True Crime: New York City is an action game with a third-person view. Marcus Reed is an ordinary gang member who inherits his imprisoned father's criminal empire in New York. Several years later, Reed is betrayed by a friend and miraculously survives an ambush. Covered in blood, Reed unexpectedly appears at the traitor's house to take revenge. After a bloody shootout, Reed corners the traitor in the basement of the building and shoots him. Marcus abandons his empty Uzi and doesn't see the gangster with the gun behind him, but an NYPD detective named Terry Higgins saves Reed.