True Crime: New York City

Bugs are where True Crime not only stumbles, but falls flat on its face. It is riddled with bugs, so much so that playing the game itself becomes a problem.

It's hard to dislike a game that piles on various side missions, secrets to uncover and a number of upgrades. Then again, the game's glitches will not fail to frustrate.

Entertaining throughout, but rarely exceptional.

True Crime New York is refined from Streets of L.A. and this time around you might have an easier time getting into the action. Although, I didn't have the same passion for this second outing by Luxoflux, I admit New York is a great location for this "fictional" story.

It's just disappointing that the rest of the game doesn't live up to the quality of the cutscenes.

Is New York really this drab and uninteresting of a place? [Jan 2006, p.82]

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.

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]

The fact that a host of disgracefully basic errors ruin any chance True Crime: New York City had of becoming what it should have been should serve as a lesson for publishers Activision: seeing a product through to its proper conclusion-even if that means delays-translates better in the long term than consumers reaching elsewhere, and remembering your name, because the final product is so much of a letdown.

A mediocre free-roaming action game, but it's still slightly better than some of its competitors within the genre.

True Crime is a game looking to score the ultimate dope hit of Grand Theft Auto genius, and it has the contacts to make such a score, but fails to use them.

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.

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

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.

Riddled with errors, glitches, catches, freezes, clippings, and resets. If you can endure the insane amount of problems and don't mind that you'll routinely run into errors that'll force you to restart from the beginning of the current primary mission, you'll get some marginal enjoyment out of the title.

No amount of racing through Times Square, cruising strip clubs, or laughing along with nutty narrative conceits eases the bruising frustration of the moment-to-moment True Crime: New York City experience.

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

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.

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

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.

Despite a myriad of improvements, True Crime: New York City's inexcusable number of bugs make it one of the biggest disappointments of this holiday season.

Most of the gameplay from the first game is back, but it's all wrapped around a dull storyline and some poor presentation problems. Worse yet, the excitement wears off after a mere couple of hours.