True Crime: New York City

Maxim Online

The gritty story, varied side missions, and jittery subway rides create the type of seedy environment that's perfect for attracting tourists, gamers, and criminals alike.

PGNx Media

The action and depth of the game will surely please fans of the first game or those who need a GTA-genre game this year. The game doesn’t go above and beyond but with solid gameplay and a superb recreation of New York City, very few can complain.

Game Informer

It still has a wyas to go to catch "GTA", but with its finely crafted sequel Luxoflux has raised this series up from another me-too title to a necessity for fans of this genre. [Jan 2006, p.135]

Gaming Nexus

Like a great hip hop song, True Crime: New York City retreads a bunch of tried and true tricks to come up with a new concoction that you just can’t help but like.

GamingTrend

The framerate, bugs, and dopey AI put a damp cloth on the whole affair, but the graphics, outstanding storyline, and voice work all but make up for it.

Thunderbolt

The side missions are exciting, and the brawls and precision aiming are superior to most of the gameplay mechanics in "GTA." It’s just too bad the whole game feels unpolished and the slowdown is so annoying.

PSM Magazine

AI problems aside, the game has a lot going for it. [Jan 2006, p.77]

GameBiz

A vastly ambitious game that delivers on a number of levels.

Worth Playing

So what exactly do I love about True Crime: New York City? It's not the story, but more the system: it lets you get out there, get your hands dirty amongst the unwashed masses in any way you see fit, and doesn't let any of your actions (for the most part, anyway) completely ruin the outcome.

eToychest

A good game. It does have several flaws that hopefully will be fixed up for any future installments in the series, but none truly distract from the game's deep and memorable story.

IGN

Does a whole lot of things right, but it doesn't take very many risks. What this means is that it's a solid title through and through, but you won't find a whole lot of water cooler moments in there.

Next Level Gaming

Wow, I don’t think I have ever be thrown through a wall and wound up in empty space in a console game in a LONG time.

Gaming Target

True Crime: New York City had the potential to break through and be something exciting...but once again it's another GTA clone that just doesn't understand why GTA is so beloved.

Official Playstation 2 Magazine UK

There's plenty here, but while it is good quality, it's all familiar stuff, and the emphasis on quantity rather than variety gets tiresome. [Apr 2006, p.86]

DarkStation

GTA clones are a dime a dozen these days, but Luxoflux's True Crime franchise has stepped up to the mark with an engaging plot, and fun-filled free-flowing action.

Yahoo! Games

We love the ambition in this take on the Big Apple, but sometimes the inexpert mechanics just can't be ignored.

Deeko

No matter what you do, things get very repetitive. I mean, how many counterfeiters can there really be in New York?

GameZone

A note to aspiring developers: DO NOT give players the freedom to do what they want if you’re going to punish them for it later!

Cheat Code Central

A marked improvement over Streets of L.A. Overall it's more refined and the storyline is more relevant to the gameplay.

Console Gameworld

Sadly, Activision’s second installment in the True Crime series is a big disappointment that begins with the storyline and ends with almost everything else.

Game Chronicles

Tries to bring the drama of the street home to you, but comes away with a vanilla game instead, replete with bugs, glitches and other issues.

IC-Games

True Crime: New York City just doesn’t cut the mustard. There are a lot of good basic concepts and ideas that unfortunately lost their way in the development process.

Gamer 2.0

Navigating your vehicles through the city streets feels good, but there is a sense of unbalance in the physics. You can drive at breakneck speeds, but if you hit a car stopped at a red light or a parked car, the feedback is like hitting a brick wall.

1UP

If framerate problems doesn't annoy you, then the stupidity of the A.I. may force you to say, "that sh*t is wow, bananas." Enemies are stricken by stupidity, as they'll simply stand there and allow you shoot the living daylights out of them.

Boomtown

My advice: wait for the PC version, where you will have a fighting chance of playing the game with a better framerate and refined controls (and hopefully Activision will issue patches to cover its holes).

PSX Extreme

A menagerie of all the elements of bad game design. It takes many more steps backwards than it does forwards, and awkward (even game-stopping) bugs will frustrate you if the embedded elements don't.

G4 TV

On paper, it's got the potential to be more than a match for "San Andreas"; in practice, it's nowhere near it.

Game Over Online

This game is junk, period. Please, spare yourself the agony and stay far away from this title... enjoy a second play through of Vice City or San Andreas instead. The sheer number of fun-ruining bugs in this game is the stuff smashed controllers are made of, so don’t even bring yourself down to the level the developers take you for when they decided to release this thing.

Gamers' Temple

Releasing this game in its current state – now that’s a true crime.

BonusStage

So many corners were cut and details rushed that whatever good content is there is overshadowed by the mistakes.

Stuff

Like this year's Philadelphia Eagles, this game is the quintessential example of a franchise taking a step in the wrong direction. Our advice: Run away.

TotalPlayStation

Unless you're dying to drive around in a reasonably well-crafted digital version of New York at 20 frames a second, there's just no reason to force yourself through this storyline. Too many things are broken from the outset, and the rest aren't any fun.

GameShark

While playable, True Crime: New York City really isn't worth buying, with clipping bugs and a bad story line and the game being somewhat too easy the game just isn't worth it.

Electronic Gaming Monthly

Basically, it's a game with loads of potential, but awful physics and endless technical glitches are the real crime here.

GameSpy

Complete with more bugs than month-old flypaper sitting outside a slaughterhouse, True Crime: New York City is utterly mediocre.

GamePro

It hopelessly mires itself in technical problems: frame rates drop and stutter precipitously and unpredictably; characters move through, and get stuck in, solid objects; there's often tangible lag between moving the joystick and seeing the result; collision detection and vehicle physics are spotty at best; and heck, the game even freezes entirely on occasion.

AceGamez

Maybe it's because I just don't like the main character, maybe it's because the story is dafter than my opening paragraph, maybe it's because it's a third rate GTA wannabe. In any case, this one should be avoided unless you really liked the first one, although this is actually a step back from the original.

Official U.S. Playstation Magazine

The underlying game is solid and would have been great had Activision taken the time to iron out the myriad bugs and glitches.

Pelit (Finland)

A step backwards even from its mediocre predecessor. With the multitude of ugly bugs the game feels unfinished, and the driving model is just plain awful. [Jan 2006]

GameSpot

Even if you forgive the flimsy story, cliché characters, and derivative gameplay, it's impossible to look past the myriad game-stopping bugs, frustrating glitches, and glaring technical problems that plague this game.

Armchair Empire

Critical flaws in a console game are unacceptable, especially when updating (i.e. patching) console games just isn’t done yet.

Computer Games Magazine

If you sometimes had the feeling that less is more while playing "San Andreas," you'll be convinced by this game at nearly every turn. [Feb 2006, p.92]

Edge Magazine

By keeping it real, the game retains many of the things that make navigating the real city more of a pain than a pleasure: countless faceless skyscrapers don’t make for memorable landmarks, and facing the wrong way down a jammed one-way street when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere is the sort of challenge few will relish. [Jan 2005, p.91]

Sydney Morning Herald

Most missions follow a monotonous pattern of car chases and shoot-outs against dim-witted opponents that lack the variety of the GTA series.

Game Power Australia

It’s remarkable that Luxoflux, developer of True Crime: New York City, managed to take such a huge step backwards in the three years since the release of the first game.

RewiredMind

If I was to offer you a game that freezes up, crashes, clips graphics all day long, slows down to sub-10fps frequently, can corrupt your save game file and wipe out hours of play at random, and then ask you for £40 for the pleasure – you’d either laugh at me or hit me. I don’t particularly see the difference in what’s happening here.

Game Revolution

True Crime: New York City replicates the over-the-top violence and goofy sexuality of GTA, but trashes that series' friendly interface, gorgeous environment, and dependable physics. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that what made GTA so enjoyable weren't the mature themes, but the execution.