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Good fun but not for kids.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Many people knock this game series because it is like GTA. I, on the other hand, like it for this exact reason. It has been some time since the last GTA was released and this is a nice alternative.

Glitch after Glitch after Glitch...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game, while trying to improve on the original leaves a lot to be desired. I have experienced a lot of glitches and problems with this game. First, I had to take the first game back and exchange it for a different copy because when I tried it on two different systems and it kept freezing up in the first part of the game, it wouldn't be so bad but you start back at the end of the last mission you had just saved and if you have arrested a lot of people and spent a lot of time running around doing a lot of extra stuff you lose all that progress.
Second problem is, while in a mission I was arresting someone after knocking them out and rolling them over, the screen suddenly flipped and put me under the floor and I fell to my death with nothing I could do about it.
Third problem, I was driving up to the pier for a mission, jumped out of my car and the whole area turned to water, my car was covered and I drowned while I was getting ready to walk up to the door.
Fourth problem, this one is pretty minor, just an aggravation, while driving the license plate that you see when saving the game, will flash up on the screen just for a split second.
I like playing the game but I will not only complete the main mission and quit playing it because I don't like playing games that waste my time with all the glitches. I think the creators need to be a little more careful with this kind of problem with these games because it will end up costing them in the long run.
If you want a game that is free of these kinds of glitches I would recommend 50 Cent: Bullet Proof. Save your money on this one while it's fun to play it's a glitch ridden piece of crap.

In the dark shadows of the city, only you can decide your fate.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

True Crime: New York City Score: 8/10
True Crime: New York City is the second entry from Activision into the world of cops and robbers. A sequel to the 2003 True Crime: L.A... It's a gritty surreal world created in the likeness of New York City. In TC: NY you play Marcus, a young man from the streets who starts his life as a thug, but tries to turn it around by becoming a police officer in the NYPD. And that's were you come in. It's your job to guide Marcus through his new profession and help him decide if he wants to truly follow the path of the law, or just bend it to his advantage. In the dark shadows of the city, only you can decide your fate.

Graphics- 8
Graphically this game is very well done. From the cars to the buildings you really get a feel for New York City. With its dark corners, constant traffic, and its colorful occupants, it's all here. Everything is done quite well in TC: NY. The cars look great. They take damage as they should; everything is very high detailed, right down to the brake pads to the wood paneling on the dash board. The building, while a bit repetitive, do look like they should so that's good. The people look good, with the main characters looking great. And you can constantly change Marcus's clothing, so that helps a lot. Even the weather looks really nice, as in rain looks like rain, and wet roads, well they look wet.

Game play- 10
The game play in TC: NY is were this game shines and "oh" how bright it shines. Since you play a cop, you pretty much have all a cop would have at you disposal. So you can fight street crime, as in arresting hookers, dissolving riots, searching cars, chase car thieves, pull people over, frisk random people, heck you can ever write traffic tickets. And as I said before, this is both a good cop and a bad cop game. So you can also shake people down, sell off evidence, take bribes, beat down suspects, and generally just make a complete nascence out of your self while burning down the town. All this while trying to solve major cases and taking down normal street crime. Plus if you get bored there are other things like street racing and fight clubs to entertain yourself with. There is a major amount of things to do in this game

Sound- 7
Sound wise TC: NY is good, but nothing super great. The sounds of the city are great and most of the music id good, it's just not perfect. As in the music selection is pretty big from hip hop and rap to rock and techno, it's all here for you. The gun's all sound good and the traffic is dead on. But the pedestrians only have maybe 10 different things to say and about 5 voices doing them all,, so that gets a bit repetitive after awhile. Plus the in game cut scenes sound is based of the music volume. So if you turn down the music, next big cut scene will be turned down too. The game gets a huge boost from its all star cast though. We're taking Avery Waddell, Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, Mickey Rourke, heck it even has Traci Lords were can you go wrong. The sound is great and all, but it could have been better.

Control- 8
The controls of this game are a bit rough, while they work fine; it's a lot to take in. The game allows for total freedom and the controls try to mimic that feel. There are multiple controls depending on what you're doing, driving or walking. On foot you've got buttons for fist fighting, gun play, object interacting, taking cars, flashing your badge, changing up fight styles, lock on, and all the good stuff. Then they through in a few button commands for the cool things. Like double tapping the jump button lets you do this neat little slow motion gun dive. Or holding the block button then taping grab allows you to counter an enemies attack. Same thing goes for driving. You get a gas, break, e-break, lock on and trigger buttons. Plus as before you get neat combo buttons like holding brake and gas lets you do a burn out or taping brake twice while holding a direction let's you do a complete 180. All in all great controls once you get accustomed to them.
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Overall- 8
This is one of the best games out on the market to date. From the sheer freedom it allows, to the star studded cast, Christopher Walken and Laurence Fishburne people! Even Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order is in this one and they all do a perfect job with the voices. The pure fun had in this game is right up there with the best of them. Following the extremely well written dialog and story or just smashing it up in the town, TC: NY delivers. Of all sequels to come out as of late this one delivers on all angles and over shadows its predecessor in all ways. No one should miss out on a game this fine, if Oprah rated games, this would be at the top of the list, that's how good this game truly is.

Eh, not bad, but it's not "True Crime" anymore

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Apparently, the fact that this game bears a striking resemblance to GTA in more ways than one has been addressed more than enough, so I won't go there... directly.
I will, however, comment that while this game is fairly entertaining, it lacks the essential nuances that made the first True Crime a unique title capable of holding its own next to the GTAs.
In the first TC, you HAD to explore the city in order to find the places to upgrade your character, and those upgrades had to be EARNED through usage of the skills. Also, the L.A. cityscape had a lot more variation- from residential areas to commercial districts, and the freeway system was awesome.
In TC:NYC, you're bottle-fed upgrade locations; they're clearly marked from the get-go, so there's really no need to explore the city. Plus, the upgrades are PURCHASED, not earned, with money that is very easily acquired. Essentially, you walk into a dojo, pay a few bucks, and congrats, you know karate instantaneously.
The RPG sense of upgrading and building your character that made the first TC fresh and new is all but gone from this title. It'll take you about an hour or two to achieve the maximum cop ranking, and that only unlocks a few cars and weapons which can just as easily be purchased from one of the game's dozens of vendors.
You can take a cab or the subway anywhere you want to go, including active crime scenes and that's just dumb. Also, seeing as the cab rides are dirt cheap, it almost makes no sense to DRIVE anywhere, especially when the most realistically rendered thing in the whole game is New York's infamous bumper-to-bumper gridlock! Also, and maybe I was wrong to expect anything different- perhaps NYC really looks like this- but I honestly got bored with the same drab surroundings block, after block, after block after... you get the point. I started taking cabs everwhere just because the tedium of driving and wrecking at every intersection caused a malignant tumor to form in my brain.
Another point is the car mechanics. Almost every vehicle you drive feels too big and weighty. Perhaps it was the close feel of the narrow streets, but even the sports coups felt like school buses. Ever tried a jacknife turn on a two-lane, one-way street during rush-hour traffic? It sucks both in real life and in this game. And forget about driving backwards; even if you've got a car that can haul @$$ going forward, our hero Marcus Reed backs up like my grandmother.
Then they added the clothes changes and hair-styles which, to me, just screamed "we wish we were GTA!" Honestly, neither has any bearing whatsoever on the game, your environment or the people around you.
All in all, that game doesn't make for a bad GTA knock-off, but it does lack in the sequal department. Ever since the first TC, I've anticipated this sequal. I waited two years and all I got was this crummy T-shirt.

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed the game and thus give it a perfect score because it kept me going for months even though i beat the game 6 times. I enjoyed the game a lot despite all the bugs and glitches. It's created with the real look and feel of new york city. Despite all the praise though the game really did frustrate me with all the bugs and things. Like on the Shadow Tong case it took me forever to knock Tommy off the crate thing. But overall loved it! I hope the come ou with a third TC.

New York C-C-C-C-C-C-beeeeeeeeeep-CRASH!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'll start by saying that True Crime NYC is the first console game that I can remember since the Sega Master System days that actually crashed my console. New game disc, 2005 model Xbox with no read errors or other problems; this is simply a horribly broken piece of software.

What is so sad about TCNYC is the clear attempt to make a great game. The programmers were trying to do something big here, what with the interesting storyline, the depth of the fighting engine, detailed building interiors, on and on. But they failed spectacularly at almost every attempt.

To the first major failure: an apparent lack of understanding of how to program software within the limitations of the hardware. The game simply tries to render far too much during driving for even the reasonably powerful Xbox. Framerates sieze up every block or two, and this led to my first complete system crash within ten minutes of play. Disturbing. I can only imagine how unplayable this is on the less powerful PS2. The driving control scheme relies on "special move" buttons to perform stunts; a pretty good indicator that the programmers had no idea how to build a working car physics engine. The awful control scheme doesnt even include analogue gas/brake functions, which would have been perfectly fine on the trigger buttons (GTA 2 did this with the DREAMCAST controller almost ten years ago). Rolling through NYC in a jet-black unmarked 4.6 Crown Vic Interceptor should feel cool, but it just feels crummy.

The on foot engine is acutally an improvement over GTA's, at least until running or fighting. While the fight sequences could have been a saving grace, the ridiculously complicated Street Fighter-style button combos make it miserable. Each special move button results in a pre-rendered animation sequence that feels clumsy and is just as likely to leave your face in the fist of your enemy as have the desired consequence. A simplified scheme with fewer "special" moves and improved response time could have made this the nicest fighting engine in any open-world game to date. But it isn't.

The city itelf, while detailed and often well-lit at night, just doesn't have the character of Liberty City. Perhaps due to the lack of any verticality in the landscape (no bridges, hills, or even peaks and valleys in roadways), the city feels dull and lifeless after a few hours of driving. And strange glitches in environment lighting (car lights flicker on and off) and collision detection evaporate any sense of realism. Not to mention awful behavior programming for pedestrians which turns every NYC resident into a Tourette's victim.

The story is initially interesting, although the foul language used as "dialogue" crosses the line from shocking to just plain bad writing. Unfortunately a horrific glitch in the volume balance means you wont hear 90% of the game's cutscenes. There must have been some evil, angry, vindictive person in charge of testing this game. You just can't screw up this bad accidentally.

The one element that really stood out as a positive was the use of NYC's precincts as controllable strategic elements of the overall map. By apprehending criminals (who commit a wide variety of rather creative crimes) in a precinct, you can gradually clean it up and gain respect and rank within your squad. While it's not much more than a nonessential side mission, I found it gave me a sense of control and accomplishment that the paint-by-numbers story mode lacked.

Unfortunately, a few unique concepts arent enough to save TCNYC from its abominable technical problems. Because the developers tried to do so much and occasionally succeeded, I can't say it's a completely bad game...but due to all the glitches it's certainly a failure.

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