Crime Cities (2000) Review

Take the sci-fi movies Blade Runner and Escape from New York and combine them in a game that borrows a lot from the classic 3D shooter Descent, and you've got a good idea of what Crime Cities is all about. It might sound enticing--but this is one case where the whole is definitely less than the sum of the parts. Crime Cities is initially impressive, but its frustrating controls and simple mission design make it quickly lose appeal.

Crime Cities casts you as Garm Tiger, a cop who's been sent to a planetary system called Pandemia. It is 16 light years from Earth, and it's been partly converted into a penal colony by "The Federation." Tiger's primary objective is to locate a missing undercover agent, but he's also been given the task of learning all he can about the recent increase in organized crime activities and the potential for terrorism that might result.

When you begin the game, all you've got to work with is an aircraft, a few thousand credits, and a couple of other undercover agents to feed you information and help you blend into the wild world of futuristic prison life. And just how do you do that? Certainly not by hitting the streets and talking to everyone you meet. Instead, you'll spend the entire game inside the cockpit of a flyer, taking on jobs you pick up from the ICNB. The ICNB is a "virtual job center" that can be accessed by cops, robbers, anarchists, terrorists, and even by men looking for a "date," presumably to break the monotony of prison life. When you complete an assignment, you'll earn a specified number of credits used to--you guessed it--improve your craft with new weapons and shields and a new look in case you've mistakenly broken the law by firing on civilians or cops.

With each passing mission, you learn more about the inner workings of the criminal, religious, or terrorist organizations of Pandemia--the plot is slowly revealed as you play the game. These revelatory tidbits appear in the form of e-mails, and it seems these outlaws have gotten as hooked on the medium as folks are nowadays: You'll get dozens of them during your stay on each of the three planets. The e-mails run the gamut from insider info from your informants to ads for 900 numbers and requests for a night on the town from mysterious admirers. But in the end, the gameplay boils down to a steady stream of assignments that result in weapons and systems upgrades, culminating in a showdown with an enemy who's managed to build himself quite a wicked flying machine. You can expect to encounter a multitude of enemies on even the most routine assignment, and while you can achieve mission goals without killing them all, it simply means they'll be lying in wait when you head out on the next job.

That's not all you have to deal with: Crime Cities might very well have the most simultaneously moving 3D objects ever crammed into a game. Literally hundreds of flying cars, buses, limos, and cops weave through the canyonlike avenues of each city at various altitudes, posing a constant hazard for anyone who's busy dealing with a dozen gang members. While the cars and buildings aren't highly detailed, the frame rate is excellent even on a midrange system with a decent video card such as the TNT2--we got great performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024.