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True Crime: New York City - First Look Preview

Jon Wilcox

22/09/2005

TVG says good-bye to LA and hello to True Crime`s new home: New York, New York (sounds so nice, they named it twice)...

When it was first released in 2003, Activision's True Crime: Streets of LA was talked about as being a real rival to Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series, with hundreds of square miles of Los Angeles accurately recreated in an open-ended experience of good cop/bad cop and a branching storyline. Two years on and Luxoflux's franchise returns with a change of seaboard a change of city, and a change of character. Where else could they have set True Crime 2 than in the Big Apple, New York? Earlier in the year Activision launched a competition that asked that very same question with suggestions ranging from Detroit to Mexico City before the curtain was raised on NYC.

This time around players take control of former gangster (and bad-ass), undercover cop Marcus Reed (though despite being NYPD is still a bad ass). Faced with the moral decisions encountered by the poorly received main character of True Crime: Streets of LA Nick Kang, players will be able to walk Marcus through the many trials and tribulations he meets throughout the streets of the Big Apple, but there have been more than just a few changes to this second True Crime outing - but more on than shortly. Following the murder of his mentor, Reed heads out onto the mean streets to uncover the truth behind the killing, targeting the heads of the four main crime syndicates in the city. As you'd expect a trailer of blood and bullets follows, but despite this somewhat clichéd overview of the plot, the game is still more than anticipated by us here at TVG Towers.

One of the main gameplay features of the previous title was its branching narrative, which played out according to the decisions made by the player and whether missions were accomplished or failed. The method showed a real desire to press ahead with a new take on open-world gameplay; this time, Luxoflux has made the decision (somewhat heart-wrenchingly for some fans of the original title) to drop the branching strategy, reasoning that the length of the game would be increased. True Crime: New Year City follows the idea of a looping linear narrative; when a mission is failed by the player they have to complete various tasks set by some of the secondary characters in the game including 'Freddie the Cabbie' before being brought back into the loop of the story.

Besides the main narrative thread, gamers will also be thrown a series of randomly occurring crimes, which depending on whether the player solves them or not, have a positive or negative effect on the surrounding neighbourhood. Solving crimes leads to cleaner areas free from litter and graffiti, and the sound of children playing in the safer streets will also be heard in the background. As well as these moral good cop/bad cop decisions that the game throws at the player, they're are also faced with the problem of whether to collect evidence and submit it for the prosecution cases, or take the stuff to pawn shops. Should Marcus play the game honestly and live a comfortable life or gather as much illicit money as possible and live life to the full? Aaah, decisions, decisions!

As you'd expect, Luxoflux has worked their magic once again to bring an authentic representation of the streets of New York City to the game with the company thanks to the use of GPS technology. The result of which means that the game features around 31,000 buildings, 80 landmarks and 1200 linear miles of road, and it takes 20 minutes to get from Wall Street to Harlem via the many cabs, and subway stations dotted throughout the city. This 'virtual' New York also features a realistic day/night cycle as well as weather effects, and the developers sound department spent many hours recording in the streets of the Big Apple to bring the true sounds to True Crime: New York City. Each area of the city, as in the real world equivalent, has its own voice with tourists heard throughout Times Square and other sight-seeing landmarks, and the more New Yoik accents in places like Brooklyn, thereby adding further depth to the audio experience of the game.

Somehow managing to go more than one better than its predecessor, True Crime: New York City will feature over one hundred songs from NYC based artists or tracks written about the city. Whilst it can be strongly assumed that hip-hop tracks will be featured, exact details of the bands/singers weren't disclosed at the time. Since the presentation was made, Activision has confirmed the final voice artist line-up for True Crime: New York City with actors Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishbourne, and Mickey Rourke all lending their talents to the game.

Besides the visual and audible representations of the city, the developers have also worked hard to bring detail to the game; one example of this are the opening/closing times of the various shops found across the boroughs - Liquor stores will tend to open later in the day whist 'high street' stores will close in the early evening. This brings us nicely to the interiors of the buildings featured in the game. As you'd expect, the New York of True Crime: NYC is home to many shops and buildings, some of which Marcus can enter throughout the game. As we've mentioned, liquor stores can be found in the game, but True Crime also plays host to many other types of shop with Activision explaining that pawn shops, clothes shops, and lap dancing clubs can all be found (somewhat disturbingly was the demonstration by the Activision spokesperson that Marcus himself can climb onto a pole and swing his way around.) That same spokesperson took the time to explain that destructible objects throughout the game and that players could enter any interior and ââ¦blow the hell out of it,â some thing that we're most definitely looking forward to pushing to the absolute limit.

Marcus will be able to utilise a wide range of weapons in the game ranging from pistols and other munitions (dual wielding capabilities are of course integrated into the game), as well as a range of melee weapons and fighting styles. Changing from one fighting style to another via the d-pad, players will be able to engage enemies with moves from across the spectrum of unarmed combat from Tae Kwondo and WuShu through to good old fashioned Street Brawling, with the animation of the moves flowing fluidly between the styles - Mr Reed can certainly handle himself in a fight.

Stealth missions once again return to the world of True Crime with gamers having to direct Marcus through locations with various hazards including trip wires, though Luxoflux seem to have made great strides in the execution of the stealth based missions (something that gamers will be highly pleased about after the poor quality of this mission type in Streets of LA). Context sensitive environmental hazards can also be found throughout the game with Activision demonstrating an example of some of these including killing a security guard by throwing him onto a sacrificial altar lined with deadly spikes. The moral issue is emblazoned into the environmental hazards too however with this action leading to several bad cop points (as an innocent bystander, Marcus could have just knocked the guard out.) Another environmental hazard has Marcus infiltrating one of the New York City cartels in a factory; lifting a guard onto a conveyer belt, the villain soon met an untimely (and bloody) end after being run through a statuette mould - needless to say that the subsequent objects came out of the machine a nice shade of crimson. After securing his prime target, players can also control Marcus and interrogate the unfortunate individual, which brings up a meter or reason and abuse. This area of gameplay requires a certain level of balancing with players having to monitor the situation - too much of a beating could leave the criminal dead, but too much reasoning won't get Marcus the answers he needs.