preview
Hands-on with the game, from the start.
This Wednesday, we had a chance to check out several games from Activision’s line-up, including True Crime: New York City. Following the same basic framework as 2003's Streets of LA, True Crime allows players to freely explore a realistic re-creation of Manhattan streets and focuses equally on driving, fighting, and shooting elements.
The game opens with a disturbing scene. Marcus Reed enters a place full of people hanging out. Bloodied, beaten, and carrying serious firepower, he walks up on some guys relaxing in a living room, exchanges a few short words, and proceeds to gun down everyone in sight. Meet our hero. This is your first gun fight, and you’ll quickly take control and get a chance to adjust to the shooting and auto-targeting mechanics as you proceed to exact your revenge. Once you’ve bloodied the alley with the last of them, police detective Terry Higgins walks up behind you… but he’s an old friend, and decides to cover for you “one last time”. Fast forward five years, and now Marcus is wearing the badge, with his mentor Terry continuing to stick up for the son of notorious criminal Isaiah “the King” Reed.
To earn your rightful place as a detective, you’ll need to complete some simple training exercises. There’s a fighting course, shooting course, and driving course which teach you the basics of each element of gameplay. While it can still be a little hard to remember all the necessary button functions at first (there are a lot of Z+ combinations), the controls feel much more responsive and streamlined.
Once you’ve completed the courses, you’ll go down to the locker room, change into plain clothes and get a car from the garage to go out on the streets with Terry. He’ll take you into a few situations to give you a quick rundown of a few more game mechanics. You’ll frisk a few guys and search a trunk for contraband. Then you’ll need to break up a street fight. Enemies’ life bars are color-coded to show their threat level: whether they’re unarmed, carrying a melee weapon, or packing a gun. Flash your badge and fire a few warning shots to get them to drop their weapons. However, as you’re arresting the others, one criminal will take off and snatch a car. Terry forces you to commandeer your own vehicle from somebody driving by, rather than taking his car. Chase down the thug and he’ll crash, giving you an opportunity to jump out, tackle him, and slap the cuffs on.
Shortly thereafter, Terry asks you to drive him to a building that explodes the moment he’s inside. Knowing that more than coincidence is at work, Marcus vows to get to the truth behind the “accident” and the game sets you out on your own. You’ll drive throughout the city freely and have the option to respond to small crimes in the area before you get a call and meet up with an FBI agent who gives your first lead.
Manhattan’s a pretty big place, but unlike Los Angeles, there’s an extensive subway network which allows you to quickly jump from one end of town to the other for a small fee. Plus, if you aren’t near a subway terminal, you can hop into the back seat of a taxi and have the cabbie take you wherever you like for a slightly higher price.
The good cop / bad cop system is still in place. If you want to be a good cop, arrest suspects and turn in evidence that you pick up from searches. If not, the bad cop route includes fatal shots to the head and selling the evidence you find at a local pawn shop to buy fancy cars, clothes, and hairstyles. Aside from the story arcs introduced from the good cop / bad cop system in Streets of LA, your behavior in True Crime: New York City also effects your environment. Do your best to be an honorable, upstanding officer and neighborhoods will clean up and crime rates will drop. Shoot guys up in every alley and order will diminish with rising crime rates, dirty sidewalks, and streets full of pot holes.
There are a couple more improvements over the last game as well. You’ll have more weapons available and be able to use your environment as a weapon, pushing suspects into hot stoves or locking them in freezers. The draw distance has been significantly improved. Now there aren’t any traffic signs suddenly appearing three feet in front of you, and a lot more people walk the streets. Plus, the complicated training areas that you had to find and complete to get new moves in the first game have been replaced, and now all you need to gain new skills is a bit of cold hard cash.
