Great Concept but Bad Execution
The concept of this game is great. Why not make an open world game where you fight crime on the streets? I think there are many of us out there who would still like to see a good cop sim video game.
But this thing is a piece of crap. All the controls are terrible, making it feel like you are running or driving through a lake of poorly programmed syrup sludge instead of playing an entertaining video game.
The main parts of this game, namely the missions, are incredibly stupid, mostly due to the extremely clunky controls. Even the easy missions are challenging because it's hard to do simple things like walk, let alone aim and shoot at things. They even make you try and race!
The main idea of the secondary objective of this game is actually cool. Crimes randomly appear on the world map, and you can respond to them, disable and arrest the perps. You get good cop points, earn higher ranks, and make payroll money through this process. A great idea made frustrating by the poor controls and almost constantly poor frame rates. I would LOVE to see this idea perfected in a different game.
The graphics are fair to good when it comes to objects, characters, world buildings and environments you enter. The cars are fair looking for a game that is not racing based. The frame rates are always so poor though that it is hard to enjoy any of the scenery.
The soundtrack is very good. Sound effects sound decent, game music is awesome. The game uses true licensed songs and has a great selection of NY themed rock tunes and some classic old school rap tracks (can't speak for the new rap tracks or techno). Public banter is accurately explicit NY talk complete with abundant F bombs. Unfortunatley, the sound never lines up with any of the action, which definitely kills the effect.
As many others have stated, the game is filled with graphical bugs that, if the game was good, could be overlooked a bit (in my opinion). As it stands however, it just all adds up to the games sense of crap. When it's all said and done, this game just sucks too much.