Similar to GTA? Sure, but Streets of LA successfully improves on the series' magic formula.

Passing by a True Crime: Streets Of L.A. kiosk at this year's E3 didn't catch my attention very much and I ended up just walking by it. Ok, so that's not entirely true, but I didn't stick around very long. It seemed kind of interesting, but it really didn't stand out amongst all the other games. It was probably the Grand Theft Auto stigma of been there, done that. Even had I stopped to play the game for a bit, one cannot truly appreciate it until you have sat down and explored what the game has to offer. This was evident from our glowing preview of the game. So, what more is there left to say? Plenty.

Let's start with the main aspect of the game, the story. You take the role as Nick Kang, a cop who has been suspended indefinitely because he likes to take care of business his way. However, at the beginning of the game, there is a crisis brewing and Nick is offered a position at Elite Operations Division (E.O.D.), a special crime division in the LAPD, to help resolve it. Nick's experience, arrest record, contacts, and having a way of getting things done make him the perfect cop for the task.

Now unlike Grand Theft Auto, missions are given to you in a more linear fashion. You are either advancing the storyline by completing the current mission, or you are freely moving around in the city doing whatever it is you like. Typically you can start a mission whenever you like except for certain missions that require you to do that task at that moment such as tailing someone to a location or making it to another location within a given time. If you fail a mission, you can continue on with the story or choose to replay it. However to complete a chapter, you will need a certain amount of missions completed which you can go back to at any time. Some missions will have different outcomes branching to other missions depending on how you approach it and your rating as a good or bad cop at the time. There are also a few alternative whole chapters that branch out as well. One thing that should be noted is to be careful of what type of car you bring into a mission as that car could be the car you use to continue on in the next mission. Once, I had to go back a mission to change cars in order to make it to a point to point driving in time because the car I had randomly snagged before was too slow.

So what types of missions can you expect? There will be fighting, stealth, driving, tailing, and shooting based missions. Fighting will be hand to hand combat against a number of enemies. Stealth will have you sneaking through an area and will result in failure if you get spotted. Don't worry though, you can be seen for a short amount of time before they report you. This gives you a few second to take them out rather than failing the mission right away. In fact, the stealth missions are pretty simple and work better than I anticipated. Driving will be point to point driving like that found in Grand Theft Auto. This will either be time based or at your leisure. Tailing is something new but is exactly what it sounds like. Like in a lot of cop shows and movies, you will have to follow a suspect to a location to see if they will lead you to something bigger. On the screen is an indicator that tells you how close you are. If you are too close, they will see you. Get spotted too many times and the mission will fail.

What helps make this game even more interesting is that even with all the freedom you have at the beginning, you gain even more things that you can do within the game later on. This is through the upgrade system which is a series of locations found throughout the city that will teach you new abilities. These abilities have to be earned though by completing the task given to you which also teaches you how to use the new ability. You can upgrade your fighting abilities, your grapple abilities, your shooting abilities, and your driving skills. For example, a new fighting ability is being able to attack enemies that are behind you. A shooting ability would be the ability to shoot at two different targets as you can hold a different weapon in each hand. It's through these upgrades that show how much variety there is to each of the styles of gameplay in the game. However, these don't come free as you will be spending the shield points you earn while playing the game. Shield points are earned whenever you complete a mission or solve a random crime. When you complete a chapter, you are offered a special upgrade but must earn it just like the normal ones.

So how detailed is the game design then? One need not look any further than the status screen where you will see they track just about everything in the game. The game tracks the number of kicks performed, punches performed, combos performed, grapples performed, jump-kicks performed, precision shots fired, limbs hit, tires hit, head shots, gas tank hits, total driving time, miles driven, average speed, car maneuvers performed, vehicles totaled, citizens run over, and more. With all of these stats stored, you begin to realize that there is more to the game than you might initially think when it comes to your options of what to do in a situation.

Most objects in the world are destroyable as well. This goes for both in the city and inside buildings. One of my favorite experiences was taking on a guy in an old house and kicking him through the wall into another room. As mentioned above, tires can be shot out, and what is neat to see is that they actually deflate and lower the car for that corner of the car. Since we're on the topic of cars, while they can take a great beating before getting destroyed, they also show plenty of detail. I had my 1969 muscle car with the doors missing, windshield shot out, all four tires flat, trunk hanging open, hood torn off and engine completely exposed. The engine wasn't a texture map either. It was actually modeled in the car.

Also among the detail is the change in time and weather. While it may not be apparent at first, it is most certainly there. The reason you may not notice it at first is that it takes a few hours for the game to cycle through day and night. Thus, it is so gradual, that you probably have gone on to another mission which it then started changing and you just assumed that it was a result of the mission and not the game itself. As far as weather is concerned, you can expect to see rain every now and then, but is also as infrequent in changing as is the time of day.

There's no way a review could be complete without mentioning again how amazing and enormous the map is. Covering approximately 240 square miles of Los Angeles from the beaches of Santa Monica, to Downtown L.A., you have every street, avenue and boulevard included here. People who live in the area or are familiar with it should have the advantage of getting around without a problem. If you're not familiar though, go purchase a street map, or head over to your favorite online mapping service for directions as both tools can be utilized here. While not at the extreme detail level of The Getaway, which was on a much smaller scale, you will find key landmarks that are contained within the area such as the L.A. Convention Center, Mann's Chinese Theater, and the campus of UCLA. With a game of this scope, you would expect that maybe they have everything but scaled it down. That's not the case here as the entire city is to scale. It can take you a good twenty to thirty minutes to go from one end of the city to the other. That time is based off of taking the freeway as much as possible too.

Despite all the positives aspects of the game, there are a few minor issues that should be pointed out. For starters, while chasing down suspects, there are a few moves you can do to take down someone. You can dive, slide, or try to strong arm them to knock them off their feet. Unfortunately the range is so limited that it makes its usage almost useless. Another issue is that if you get out of a car, when you get back in, it doesn't remember your last camera setting. This is extremely annoying when you get out of a car to chase someone down, and they get in a car to run away. Trying to quickly get back in a car and having to adjust the view just gets in the way. Another issue is that if you live or have visited L.A., you will know that traffic is horrible practically all day there. There is no reflection of this as traffic is generally light, even on the freeways.

However, the biggest issue for some people might be music. True Crime offers an assortment of hip-hop and rock songs which are a mixture of licensed music and tracks created just for the game. In the options, you can customize tracks to be played under one of the three conditions: cruising, fast action, and slow action. While it shows a lot of effort went into having a wide assortment of licensed music, it would have been nicer to have a larger variety of genres as seen in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. For those of you who are wondering, it's not even done in a radio station format. This could be attributed to the music being more like background music to a movie than you listening to the radio.

Now, these are probably the issues that stand out the most, but it should be noted there are small issues all over the place. Occasionally the camera can be in not the best of positions, but it can be adjusted manually. Also sometimes you can get stuck if you slam the car into an area at the wrong place and angle. Minor quirks like these are found every now and then but don't really happen frequent enough to consider them problems. With a game of this size, it's expected a few minor quirks will happen every now and then.

Even with these minor issues, True Crime: Streets of L.A. has by far more positive aspects that a few minor quirks don't bring it down at all. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City wasn't perfect, and neither is this. What you get here is a game that builds on top of one of the best selling games of all times, and fixes many of the issues that have plagued it. Make no mistake about it, this game does not trounce, destroy, walk all over, or replace Grand Theft Auto. It is a better game though, as it is more refined and makes a nice addition for those who like the genre and are looking for more. Luxoflux and Activision have brought us a great game that is pretty addicting. You'll find yourself having trouble staying on track in the game as you'll be exploring what you can and can't do while fighting random crimes all over the city. Like the preview, it's hard to cram so much about this game in the span of a few pages. In fact, the preview was really just part 1 of the review. Go back and read the preview, and this review together to get the complete review of this game. True Crime: Streets of L.A. is one of the best games to come out this holiday season and I sure regret ever passing by it at E3.