In 2007 or 2008, I was browsing the clearance rack at my local Walmart, and I happened to see True Crime: New York City sitting on the shelf with a $10 price tag attached. Previously, I had no interest in ever owning or playing this game, but for $10 I decided what the heck, I can get my $10 worth out of a Quote-unquote GTA clone.
I had previously played a little portion of of True Crime: Streets of L.A. At a friend's house, and I was rather underwhelmed by it at the time. I know the game still has a cult-following among it's fans, but, even going back to play it for this footage, It feels a little janky, and glitchy, and the mechanics don't feel fleshed out as far as they should have been. The episodic nature of the missions also feels a little out of place in a sandbox game. Yes, I'm going to use the older term Sandbox game instead of open-world game, as we used to use it parallel to GTA style games.
When I finally got to playing True Crime: New York City I was actually taken aback at how good the mechanics in the game were. Many of the mechanics in the game like the hand-to-hand fighting, and the aiming and shooting feel better to use in this game than even San Andreas. There are also a lot of other additions to the game that I really enjoyed. While, like the previously mentioned San Andreas, you can buy clothes and a new haircut, you can also go to a dojo and buy new fighting techniques to switch to on the fly. For example, you can switch from the brawler to taekwondo or Karate on the fly mid combat.
You can also use your in-game cash earnings to buy new cars, new driving techniques, new guns, and even new songs for the games excellent soundtrack which consists of licensed music (which I had to mute for this review footage). Top that off with the fact that almost any door to any store, hotel, or apartment complex can be entered in the game, and you have a game that feels incredibly expansive considering the hardware it runs on. While being able to walk into random buildings in a large, sandbox style game might not seem like a big deal in the modern age, even with the game using only a couple of different templates to simulate the inside of the buildings, this was an incredibly impressive feat on the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox.
Being able to walk into any open store in the game really helps bring New York city to life in this game. It's a small touch, but it adds an extra layer of interactivity and exploration to the city. I remember being blown away by the fact that you could enter a large percentage of buildings in the game. I thought it was an awesome design idea, especially since I was used to building doors mostly being there for decoration in other sandbox games of the generation.
would say, however, my favorite mechanic is the random active crimes. Carried over from the original True Crime, Marcus is constantly being notified of various crimes being committed in his vicinity. You can either choose to engage in stopping the ongoing crimes (either arresting or killing the perpetrators as needed), or ignoring the calls. This is one of my favorite design ideas instituted in the game, because it gives the player something engaging to do in the times between missions. The crimes vary in variety from stopping a domestic disturbance, a bomb threat, a car jacking, and many more. In fact, the crimes, at first, have a good variety to them. Eventually, they start to repeat over and over, but, at first, they feel quite varied.
Later, when I finally played Marvel's Spiderman Remastered on the PC, I realized that Spiderman used a similar city-crime system in it's design where Spiderman would intercept police chatter about active crimes being committed in the area, and players could choose to respond to the calls, or ignore them. I know Spiderman 2 on the PS2 had a similar system, but I've still yet to play Spiderman 2, even though I have owned it for years. For me, when I first was Spiderman's active crime system, it was a call back to True Crime in my mind. It's an ingenious design idea that helps bring the crime-fighting portion of each game to life, and gives the city more life, feeling less static and lifeless as a whole in each game.
True Crime: New York City follows the story of Marcus Reed, the son of a New York Crime Kingpin, who, as the manual states: After a life of hard Crime, has turned to Law Enforcement, only to watch his mentor die in front of his eyes. Marcus is now drawn into a story of deception, conspiracy, and double crossings.
The introduction mission of the game introduces a young Marcus while he was still in his life of crime, taking revenge for an attempt on his father, and his lives. After that, the timeline shifts forward five years where Marcus is now a police officer who's about to be promoted to the organized Crime unit. The game sets up the story, and has a quick forced training mode that does a good job at teaching the basic combat and riving mechanics. Normally forced training modes annoy me to the end, but this one isn't too bad as far as training modes go. There are quite a few complex mechanics to the fighting and gunplay in particular, but the training goes by pretty quickly overall. I still hate forced training modes, and prefer the good old days where they were an optional mode on the title menu, but this one isn't too bad.
I've found that whenever I play this game, my usual GTA urge to go on crazy rampages isn't there. True Crime is actually kind of unique in that you play as a cop. Now, you can certainly go an rampages if you so choose, but the game does punish you for doing so. Players can even choose to play the game as either a good cop or bad cop if they choose. Choosing to do things like sell any crime evidence the acquire at local pawn shops for cash instead of turning it in for career points, extorting local store clerks for cash, or just shooting every perpetrator when responding to crimes. The game grades you with good points and bad points throughout.
In the game, you can stop and frisk any of the NPC characters you want, searching for drugs, weapons, and etc. his brings up another addictive mechanic in the game. The more pedestrians you arrest who are carrying these items, the more the crime rate goes down in each neighborhood. When you get the crime rate down enough in each neighborhood, stores that were previously boarded up are reopened, as they were forced to close because of the high crime rate. There is also less trash a debris floating around in the neighborhood as well. I found myself kind of addicted to cleaning up each section of the map. Plus, the stop and frisk feature allows me to be evil in other ways beside going on a rampage.
I like to stop and risk random pedestrians, hit them once, and then let them go. If they turn to fight me, I beat them down, then arrest them for assaulting an officer. See, there are other ways to be an evil A-hole in this game that aren't rampage sprees. I also like to randomly walk up to NPC's and punch them to see if they will attack me, then I arrest them for it. It's my own way of being diabolical in this game. Granted, most of them pull out tazers to taze you with for attacking them, but I still find ways to skirt the rules and be a little evil in the game.
I also like other small touches in the game like, since Marcus is under cover and in street clothes, if he is shooting or openly carrying a gun, he has to identify himself as a cop to other police officers or they will attack him. You can also randomly search the trunks of parked vehicles for contraband if you want. There are a lot of small details and quirks in the game's design that combine to a extra layers of immersion to the game. Luxoflux really thought outside the box on this game, and there are a tons of seemingly small design choices that, when added together, give this game it's own unique feel. It wouldn't be nearly as good without them.
The main story missions can be beaten in 7 hours or less which is relatively short. One thing I did notice in this run is there aren't a lot of timed driving missions in the main story mode. There are a couple of scenes here and there, but, to be honest, I didn't really miss the Driver or Smuggler's Run style missions. There are still a couple, but the game focuses more on the parts it excels at, and that's the hand-to-hand combat and gunplay elements.
Coming back to the hand-to-hand combat in the game feels rather clunky if you're used to more fluid fighting systems. The hit detection feels off, and it's best not to bother with the lock on system. For the time, it was impressive for a GTA clone. It had a lot more depth than the hand-to-hand combat in the GTA games. Coming back now, it might feel janky to most modern gamers, but it still mostly works well enough.
The gunplay also feels better here than in GTA outside of the clunky weapon switching interface on the D-pad. However, unlike San Andreas where you have to hold down the lock-on button to get dual-stick aim, True Crime has dual-stick aiming by default. You can also lock onto enemies for fast targeting. Again, compared to the fluidity of modern games, certain aspects of the combat and gunplay will feel a little janky, but compared to it's contemporaries, there was a lot more depth to True Crime's fighting system than even in the GTA series of the day.
The driving in the game is alright. The physics engine does a decent job. The cars control decently. A lot of people complained about the driving physics in the game, and while it's true that the GTA games feel a lot better in this department as well. The driving isn't terible in my book, but also doesn't feel great either. It's in the middle of the road. There are also framerate issues in the game, but I didn't notice them much. For some reason, when I am playing old games on old systems, I barely notice framerate issues inless there is massive slowdown. I just kind of already expect them to be there by default. It is there, but, considering the hardware, it would be more surprising if it wasn't.
The main story missions have five major cases. Once you complete the first major case, the Magdalena Cartel, you can then choose which of the other three major cases you want to play next.
Outside of the main story missions, there are side story missions like your typical racing missions, taxi driver missions, and even a fight club you can partake in. Completing the game 100 percent, or putting in the cheat code like I did for this footage also unlocks a hidden mini game called Redman Gone Wild.
The original True Crime had an unlockable mini game featuring Snoop Dog, but the one in New York City features the Rapper Redman. I haven't actually played this mini-game until this playthrough. The point of the game is to help Redman escape New york against an entire city of people who are trying to kill him. You have pedestrians that try and attack you hand-ton hand, armed NPCs, and even vehicles that try and run you over. Every kill adds extra seconds to the timer, and life and weapon pickups abound. Redman Gone Wild is actually really fun to play. I was surprised at how much fun I had playing this mode. It's a great addition to the game.
Graphically, from a quality and polish standpoint, you'll have a hard time recognizing that True Crime New York City was released in the same generation as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, let alone the same console. In San Andreas' defense, it's is gigantic in scale, even when compared to True Crime, but True Crime New York City, aside from being on the list of being one of the small handful of PS2 games that support progressive scan, looks amazing, and is as faithful a recreation of New York city as possible on the PS2. The map in the game is said to be GPS accurate, but as I don't live in New York, and have even even visisted, I have no idea how accurate it is to the minute details in the city. Either way, for the size and scope of the game, the graphics in the game look amazing for a PS2 game.
You can tell that, by 2005, developers had really started to learn all the little tricks of the PS2's architecture to either use certain effects, or how to convincingly fake them. I guess the modern word would be optimize, but in the olden days, it was less optimization, and more how to think outside of the box to get a system with as weird an architecture as the PS2 to produce things like say, the beautiful, by PS2 standards, reflective surfaces when it rains, or just having a shiny, reflective sheen on the roads that occur whether it's raining or not.
The texture quality is also excellent, as are the lighting effects, and even the shdows after they stream in of the disk that is. Overall, the game offers top-tier PS2 visuals. This is a great example of what the system was capable of, graphically, in hands of the right developemtn team.
However, once area that falls into the graphics is the biggest flaw of the game, and that is the abundance of technical glitches in this game.
There are so many bugs in this game. For this run, I didn't have a lot of glticthes occur while recording this footage, but in the past, I have glitched through walls, fallen through floors, had tons of completely other wonky things happen, like guys walking in the air. This is a game you definitely need to save often in, because the game can just freeze up on you at random.
I've actually heard that the PS2 version is the least glitchy version of the game. I remember when I posted this as an Underrated Gem in 2008, one of the commentors informed me that the other two console versions are even worse when it comes to glitching out. It's so bad that there is even a in-depth glitch/error guide for the Xbox version on Gamefaqs.com.
So even though I really enjoy this game, I enjoy it despite it's glitches. The game might be too glitchy and flawed for most people. It's a shame that Luxoflux didn't spend more time trying to iron out the glitches before the game shipped. I don't know if the game was under a strick publishing deadline, so they shipped it in good-enough state just to get it out the door on time, or if it was laziness on the developer's part. Maybe they spent more time trying to make he game look good than trying to get it to run good.
No matter what the reason, it's still an utter shame the game has so many technical problems. Constantly having to save your game after everything you do out of fear of losing your progress isn't a fun way to spend your time. Luckily, the game prompts you to save after every completed mission, and you can also save anywhere from the pause menu.
It's just unfortunate that this is a game that you will either hate because of, or enjoy despite of It's technical issues. When I see the low review scores at the time for the game, I can certainly understand why a lot of outlets heavily panned the game. That, and they were probably directly comparing it to San Andreas at the time. GTA isn't glitch free, but by comparison, True Crime: New York city seems like a sloppy rush job.
Plus, there's always a reviewer slant in each generation where sometimes games get low review scores because they are being compared to games like San Andreas instead of being judged on their own merit: Similar genre, but doing different things. Yes, gamers would have been more suited spending their hard earned cash on a GTA game over the clone game that's riddled with bugs, and not nearly as much stuff to do. Comparisons are helpful in reviews, but sometimes reviewers had a tendency to go a little overboard in the comparisons and the entire reviews come off as, “Game A is bad because it's not game B.”
There are other glitches in the game like wonky AI, and NPC's that randomly crash their cars into other cars or run you over when you are trying to arrest a perp. There's enough here for someone to write a full guide on Gamefaqs of bugs. As I mentioned earlery, there is slowdown in the game to the point that a lot of user reviews complained about it, but, again, I didn't notice it much. Yes, the cars move slower in True Crime than they do in GTA, and you can tell the framerate doesn't move as fast overall, but I didn't notice many large framerate dips, just that the game, overal feels a little more sluggish than GTA overall. Maybe that's where the framerate complaints come from, or maybe the ones who complained were playing the Gamecube or Xbox versions of the game.
It really comes down to whether or not you can look past all the bugs and enjoy the game, hoping you don't run into any game ending bugs along the way, or if the myriad of other technical issues, or if the technical problems are a deal breaker. I guess it comes down to your tollerance of glitches. Even the user reviews for the game are split on this issue. Some people, like me, really like the game despite it's problems, while other absolutely hated it.
I guess it also depends on whether you spent $50 on it when it launched, or a mere $10 like I did. For $10, I really enjoyed my time with the game, but those who paid full price for it when it hit, I can understand why they might have enjoyed it as much as I do. Plus, there were no day-one patches on the PS2. You got the game on the disk and all the glitches were cemented in stone. No patches, not fixes, the game was eternally in it's launch condition.
One place the game doesn't lack in it's the sound department. It has an excellent soundtrack with a variety of genres of music from rap to punk rock, from Redman to the Misfits, the Ramones to blue oyster cult. The music selection had songs for all musical tastes. I believe the Xbox version of the game will even let you use custom soundtracks. Remember, we used to rip CD's to our Xbox hard drives, and some games would let you use them as background music in the games.
The voice acting is excellently done, and even has an all star cast with names like Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke, and Lawerence Fishburne. The sound effects are decently done as well. The car sounds, gun sounds, and other effects are all good. The only annoying effect is that weird buzzing noise when the game freezes up on you. The constant quips by NPCs in the game can also get annoying to some people. Overall, the voice acting and soundtrack are the star of the show, while everything else is good as well.
The Bottom Line- True Crime: New York City has a ton of technical issues, bugs, and glitches. This is a game that I've always found the fun and interesting gameplay design outweighs the it's problems. I've always really enjoyed this $10 clearance rack buy of mine, and I think that forgiving gamers, who can look past the technical problems should really look into this game if you've never played it before. I really enjoy it's exploration elements, and the mixture of good design ideas that I think improve the gameplay experience. I always play as a good cop, but it's cool to have the option to play as a bad cop if you choose.
I find the stop and frisk elements where you get to troll the NPC's in the game, the city crime system where you get calls for local crimes being committed, as well as the ability to enter most shops in the game to be addictive touches that add a lot to the core gameplay on top of the story-driven missions and side missions. I really like True Crime: New York City and I always have. That being said, I can't suggest it to everyone because of it's myriad of problems that will put many gamers off to it. It's many elements combine to make a great quote-unquote GTA clone in my book. If San Andreas it a 10 on the scale, True Crime: New York City is in the 7 to 8 territory by comparison. It's a good game in my book, and I always have fun with it. If you can look past the overall bugginess of the game, you might want to look into this game. It's a flawed, yet still fun underrated gem.
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