2005 was the Year of the Franchise, with sequels getting churned out for pretty much every major series on the planet. The biggest trend was dropping numbered sequels in favour of subtitling, as pioneered by Ubisoft and implemented with great effect. Most other publishers have gotten on-board the numberless train, including Activision's True Crime series. But a sequel is still a sequel, and as is always the case with sequels, a small percentage was great, most were average, and a few were outright awful. Unfortunately, True Crime: New York City is a late entry to the latter category, and for all the wrong reasons.

From its very inception, the True Crime series has always been geared towards a franchise. The flagship title, The Streets of L.A. (XBW: 84%) was a solid debut, though some bugs and glitches marred an otherwise enjoyable experience. Not long after, Luxoflux ran a poll on their website giving users the chance to vote for where the next destination should be. Not surprisingly, the gritty streets of New York, New York won out and thanks to what we can only assume was the use of a bullwhip or the threat of being sacked, True Crime: New York City sped onto shelves just in time for Christmas.

Just like all those RTA campaigns on TV, the moral of True Crime: New York City is that speed kills. It leaves a messy stain, a lot of twisted debris, and ruins the lives of those involved and their immediate families. So too this sequel, which despite being a really great game, is left bloodied and broken inside the wreckage of a hundred bugs, glitches, crashes and errors. Not even the Jaws of Life can pry the gaming goodness out of this painful pile-up.

Rather than try and work more automotive accident imagery cleverly into this review, I'm just going to give you a brief list of some of the multitude of obstacles you will encounter within your first couple of hours playing True Crime: New York City:

Sound effects will often disappear when you re-enter vehicles, music sometimes won't play either. Textures inexplicably vanish from surfaces, as does the lighting (particularly at night time) and the shading. Your vehicle will often collide with invisible objects, or go shooting up in the air for no reason, yet conversely you may drive right through cars or objects. While on foot you can fall through the map or wander outside of it and get stuck in infinite blackness, which is actually something that happens from time to time in general; all on-screen activity vanishes and you can hear the world but you're essentially blind. Ditto your HUD which takes a vacation from time to time, or the visuals just start to tear and smear across the screen. Sometimes your enemies will shoot at you before they actually have a weapon drawn, and if you throw perps too close to a wall they may end up on the other side of it making them impossible to arrest.

Phew! And that's just the non-fatal issues'True Crime: New York City suffers from a good many game-breaking bugs and glitches too. This ranges from the game locking up and freezing, to the far more insidious, such as missions that cannot be completed for any number of reasons. In fact, the problem is so bad, that some poor soul actually wrote an FAQ dedicated to the problems, in an effort to help players work around the more glaring issues'some users have even claimed the game is unwinnable for them, though after much persistence I can say that it *is* possible.

Normally writing up such a laundry list of laxity would be anathema to me when reviewing, but I felt it was important to give you a glimpse of the sheer scale of problems facing a player who sits down to 'enjoy' a their new copy of True Crime: New York City. I say enjoy because deep down, Luxoflux have created an excellent sequel to a solid debut title, but it will require saint-like patience and dogged determination to uncover. As a reformed PC gamer, this level of 'brokeness' is almost forgiveable if a patch follows shortly, but this is an Xbox game people, without Xbox Live, there will be no patches! It's just broken.

In New York City, players assume the role of Marcus Reed, the son of one of the most notorious gangsters in Manhattan, who finds a guardian angel in NYPD detective Terry Higgins, who overlooks his questionable behaviour and enlists him to join the boys in blue. Not long after Reed makes detective, Terry winds up dead, and it's up to you to find out who is the mole in the Organised Crimes Unit. Your unique heritage puts you in a position to really play out the whole good-cop, bad-cop thing, which is implemented a lot better than in the first game.

The same goes for the mission structure, which is a lot more open-ended. Once you've played through the opening tutorial business, you can tackle one of four Major Cases that see you busting up cartels, triads and the mob amongst others. It's up to you what you want to do, or indeed if you want to do them at all! Like its predecessor, True Crime: New York City has dozens of City Crimes for you to investigate, ranging from robberies, attempted rapes, carjacking, joyriders, angry hookers and rioting clubbers beating on a DJ who plays crap music (do they ever play anything else!?).

It isn't all random crime though- your Lieutenant will often inform you about various vice operations that need taking down, including chop-shops, prostitution rings and illegal gambling. You start small and work your way up the chain until you get the head honchos, just like real police work. There's also an illegal street racing circuit and underground fight club to bust up too, both requiring quite a bit of work. This, coupled with the ability to frisk citizens for contraband and write up traffic tickets means there is no shortage of law enforcing to be done by enthusiastic coppers.

And this time around, you've got good reason to be collaring crooks. When you start the game you'll be ranked Detective 5th Grade, the lowliest of positions, only slightly above the guy who mops out the drunk-tank every Sunday morning. The more baddies you nab, the more Career Points you'll earn, and the more of those you get, the more likely you are to earn a promotion. Just like in the real world, Reed gets a regular paycheck which is determined by his position, so if you want that shiny new 5.62mm Carbine you'll have to work for it!

Of course, you can earn less-than-legal cash too; you can sell evidence at Pawn Shops, extort shop-clerks for protection money, and perform off-the-books activities on behalf of your Confidential Informants. All in all, there's plenty to do in True Crime: New York City, with lots of money to be made a quite a lot to spend it on too. Reed can invest in new outfits and hairstyles ala Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (XBW: 90%), buy both civilian and police issue vehicles and weapons, train up his unarmed combat skills, and even buy CD singles from various music stores around the city.

Speaking of the city, Luxoflux have done an amazing job of recreating Manhattan Island to a perfect scale, landmarks and all. It was a massive endeavour to undertake the digital doppelganger of one of the most famous cities on the planet, and even though you'll be glitching your way from Times Square to Wall Street, it's nevertheless an impressive accomplishment. Sadly, free-roaming is when most of the bugs poke their heads out of the woodwork, and given the propensity for textures and lighting to not load, I'd hazard a guess that this is a streaming issue with the console. Word on the web is that owners of everybody's favourite ol' Thompson drive suffer even more than the rest of us.

Mission-wise, there isn't a whole lot of variety to True Crime: New York City'you pretty much just beat or shoot the crap out of a lot of villains. Sometimes you'll drive somewhere to do it, but the end result is always the same. At one stage, when you're driving a taxi for your Cabbie informant, Reed quips about the lame errands he's doing, and that next he'll be flying remote control planes or some shit. It's a diss on Grand Theft Auto, of course, but the Luxoflux team could've learnt a lot from Rockstar when it came to variety.

In fact, True Crime: New York City relies a little too heavily on the gunplay, which is almost the opposite of The Streets of L.A.'s hand-to-hand emphasis. In a hurry to deal with a street crime? No problem; just shoot the guy! Aim for the legs for a disabling shot and you'll earn Good Cop points'go for the head shot and, well, you can guess the rest. Suspects running away, prompting you to decide who to chase after? No problem; shoot them all using the slow-motion precision fire mode! At first you'll probably want to wrestle them to the ground and slapping the bracelets on a perp is quite satisfying when you do, but after the umpteenth felony, shooting a group of six hookers and their pimps kneecaps out is just so much simpler.

Thankfully the gunplay is good fun. Auto-targeting is present as is always the case these days, but precision shots are by far the most effective way for dealing with offenders. Going it melee style really isn't a viable option if your foe has a firearm which is realistic, but sadly it means the great, visceral mano-a-mano action is relegated to the few missions designed for it. While the on-foot controls are good, behind the wheel is a whole other story'the cars feel sluggish or oversensitive depending on the vehicle, there's no real sweet-spot there. The advanced manouevres are awkward and often just don't work out- ditto to the handbrake- and when this occurs, you usually end up ploughing into a crowd of New Yorkers.

Visually, True Crime: New York City is all over the place. As mentioned above, New York looks fantastic, but only when it works. The amount of times I had to drive down pitch-black streets because the lighting wasn't working is just ridiculous, and downright frustrating when on a mission. When it does work, the City That Never Sleeps looks exactly like that- a bustling, neon nexus filled with colourful sights that's almost enough to overwhelm those unaccustomed to the big smoke. The characters are well animated and look pretty good- though obviously cross platform- but they too suffer from their own (un)fair share of mismatched or gappy textures as well as some nasty clipping'.Reed's afro appearing through his beanie is quite a sight indeed. The vehicles are also pretty basic, and overall the framerate fluctuates wildly between good and unplayable, though given the scope of the city, this isn't surprising. The real shame is that when everything is functioning as intended, True Crime: New York City really looks great, but encountering it looking its best is sort of the same as trying to find a good angle for Michael Jackson these days.

The sound department fares a helluva lot better. Luxoflux managed to wrangle a great deal of talent, both vocally and musically. Voice actors include Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, Mickey Rourke and Mariska Hargitay as well as the usual novelty inclusions like Beetlejuice and Traci Lords. The voice talent to a bang-up job, especially the ever-reliable Walken who is hilarious, and Fishburne is quite menacing in places. I've never been to New York personally, but if pedestrians swear as much as their virtual counterparts, then they might as well rename the city Noo Fuckin' Yawk. In case you missed the point: this one isn't for the kiddies!

The musical medley is absolutely awesome too, featuring some of New York's finest artists, including the Ramones, Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, Blondie, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Run DMC, as well as newer blood like My Chemical Romance and The Bravery to name but a few. All told there are over 50 licensed tracks, some of which are available by default; others must be purchased in-game and music stores. Unlike the Streets of L.A., there's a lot more variety than just the usual c-rap gangsta garbage, so if you're one of the few sane people on the planet who doesn't chill wit da ghetto vibes n'all, there's definitely something to enjoy.

True Crime: New York City features four major cases as well as all the other incidental ones, and all told should take about 8-10 hours to beat. This of course does not factor in all the crashes and glitches that require a restart, or the amount of playtime you'll lose since the game only autosaves after major case missions. A word of advice: save frequently in multiple slots- you'll need it. You may even be forced to replay key missions because the game simply doesn't show you cutscenes sometimes' for me, the lead-in cutscene to the final boss battle never displayed, so I have no idea what got the narrative to the final point. As if it couldn't get any worse, the boss battle itself glitched and I couldn't take him down properly, so I won the game without lifting a finger. A disappointing, but nevertheless fitting, metaphor for True Crime: New York City.