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love it!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

this is a great game , i definately enjoyed this one, i spent hours getting lost in NY city, fighting crime, doin whatever, going on my missions whenever i chose too, its sooo cool, i highly recommend this game

Trying too Hard; hits Technical Shortcomings

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This review was written by James Shea, my son.

The sequel to True Crime: Streets of LA, "True Crime New York City" takes the main idea of Grand Theft Auto and changes some key element; for example, the main character is a cop, rather than a criminal, and the game takes place in a map that is based on the actual NYC.

The general story follows an ex-gang member who joins up with the NYPD to follow in the footsteps of a family friend, and simultaneously tries to escape the influence of his crime-lord father. The story progresses to involve corrupt police, gang members, and the mafia. Like "Streets of LA", the player can choose to be a good cop (arresting suspects, using non-lethal blows, turning in evidence) or a bad cop (killing suspects, pawning evidence, and generally being corrupt). This leads to two different endings, but not as many branches as in Streets of LA.

The gameplay elements are fairly diverse. The controls, to start, are absolutely terrible. They're complicated, they don't handle well, and oftentimes they don't go where they're supposed to. The range of activities, and how the player deals with a given scenario, is extensive. There are many random crimes comitted across the city to deal with, ranging from a stolen car on the loose to a gang showdown to an assault and battery. There are many ways to deal with these problems. A good cop dealing with a sidewalk full of gang members has to flash his badge or fire some warning shots before they'll cooperate; a bad cop can simply run them all over with his car. Good cops need to only arrest legitimate criminals; bad cops can plant evidence to boost their reputation for getting an arrest. However, due to the bad controls, sometimes good cops may slip up and accidentally break a neck or some other unapproved act. This limits the full potential of the game. At the same time, civilians aren't entirely helpless, either. Frisk the wrong guy for drugs and he might just decide to pull a taser or a handgun. However, in a lot of regards there is no penalty (besides a bad cop rating) for running over civilians or your fellow officers.

The graphics are decent to good, and the sound has lots of good licensed music. However, the main issue in the game is the lack of crowds. Considering that the game takes place in NYC, the entire city should be jam-packed, but due to the software and hardware limits there are only four or five people on a sidewalk generally. This makes the game feel like it's more ambitious than it can afford.

As a whole, this game isn't terribly good; despite a lot of neat attempts, the game ultimately falls short due to a wide variety of technical shortcomings. It just seems like it's trying too hard to be GTA, and this makes it lose a lot of the little things that it had going for it.

Rating: 6/10.

A time consuming but awesome game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a game for full frontal melee and weapons players.It may take a while but it is very rewarding with cars, money, and new martial arts and weapon techniques. The time slow technique is used in many games but this definitely pulls it off with changing crosshair colors just to be sure that you can make the shot and don't worry about wasting bullets because every gun is single shot, even machine guns. The sights change very fast from tall skyscrapers to back alleys and shacks. This game has 2 sides, the bad cop or the good cop. The bad cop is the extortion and "accidental" running over citizens. The good cop takes out criminals big in story missions and small in random crimes. He also only chooses to beat the living snot out of criminals and not the "innocent" townsfolk. Don't harass the citizens too much, there's consequences! I highly recommend this game for the vigilante in all of us.

A True Crime

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

(Brittany Spears song) Ooops, they did it again. They made a new game, and it plays like crap. I'm not going to waste time with details, you'll get that from the other reviews. This game has been out for a while now. It's just funny to me how Activision has the balls to make wise cracks about GTA within the dialog of the character. The real "True Crime" is that Activision packed do-do in a box and tried to market it as entertainment. Pathetically, its clear that the jokes are nothing more than jealous mud slinging. HA,HA!

1ST TRUE CRIME, IS A BETTER GAME

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I DID NOT LIKE THE NY VERSION. IT MAKES NY LOOK LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A GODFATHER FILM. MIGHT BE BECAUSE I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN NY. SO, I MIGHT BE PARTIAL TO NOT ENJOYING THE GAME. THE CONTROLS ARE NOT GOOD WHILE DRIVING THE STREETS. THE LA VERSION I THINK HAD A BETTER STORY. THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THE GAME IS THAT IT DOES LOOK LIKE NEW YORK CITY. IF YOU WANT A BETTER GAME SIMILAR TO THIS ONE, GET THE GODFATHER GAME. I KNOW IT'S VIOLENT ALSO, BUT THE CONTROLS ARE A LITTLE BIT BETTER, AND IF YOU ARE A FAN OF THE FILMS, GET IT. THANK YOU

The controls are difficult to master

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game isn't bad, it's just kind of frustrating. You have to press the directional pad in different directions to change the functions of the buttons constantly. This is very difficult to explain, and even more difficult to learn while playing. If you have patience enough to play this game for two hours straight to try to learn the controls, then you are a lot more patient than me! I gave up after stage 3...

Good But needs sone improvements

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: August 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game starts you out at Christmas 2000 and you are a gangster named Marcus Reed. This part is not very hard. Then 5 years later you become a street cop. After that you half to go through Fighting training, Gun training, and Driving training. Led by the person who takes care of Marcus, Terry. It is kind of boring. Then you half to drive to a certain place where Terry tells you the different kinds of crimanils and you half to search for drugs. You half to check 3 people for drugs. The last person you check has drugs. Then you half to check the car ahed for drugs. Of course, it has some. Then Terry tells you about the different kinds of criminals. After he tells you about all of them, you half to arrest all of them. After you arrest 4 out of 5 people, the last person escapes. You go into the car thet you see 1st (not Terry's) then you drive to the closest street. Then you chase the guy down and arrest him. Then you half to drive to another place because Terry has to do something the biulding explodes and Terry dies. Then back at the police station, Deena Dixon tells you that you are on yo'ur
own. You are. My opinion of the game play is 5 stars but the music is -100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Rap and Punk are horrible! But the rock is ok.

Fun, but falls to GTA

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Ok, you could assume without much information that GTASA is a better game than this, though since this is sort of an imitation of it, it makes it less worth while. That's just a foreword: this game is decent.

The graphics aren't great or anything, but they don't do a bad job of portraying NYC. The building designs aren't so great, they have the neighborhoods down and know where to place key structures (like churches or synagogues or famous food places, not just Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, or Empire State). That said, the human model graphics are somewhat mediocre, but they're not as bad as the grand theft auto ones, and the building graphics are decent, and vehicles look fair.

The controls hold up pretty well. Compared to a lot of games, the combat engine is nice. Melee isn't anything special, but shooting holds up well, I just wish you could get weapons more easily (there's an armory that you can get as you go up in rank as an investigator, but it seems nearly impossible to be able to actually use them, unless I'm seriously missing something huge).

The gameplay itself varies. There are the neighborhoods of Manhattan that have different crime rates, and you can temporarily 'clean' them up, but they'll decay as time goes on, and you can help this decay, the engine of 'rotting buildings' is rather amusing. As Game Informer cited: The stores will slowly close down on the streets where you randomly punch people in the face. Basically, there are repeatable crime scenarios (there are many, so you don't end up using too many) and several routes to resolving the issue. The only problem is, when the violators are getting intensely violent (to the point of guns) and you need to shoot them, other cops who are helping to arrest them will sometimes shoot at you, and flashing your badge generally won't work, in which case you need to flee or shoot them, which will eventually lead to demotion. There are story missions as well, of course, in which at first you're chasing down what appears to be a run-of-the-mill drug ring, which evolves into a more complex storyline, but the storyline missions really aren't very entertaining.

In short, this game is a good effort, is generally entertaining, and has a decently good sense of city geography (central park is actually done alright, as is morningside. Riverside, like in spiderman 2, has shops on it which are illegal, there are no key spots.... well if you consider the actual meeting scene of The Warriors a key zone, and the park itself is just an intensely narrow strip. They have some buildings that are well-known, like Saint John's Cathedral, which is to an extent somewhat realistic). Basically, the subway system is done well, and it's a good free-roam game, but the storyline is mediocre.

True [...]: New York

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Both games in this series are horrible copies of Driver 3, which is a horrible copy of the Getaway, which is a horrible copy of Grand Theft Auto.
TC: New York starts off forcing you to participate in a two-hour long "training" session that gets worse and more boring by the minute, then its another 30 minutes of "drive here, do this" before you can even start the game. Horrible, sloppy controls (such as having seperate buttons for firing a weapon and firing warning shots) and some of the worst video game acting I've ever seen totally destroy this game before it even starts.
This game is such a waste of money, its a true crime.

Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. I am having a blast playing it. I only have like 3 missions left in the main story and so far I haven't noticed any major bugs in my copy. I really haven't had any problem with it at all. I don't know why so many people are having so much trouble with theirs. I did try to play it with a wireless controller which kept freezing it up. I hooked up my wired controller again and had no more trouble at all. But anywho, my only major complaint with this game is the horrible language. They need to include a language toggle in the game..all games infact. Other than the horrible profanity, this game is awesome to play. If you like the GTA series, try this one out. I recommend this title for only those of a mature audience. It earns it's "M" rating. Not for kids.

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