A crime against Humanity.

Gameplay 3 Battle System 3 Story 8 Visuals 3 Characters 6 Sounds 5 Replay Value 5 Difficulty Moderate Completion Time 10 main; 30 extra

New York City's storyline puts players in control of Marcus Reed (Avery Waddell), a former gangster turned police officer. After his mentor/partner/father figure Terrence Higgins (Mickey Rourke) is murdered, Marcus is determined to find the killers and get his revenge. Marcus then meets up with Gabriel Whitting (Christopher Walken), a mysterious CIA operative who was apparently a close friend of Terrence. Gabriel is more than happy to help Marcus on his quest; that is, assuming Marcus will help him with some detective work.

In between all of this, Marcus will find himself entangled with some of the story's supporting characters, including his corrupt father, Isaiah (Lawrence Fishburne), his understanding, but firm, boss, Deena Dixon (Mariska Hargitay), and Victor Navarro (Esai Morales), the NYPD police chief that hates Marcus with a passion.

Overall, the story is well told, well acted, and pretty well written, and will provide players with incentive to play the game to the very end. The story would be better suited to a movie, especially since the game has more bugs than a beehive.

Graphically, TC:NYC has some detailed character models and lip-synching in the cut-scenes. The overall look of the game is below average, especially compared to other open-world games like Destroy All Humans and Spider-Man 2. The game also suffers from a ridiculous amount of technical problems, like constant pop-ups, glitchy animations, brutal and randomly dropping frame rate, and some of the worst and most outrageous clipping problems I've ever seen in any video game.

The collision detection is awful. Sometimes you'll find yourself trying to frisk a pedestrian that's standing right in front of you and end up grabbing the guy to your left. When you notice someone behind a wall or door (you can usually tell because their bodies are passing through it), you can simply start punching the barrier and manage to inflict damage on the guy standing behind it. It would make sense if the world were made of plastic or something! These collision issues are only a couple of the many problems I noticed in this unique gaming experience.

The controls of the game are no picnic. The controller set-up is confusing and counter-intuitive (for example, press the L2 button to get in and out of a car). Even worse, you can't remap the controls to your liking. This is unacceptable; the last True Crime had that ability. Another problem is that Marcus doesn't run fast enough, which makes on-foot chases ridiculously laborious and more difficult than they should be. This could have been easily addressed with addition of a run button, but alas, none in sight. The in-depth hand-to-hand combat from Streets of LA has degenerated into mashing the attack button. There's a decided lack of strategy and special combos to perform, which makes the fighting much less engaging and fun than it than what it was on its predecessor. The gun targeting is all right and I like that the precision aiming system from the previous game is still there. But this time the color-coded system (it tells you if the shot will be lethal to your target depending on the location) tends to screw you up, especially during hostage situations.

You can't dive out of the car while driving, like in Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which is especially aggravating when your car is about to explode. Even worse, the time you have to abandon your vehicle before it explodes is unbelievably brief. This makes it nearly impossible to escape without either dying or sustaining severe damage. The car physics are very unrealistic and sometimes downright laughable; wait until you see a bus spin like a figure skater after being hit by your small sedan. Furthermore, the extra driving actions that you can earn seem to hinder more than help; you'll find yourself accidentally activating one action when you meant to do another (this happened when I tried to speed boost, but I went up on two wheels instead, and then the car flipped over).

The technical problems further hamper the flawed controls. You can't arrest stunned perpetrators even when you're standing right over them. The game's AI isn't advanced enough to make Marcus move to the proper location to perform the action, which is completely ridiculous. Same goes with getting in and out of cars, entering doors of buildings, picking up guns, and/or evidence, and so on and so forth.

In the audio department, the sound effects are pretty authentic and help create the mood of the city, but some of the sounds in the game cut out for no apparent reason (the siren is one example). The music of the game consists of about 50 or so licensed tracks from such artists as Jay-Z, Blue Oyster Cult, Redman, Run DMC, The Ramones, Sonic Youth, and many others. However, I didn't find many tracks that I really enjoyed, and some of them were pretty bad.

The voice-overs in the cut-scenes are very well done, but when you're playing the game, there's constant repetition that will drive you insane. When you honk your horn in the cars, Marcus has only three phrases, two of which contain the F-word or one of its derivatives. The pedestrians constantly repeat the same quips over and over which almost all contain the F-word or some other profanity. Even the women in this game swear profusely, making the overall use of profanity seem desperate rather than authentic.

As if all the bugs and glitches highlighted weren't enough, TC:NYC suffers from some even more severe problems. The camera at one time became locked in place and stopped following Marcus correctly; this eventually allowed me to walk completely out of the camera's view and I couldn't see where I was or where I was going. Another instance, I got out of my car and tried to start moving on foot: nothing happened. Marcus was stuck in place and nothing save reloading would make him move. Then the game locked up on me twice, requiring me to reboot my system.

This is what it comes down to: True Crime: New York City should not have been released. This game is obviously not finished. Somehow, the myriad problems, some of which I noticed within my first 5 minutes of play, got past the 100+ members of the QA departments of both Luxoflux and Activision. Worse still: Sony (who ultimately must approve each game for quality before release) allowed this disaster to reach the market instead of refusing to support it. Everyone involved in the QA process of this game should be ashamed and perhaps lose their jobs. It appears that they don't know how to do them.

When the game actually works, it's of average quality. With the story mode missions and the many side-quests such as racing and street fighting, players will probably get a good 30 or so hours. When the game doesn't work properly, which is a lot; gamers are not going to bother to play it for even a fraction of that time.

Usually at this time, I'd probably demand that Activision recall the game. But considering how badly TC:NYC sold, it probably wouldn't make a difference. As it is, I don't suggest buying or renting this game. I fear that doing either will only encourage Activision and/or Luxoflux to screw us over again.