True Crime: New York City / Games / Web Wombat

You are Marcus Reed, a disgruntled street thug with a penchant for violent outbursts who finds himself turning on his friends after the collapse of his father’s criminal empire.

In order to escape resultant prosecution from the authorities after killing about 20 or so mates in a rage that rivals Denzel Washington's manic form in Man on Fire, Marcus joins the ranks of NYPD’s finest and, after serving a successful trial period on the streets, he’s drafted into the OCD to work alongside ‘Terry’, a long-time friend of Reed’s father.

Reed has a street-wise demeanor, but that's what it takes on the mean streets of New York to get the job done. Pencil pushers can go to hell in Reed's mind - his gun is his pencil and it only takes roughly four seconds to realise what the lead is: yeah, you guessed right.

Before too long, your partner and mentor, Terry, is soon killed in the field and, subsequently, Marcus is approached by the CIA who fully uncover Terry’s ongoing investigations, and assign Marcus with the task of finishing his work while also cleaning the crime from New York’s streets.

One of the best parts of True Crime: New York City is how well your general duties as a cop are tied into the game, working very well alongside your own personal investigations. There are a ton of random crime scenes that happen throughout the city, like somebody going crazy on a bus or a group of bums fighting over a piece of bread or something, and all of those work well enough (the Games Channel doesn't condone bum fighting.

Like it's predecessor (TC: Los Angeles), this New York-based game gives players the chance to cruise around a fairly accurate recreation of New York city - and we can tell you that it's phucking huge - without any hindrance. There are few locked areas from the get go, allowing quite a lot of freedom to do as you will.

For example, you may decide to jump in a cab or ride the train from one end of the Big Apple to the other - often the quickest way to travel long distances. Otherwise, you can appropriate a vehicle and drive, which takes ages, and shows just how much time and effort went into the huge map in this game.

On your travels through the city - which exhibits a number of visually gratifying weather permutations - you can do pretty much anything you want within the games action parameters. Here's one scenario we both encountered early on in the game: Driving down Fifth Avenue, you get a call on the radio there's a bunch of joy riders tearing through the city at top speed. You spot them, chase them and shoot out a tyre. This slows them down, allowing you to shoot for the fuel tank and BOOM! Problem solved in a molten metal, charred cadaver kind of way.

Another situation may be you spot a dodgy looking dude as you're walking down the street. Now, instead of opening fire, you saunter over and search the guy. He's clean, but your cop instinct tells you he's a dirty crim who doesn't support the Iraq war, so you plant drugs on him and haul him off to the smaller. Job well done Reed!

The coolest parts are the more involving major side missions, though. You'll be given orders to look into a couple underground criminal activities, like illegal street racing or fight arenas. For each one of these, you'll need to get yourself introduced into the scene and then work through a series of fights or races, each of which can be completed as you wish, at any time. You may have two fights and drag race, complete a few random arrests and do two storyline mission. It's a very well conceived concept.

While these major side missions generally work as expected, and are reasonable fun in their own right, the way that your boss presents them to you and commends you on your constant progress through them makes it feel like you're actually doing your job as a policeman, rather than just busting random street crimes because they're there. It helps tie in your general job duties really well in a way that doesn't feel contrived or forced. Also, being able to buy a new car from dealerships, and having your heavy firearms in the boot of the car add some more realism to the game.

The gameplay is brilliant (though the car and motorbike dynamics aren't perfect), and both gunplay and close quarters combat are highly rewarding, the well thought-out control scheme playing a big part in this. There are a few controls to learn (in fact quite a few), but this adds to the games attraction, we believe. You can hug walls, shoot round them, auto target, free target, zoom in, punch, kick, grapple, execute (neck snap etc) roll, dive, duck and plenty more. There's even a some slow-motion stuff in there for all for the bullet-time aficionados, and everything combines fairly well to create a very violent, but very interactive gameworld.

When the sun goes down and conjecture ends, there is little left to say other than this game is good amount of fun to play, and long lasting too. The voice acting by the likes of Lawrence Fishburne (as Reeds crime boss father) adds a good deal of purpose to the game, while Christopher Walken is brilliant in his appearances. If any of you watch Law and Order: SVU, you may recognise the voice of Deena, your police chief, being played by Mariska Hargitay (Olivia Benson), which may make it a bit more enjoyable too.

If you enjoy the GTA series, then give this a go as it's got some similarities and some differences and is maybe a bit easier to complete - and less frustrating! If you enjoyed (or even hated) Streets of LA, then play this as it is a lot better, in both gameplay and graphics.

True Crime: New York City is but another title leveraging Grand Theft Auto’s infamy. It tries to be different, it really does, by creating original content and compelling narrative across established and imaginative ideas - and it works - but it is still using the concept of a free-roaming, shoot-em-up, mission-based game based around ideas first seen in GTA. But unless you're a elitist right-wing gaming aristocrat, you'll have a lot of fun with it.

Game: True Crime: New York City
System: Xbox
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Luxoflux
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

	Announcement