One of the most highly anticipated third-party titles this fall is Activision's take on open-environment games like "Grand Theft Auto", except that this environment is real. Welcome to the streets of L.A.

The player takes on the role of Nick Kang, your prototypical "loose cannon" in the LAPD, tasked with infiltrating the Chinese Triad and the Russian Mob that are ruining his city. In an interesting twist on the mish-mash of genres that the game encompasses, the player can choose whether Kang is going to be a "good cop" or a "bad cop" through his actions. This is represented by a Karma meter on the screen, showing at a glance which side of the line Kang is riding. Depending on whether you're a shining example of LAPD excellence, or a cop on the take, you'll end up on different paths through the game.

As I already alluded to, there are a variety of gameplay styles in True Crime, with gunplay, driving, and hand-to-hand combat, and often combinations of them at the same time. As you progress through the game, Kang can take combat training to improve his abilities and learn new moves. He can move like Keanu Reeves with Matrix-like "bullet time" effects, and he can commandeer vehicles off the streets to chase down criminals (or simply be one). He can even pull off driving stunts like the classic "J Turn" or riding on two wheels. The controls to pull off these moves are fairly simple, for example, pulling off a 180 spin in your car just needs you to jerk the stick to the side and double tap the brakes. Each aspect of the game is painstakingly detailed and blends well, and where most games attempting to be a little of everything tend to fail miserably, developer Luxoflux has created a mixture that works great.

As Kang drives around his city on his way to his next mission, his police scanner will alert him to smaller crimes happening in the vicinity. Kang can choose to intervene and even choose exactly how to resolve the situation. He can apprehend the criminals, kill them, or kill everyone involved, including the victims, and every decision will affect Kang’s Karma rating appropriately. When he finally arrives at his mission, he may need to sneak around quietly dispatching villains, or fight his way through to its conclusion, or simply shoot everything in sight. Some villains will have a series of exclamation points (!!!) on the screen, hit the baddie that many times, and they'll be stunned, allowing you to pull off one of your special moves, like the monkey kick. You have a short amount of time to do it in, and it requires a rapid-fire series of button presses (jump, kick, punch) to work, but does lots of damage when you do.

The game will, at times, have a feel similar to the movie "Big Trouble in Little China", and it's not entirely by accident. Activision hired James Hong, who played the antagonist "David Lo Pan" in the aforementioned movie, to add his voice to the story. That’s not to mention Kang's resemblance to Dennis Dun's character "Wang Chi" from the film as well. The game has even more voice talent from much more notable names, including Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, Michael Madsen, Ron Perlman, CCH Pounder … the list reads like a who's who of cop dramas. The game has a great deal of humor, considering the gritty subject matter. Activision demonstrated a scene from the game where Kang is triple-teamed by three men wearing nothing but towels in a bathhouse. The game is so detailed, there was actually some concern that the towels might fall off during the ensuing melee.

The most interesting facet of the game (as if all of the above weren't enough): if you fail a mission, you can still progress along a slightly different path. Each mission has up to three outcomes, frequently with differing cinematics, and the story is compelling enough to encourage players to try everything just so they can see it all.

True Crime: Streets of L.A. is the first game of its kind on the GameCube, and it's going to be a welcome one. Perhaps it'll even show those folks at Rockstar that a game like Grand Theft Auto can succeed on GameCube, market demographic be damned. But with a game as promising as True Crime, who's going to care about GTA anyway?