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Activision’s True Crime: Streets of LA was one of the better Grand Theft Auto-inspired free roaming crime games that emerged shortly after the release of Rockstar’s smash-hit Grand Theft Auto III. It was hardly perfect, but it was entertaining, and the idea of playing as a cop put an interesting spin on the go anywhere do anything premise. It appeared to lay some solid foundations for a sequel, but appeared is the operative word, because that sequel is one of the most broken, flat-out terrible games we’ve played in a long time.

One could dream up a few scenarios to explain True Crime: New York City – maybe this was a title rushed to completion so it’d be on store shelves in time for the last Christmas holiday season in the States, or maybe the game was in such a mess that Activision thought it’d publish it as-is in an attempt to recoup costs. However things played out, the result is this – True Crime: New York City looks and plays like an unstable preview build of a game. A criticism of the predictable story and stereotypical characters aside, the title features so many crippling bugs that playing is hard work.

You assume the role of Marcus Reed, formerly a no-good gangster who’s risen through the ranks of the police force thanks to help from an old family friend. Having been promoted to the organized crime division, Marcus believes he’s done with taking down street thugs, but things go wrong and pretty soon you return to the beat. The game’s story is structured around four major cases, each of which sees Marcus talking to generic bad guy number one, who directs him to generic bad guy number two, at which point you’ll do a lot of shooting, kill more people than necessary and go off in search of more bad guys. When the in-game cinematic sequences aren’t hitching up and the audio is in sync with what’s going on (as opposed to lagging five seconds behind), the presentation during the story sections is extremely good. The story itself isn’t.

If all you do is focus on the narrative missions, you’ll be able to blow through the game in five or six hours – it’s not very long. Obviously there are quite a few side missions to complete, and in theory there’s no limit to how long you can drive about the accurately modeled New York City for, but you’ll probably want to stop playing the game after just a few minutes. As in most free roaming crime games, you have the option to wander about on foot and beat people up with your fists, break out the firearms and start shooting or commandeer a car. You’ll also be able to frisk people and handcuff them if they’re found with anything illegal, as well as fire a warning shot into the air and flash your shield if you need to scare someone or convince them to hand over their car. It sounds great, but the game controls very poorly, largely because of the awful frame rate. On PlayStation 2 GameCube and Xbox it runs at around 10 or 15 frames per second, making the action look and feel like an ugly blurry messy.

On foot, the collision detection is laughable – you’ll be standing right next to an enemy and punch for a good thirty seconds before your attacks connect. Frisking people is even worse. You’ll watch in disbelief as Marcus grabs thin air over and over and over again, despite standing directly in front of a suspect. Many of the combat moves look hilarious – the broken animation for radial attacks sees Marcus magically teleporting into the air and performing a round house kick in fast forward, then re-appearing in his original position as though nothing happened. Best of all is the diving animation, where Marcus appears in mid air and then miraculously returns to his feet just before his stomach hits the ground. Shooting is a little less problematic – it’s a case of lock on and fire – but you’ll still find movement frustrating.

None of these things are as bad as the driving, which is really beyond a joke. The cars feel completely weightless, so there’s no use trying to drive realistically. When you’re not driving in a straight line, they slide about like they’re on ice for no particular reason. The physics when you hit other cars are absurd. You’re encouraged to make enemy vehicles spin out by nudging their boot, but any vehicle you do this to – be it a compact car or a truck – immediately performs a 360 degree spin the second to touch them. It’s ridiculous, not to mention mostly unplayable.

Then there’re the bugs. On numerous occasions, we broke scripted sequences by moving to the wrong side of the room or shooting the wrong person, preventing us from progressing unless we reloaded our game. We also fell through the environment, leaving us spinning in a textureless area outside of the game world where we eventually died. The audio is, as mentioned, often out of sync with what’s going on in the cinematic sequences, and every now and again, whole streets of the city will become textureless for no particular reason, leaving you staring at grey walls and the white mesh used when modeling the city. We’ve also heard of a show-stopping bug in the final mission on the Xbox where you simply can’t beat the game – we finished the PlayStation 2 version, so we can’t comment on this from experience, but it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

Bugs and gameplay aside, there’s very little about the game world that’s believable. There is only a handful of character models used for pedestrians, and you’ll see these recycled for everything from prostitutes to cab drivers. You can beat up just about anyone without any consequence, and certain moves won’t kill people. There is a good cop/bad cop system, but unless you go crazy and start running over hordes of pedestrians, you don’t need to worry about it much. To the developer’s credit the city itself is modeled extremely accurately, but that’s not to say you’ll enjoy exploring it.

If you arrest a sufficient number of criminals, it can affect your rank (in turn affecting the kinds of weapons and combat moves available), and you’ll stumble upon numerous side missions (the standard pimping/taxi driving fare), but ultimately none of this matters, because you’ll want to stop playing as soon as you can.

The graphics are awful. The frame rate is, as mentioned, ridiculously low, and for every gameplay bug, ten more exist in the graphics. From clipping problems to terrible animation, the game is a mess. The textures are decent and the city is recreated well, but you won’t be able to appreciate this thanks to the frame rate. The audio on the other hand is mostly good. Christopher Walken (Domino, Catch Me If You Can) and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Mission Impossible III) provide some of the game’s voice work, but these quality performances starkly contrast with the amateurish acting in other portions of New York City. Musically, the game has quite a bit to offer, with artists like GrandMaster Flash, Redman, Blue Oyster Cult, The Misfits and Danzig contributing to the soundtrack. In the end though, it’s all wasted.

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. No matter how you felt about the original, you should avoid playing the sequel. The true crime was the green light given to this title’s release.