True Crime: New York City Preview

Then with your actual driving throughout NYC, yet another feature of the first True Crime will be returning, the random crimes! Now True Crime wasn’t exactly stellar in presenting these “random crimes” in an authentic manner. You simply drove through L.A. and at any “random”, you would receive an onscreen prompt of one of five or so possible crimes nearby and see a locator point on your radar. But the problem therein lied in the fact that they didn’t do much to affect the overall game experience. TC:NYC seeks to change that by having the random crimes actually go hand-in-hand with how the game actually presents itself! As the first True Crime did though, at any given point in time you’ll receive notification of a crime in progress. You’ll once again have your own choice as to whether you stop the crime or not, but this time that choice will actually affect how you see things! If you choose to not stop a handful of random crimes you’re alerted to, the city will actually begin looking as if it’s being decimated by crime. You may begin seeing trash all over the place, vandalism in various locations and or maybe even just general decay throughout the city.

Another feature that made the first True Crime rather interesting will make its return in TC:NYC, but in a pretty cool sounding new way. This happens to be your status of either being a “good cop or bad cop”. If you choose to go the route of that ethical and morally sound law enforcement officer, Marcus will experience a nice and stable life. But if you go down the route of being “bad”, you will have chosen to steal evidence, pawn items on the streets and generally just have that subtle “criminal fun”. If you go the bad route, you’ll find yourself having a lot more expendable income than normal, and being able to live the “high life” because of it. Sure it’s not the morally sound choice, but knowing the awesome goodies you can snag in doing so may be rather enticing to most players.

The visuals of TC:NYC seem to be shaping up rather nicely as well. Like stated previously, the city will be featured in a 25 square mile GPS-accurate layout. You can then either choose to explore the massiveness of the city by car or subway. Although cars will more than likely be the preference of players since the subway is more or less meant for instant transports from one point in the city to another. In addition to being able to do a little outdoor sight seeing in your car, you will also have the option of making your presence known in the game’s various buildings. These may include apartment buildings, nightclubs, music shops and other such locations that you’ll be able to slap down your cash for some nice items! The level of detail also seems to have improved quite nicely given the revamped graphical interface and brand new environment. There seem to be some issues with frame rate during certain sequences right now though, but it hopefully they’ll be fixed in time for final release.

Now in terms of music and audio, they too seem to be there to offer a better overall atmosphere than the first True Crime was able to. Most of the feeling you get from the music and sound effect should take on a “moody” tone, which will in turn hopefully give the game a more lively feel. The music seems to take on the genres of hip-hop and R&B for the most part which seems like it will do a better job accentuating the action of the game. There is also plenty of voice work in the game as well, with most of it delivering a nice feel of “grittiness” that seemed to be lacking in the first True Crime. Let’s also hope those horrific Nick Kang one-liners won’t be making a return either. Those can make a game annoying SO quickly. But just have it known that there will be a heavy dose of profanity in the game’s dialogue which is one of the features that will make this game rated M. Also based on Gamespot’s preview of this game, the sounds and such you hear from utilizing your guns and martial arts techniques seem to be quite satisfying.

So based on everything we know about this game so far, True Crime: New York City seems to be a rather nice improvement over its predecessor. Although I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about this game taking on some elements of the first True Crime a little TOO much so that it just doesn’t feel like anything different. But with a brand new story, a new character, more weapons and seemingly revamped in-game play, TC:NYC just may be that “GTA-esque” game GameCube owners have been waiting for. It seems like Luxoflux has definitely listened to consumer complaints about the first franchise iteration, so we can only hope that they listened well enough to deliver a more authentic feel! Look to either experience crime or stop it come this November!