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Pretty Much WORTHLESS..

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: November 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

True Crime New York....I actually just rented it tonight, played it for 30 minutes, and repeatedly said the phrase "this is gay". For everyone that found "streets of L.A." to be a pretty decent experience probably will not like this crap. From the get-go, it feels solid and very intense, possibly worth the time. My mind soon changed when I got into the game. I know it's New York and traffic jams are common, BUT COME ON!! You can barely run without smacking against a friggin car!! I mean I realize 'L.A.' had it's fair share of bugs to make it not great, but this is just lame. I am by no means a Grand Theft Auto fan at all, but they completely stole the concept from San Andreas and threw a new name onto it. that's all I have to say. Depending on your preferences it may be worth a rent, but i strongly urge you to not spend your cash on this pile.

Games this bad should have warning label

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The only true crime here is the shoddy work done on this title. True Crimes: Streets of LA was like many Grand Theft Auto rip offs. Big city, plenty of running around to do. Except instead of working for the mob or whatever, you're actually a cop. It may not have been the best game, but it was a start. Some of the mechanics weren't bad. Some were actually fairly well done. I guess one could only expect a sequel. In hopes that True Crimes: New York City would be better, I seem to have had my hopes up.

You play as Marcus Reed, a gangster who has just become a cop so he can clean up the streets of New York. And as Marcus you'll take on the assignments given to you by the police department. They're all pretty straightforward. Each mission is divided into parts. Each part consists of you gunning down all the thugs, and finding the bad guy. Rinse and repeat. The missions, like Streets of LA, are very simple and don't really call for any real strategy at all. And the bad guys are as stereotypical as the main character himself.

The game is pretty simple, and should you only do the missions, you'll complete it in fairly short time. The same thing plagued the first True Crimes game, and I was hoping there would be an improvement here. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

If you don't want to do the main mission though, there are alternatives. Much like GTA there are side missions you can do. You can street race, go off and stop other crimes, and you can frisk people for contraband, including drugs, obscene pictures, weapon parts, stolen license plates... and the list goes on. You can either turn these things into the station for Career Points, which help your rank.

There are five ranks in True Crimes 2, and they're all based on whether or not you're a good cop or a bad cop. Unfortunately, there's nothing special about the ranking system until you become an extremely bad cop, and that will overall lower your ranking.

Being a good cop simply means you've taken the proper precautions such as frisking your suspects, clipping them in cuffs and not killing anyone needlessly. Bad cops are obtained the exact opposite way. It's a lot easier to be a bad cop than a good cop, but it is still one of the points of True Crimes that sticks out as being plesant. You just won't notice until you're an extremely bad cop, or an extremely good cop.

The gameplay is simple. You shoot or strike down your enemies to death. You can lock on to them, but for some reason Marcus isn't always accurate in doing so. You can also pick up weapons your enemies drop but there isn't much variety in them, and in the end you'll most likely find yourself picking them up because you're low on ammo in one weapon, so you need more.

Melee combat isn't bad. You'll probably only do it because it looks cool, but it's almost suicide in some cases. You can pick up objects and lug them at your enemies and whatnot. You can also snap their necks if you're good enough, or throw them up against the wall. There's a lot of variety there. Hey, you can even do it to random pedestrians, but it isn't much fun (especially when they, for whatever reason, don't die).

The vehicles you drive around in are pretty realistic, based off of real cars, but you can't help but look at how messed up some of these mechanics are. A slight tap on another car will send it flying into traffic, without a doubt. It doesn't matter what the car is, it sends it out there! You'll also run into a moment or two of floating cars, and that's another of many bugs this game has.

There are more bugs than one can imagine. For example, you may just randomly fall through the ground into eternal darkness. You'll eventually die, but you'll wish you hadn't stepped on the crack when you do. Some of the scripted moments for whatever reason just stop, cars changing colors... the list goes on and on and on. And the XBOX version has a particular bug where the game totally freezes for good making it IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAT THE GAME!

Surely the graphics will save this game right? Naw, and if you think they do, something is seriously wrong with you. This isn't up to the standards of this generation at all. The character models are blockier than a cube of ice, and the framerate is terrible. Every five seconds or so the game will freeze and then resume. This very apparent when you're roaming the streets of New York. In the indoor areas it's less frequent, but you'll lose several boss fights because of that. The game freezes for that brief moment, but the action does not. Not only that, but sometimes the sound will cut out.

As far as the music goes, it really isn't too bad. You can rank your songs so that the ones you want to play actually play, and if there's a song you completely hate, you can rank it a zero and it'll never play.

The voice acting isn't bad. Christopher Walken lends his voice, but sometimes the celebrity voice actors feel like a waste. Especially with the poorly written script. Now, I can be a good sport about cusswords, but not when they're used as senselessly as this. They come as sounding like little middle school kids saying these words just to "be cool" rather than to be serious or tough.

Truthfully, I think this is a game that isn't worth getting. Way too many bugs, the game is short, the dialogue is bad, is there really any reason to want to get ths game? Even the graphics lack. This isn't worth your time. Even if you like True Crimes: Streets of LA this just isn't worth your time.

The Good:
+The sound, for what it's worth, isn't bad.

The Bad:
-Choppy graphics
-Terrible framerate
-Bad dialogue
-Way too stereotypical
-Way too many bugs to enjoy

Just avoid it. Not worth your time.

Just Like GTA is that bad?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: November 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

So many of the game reviews are picky. One of the biggest complaints about this game has been that it is the same old thing. Just like Grand Theft Auto. WHen was being like one of what is considered one of the best games ever been a bad thing? That said, if you don't like violence or profanity, avoid this game at all costs. It has both in spades. The game is very similar to the whole GTA vibe. Lots of free roaming action, lots of violence to innocent people, lots of what people loved from GTA. YOu can get more details from other reviews. The truth is if you are a churchgoer, avoid this game, it will do nothing to improve your spirituality. If you love GTA you love this game.

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.

Excellent Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

True Crime: NYC is a great game, with tons of stuff to do and many elements that breathe life into the city. The storyline is actually only a minor fraction of the game, the real fun comes from driving around the city, doing the street crimes and discovering all the different stores around the city. There are car shops, music stores, dojos, and gun shops spread around the city that offer different cars, songs, fighting styles, weapons and other clothing.
Don't like driving around? Take a cab or ride the subway. Solve the crimes throughout the city and watch how the buildings and trees reflect the changes. You can kill, arrest, stun, frisk, interrogate or extort people, using different weapons and skills you acquire throughout the game.
Unlike GTA, in this game the whole city is actually filled with life.
Many people rented this game for a day and complain that it's just another GTA. I think that's because they did not spend the time to discover all the different things and activities in the city.
The graphics are great too. The city is full of details. There is a day/night cycle, weather effects, reflections on the ground and even litter flying around. All sorts of different cars and a bunch of street objects which are all breakable.

What's not to like?

Better than GTA!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is better than GTA:SA by a little bit!Unlike the 1st True crime, you can swim and you can go into stores like gun shopes, banks, offices, clubs, the police department and more! Also you can search trunks. You can even eat!!! You can buy cars from dealerships and buy guns from gunshops. And better street crimes are available. You can take subways and taxis around the city too. And you can ride motorcycles too!!!!!!!!!!!! You can also change and buy clothes! Overall this game is way better then TC: Streets of LA and is almost better than the whole GTA series!If you love True crime and enjoy playing GTA, buy this game immediatly.

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.

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.

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.

True Crime?......More Like False

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: February 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I liked the first True Crime a lot so when they announced this game I had high expectations for it. I got it and started to play it and I loved it, I was like YEAH! another True Crime, but then after the first 5 minutes if gameplay it turned into crap. It was kind of like the creators put all there effort into the first five minutes of the game then they were just like "alright lets finish this already." The first five minutes of gameplay are non-stop actionu are in a warehouse killing all these gang members for revenge or something with these two sick Uzi's, BUT THEN a cut-scene happens and all of a sudden alakazam......its crap. After the cutscene you are a cop and it is two years or something into the future and you and your partner are set to go on a mission. You drive there and your partner walks in alone and the whole place explodes. Your cop expectations go down and now oyu must work your way up doing dirty work. Thats basically the whole game, doing dirty work and its not fun at all.

Probably the most fun out of the game is just running around on foot, because the driving is horrible, and arresting random people and showing them your badge and shooting your gun in the air. Everything else sucks. The story-line missions are so boring and pointless. All you do in the story missions are go to this random guy and get told about this bad guy who needs to be in jail but its your job to figure out where he is. So the random guy gives you a list of poeple who might know something about the wanted bad guy. So you go to a warehouse and kill everyone in it and make the person tell you something about the wanted bad guy and then you go to another warehouse and do the same thing about three or four times till you have found enough info on the guy to take him out. Then once you have got that guy the random guy gives you another guy you need to find info about. And thats over and over till the story missions are done, sounds boring...right? Well it is! There are side missions but they suck and are also boring. Like doing missions for your father or taxi missions and racing missions.

The environment is horrible, now i know New York city is awesome and what not, but NYC sucks in a game, like really sucks. First of all the place is so freakin huge that if oyu want to do a mission you have to drive for like five minutes just to get to the person who tells you the mission. Then you have to drive to where the actual mission takes place which is another five minutes. This will keep you from doing the other missions because you will be like....eh i dont want to drive all the way there lets just do this misssion. The car crashing is also horrible. When you crash you most likely do a 180 degree turn, which gets really annoying when you are in a cop chase. Also the place is just boring, its the same looking buildings over and over again and its like never day and ther is always garbage flying across the screen, its like a dump.

OVerall the whole story-line sucks. Basically because there is no specific storyline. The game jst feels like someone regular, normal life, the normal life of a cop. The sound sucks too, especially the cars. When you crash it is the most irritating noise and the cutscene volume is so low while the gameplay volume is super high. So you will turn up the volume while in a cutscene and forget to turn it lower for gameplay and your ears will blow out from the noise. The controls are also bad. Since its like just based on a normal life of a cop you are able to do all the normal things making you use all buttons on the controler. I mean the back button shoot in the air, now when is the back button ever used except for menus. The fighting stile is cool but it kind of gets confusing with all the buttons you have to press.

You are able to do all the same things as the first like badge showing and arresting and fighting moves and shooting in the air. Really the most fun i have in the game is driving at full speed in a car and when someone does that stupid thing, like in all games, where they change lanes and get infront of you to make you crash; so i slam into them from the back and then make them get out of the car and arrest them, because in all other games you can't do anything about it, like GTA.

Overall this game is bad and not what it could have been or should have been. I would not recommend this game to anyone, its just so bad. IF you True Crime fans want to try it be my guest, but you will be surely disappointed. All you other people if you want to rent it just for the first five minutes of the game go ahead. This game is M for Mature: Blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs.

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