True Crime: NYC

The line between good and evil and what makes a person cross from one side to the other has been studied and considered by some of the greatest minds in history. Many have written on it, and many have made movies about it.

Games about a topic as deep as the nature of man are somewhat thinner on the ground. And surprisingly, despite it's bombastic appearance True Crime: NYC might just have something to contribute.

Apparently it all comes down to whether you get caught being bad or not.

Playing as a hard-bitten cop with an unfortunate penchant for speaking like Randy from American Idol ("Know what I mean, dawg?"), you get dragged into a murky world of drug dealing and weapons smuggling when your best friend is killed during a questionable 'business' transaction.

Taking to the streets, you'll solve routine crimes and larger felonies that slowly reveal the extent of the conspiracy and criminal network infiltrating the city.

You choose your missions by selecting them from a map of New York City that appears whenever you leave a building or street scene. The locations and missions come in a variety of colours (blue ones are plot-development related, for example) and you can, in this manner, work your way up the ladder, both in terms of the case and your career.

It's in fuelling your employment history that the smaller routine crimes come in handy, because each time you deal with a criminal, you get bonus points. Kill a perp and you get 'career points' that are used to up your salary. Subdue your target, though, and arrest him, and you get 'good points' in addition to your pay rise.

These good points and the corresponding bad points (gained when you kill an unarmed or lightly armed crim) determine your reputation. And your rep governs what weapons you can buy with the money that you earn by cleaning the streets.

It's a convoluted approach (whoever heard of a cop having to buy his own weapons and ammo, even one with questionable morals like this one?) but it does offer a sense of progression. For instance, during the opening few missions you feel lucky to gain a pistol, but as you proceed and improve your rep and cashflow you can get your mitts on a shotgun, MP5, and more.

This increased firepower is essential for dealing with the tougher hoods that crop up in the later missions. It contributes to the difficulty curve, too, but sadly it's not a smooth ramp up in hardness. Rather it is one that jerks upward in fits and starts.

You first realise this when, having got your hands on a nightstick, pistol, shotgun, MP5 and stun gun (some of which you've paid for, others collected from dead bodies) you lose them all in a clumsily-scripted attempt at a cut scene.

This spanner in the works (or any of the others that intermittently jam proceedings) isn't insurmountable and you'll get past it eventually. But when you're eager to drive the storyline forward it's a needlessly annoying distraction.

So are the routine missions, which seem to repeat the same basic three crimes over and over. It's almost a case of digging for pearls in slurry.

Otherwise True Crime: NYC is a pretty accomplished game. The visuals, while unspectacular, are pleasantly functional and the sound effects and controls adhere to the same philosophy, in that they keep their intrusion to a minimum. Although you've got a range of weapons, a stealth mode, the ability to crouch, and that of arresting people, matters never get out of hand.

Even the storyline is involving enough to keep you playing, which says something when compared with most mobile phone games of this ilk.

It's just a shame that there's so much repetition involved. There's not even a button to exit the isometrically-viewed street and room scenes once you've resolved a crime; you have to walk all the way back through the streets or corridors you've already negotiated.

The ability to select your missions and the RPG-style points investment in upgrading your arsenal and personal attributes as well as the decisions you need to make about being the good cop or bad cop are all in True Crime: NYC's favour. You'll just need to be patient to get the most out of it.