GameCube fans may never get to play Grand Theft Auto on their system of choice, but True Crime may be the next best thing…and in some ways, it’s actually better. Though this M-rated crime adventure borrows heavily from Rockstar’s masterpieces, it also has some fundamental differences, as well as plenty of cosmetic ones. And even if it had no originality at all, the game’s tight structuring and unbelievable presentation would set it apart to some degree. And I can tell all of this from just a few hours of playing.

After starting a new game, the first thing you hear is an introduction narrated by Christopher Walken. Then we meet Nick Kang, a hard-ass LA cop who was recently suspended for putting too many crooks in the hospital. He’s being invited back as part of a special force where his style will fit right in. This unit has “special jurisdiction” over the whole Los Angeles area, meaning its officers can get away with practically anything in the name of justice, and the cases are so tough, they’ll have to. This is the premise by which True Crime allows your badge-carrying officer of the law to “commandeer” (steal) any vehicle in sight, run over criminals as a means of apprehension, and generally create chaos on the streets if it helps to stop the bad guys.

Kang is a well-defined and stylishly acted character right from the start. He walks into a room and immediately owns it. That trait puts him at odds with pretty much everyone else, including his partner Rosie and the chief of detectives. All of the major characters are rendered with impressive detail and lifelike animation, including very accurate lip-synching. True Crime sports some of the best real-time cinemas I’ve ever seen in a game, from the acting to the camera shots. Cut-scenes occur at the beginning and end of nearly every mission, so there’s plenty of story advancement. The plot is thick with style and seems ripe for twists. It certainly has a much larger presence than in GTA, and the straightforward mission structure allows for a cohesive storyline that clearly defines the backbone of the game.

So how does it play? Obviously, the bulk of gameplay is very similar to Rockstar’s formula, but you can’t play True Crime the same way that you play GTA. Though Kang might be rough around the edges, and though he might even turn out to be a “bad cop” depending on your actions, he’s still working for the police. It’s possible to beat up or mow down any person walking down the sidewalk, but the game discourages you from doing so through various means. You’ll lose points, which work like money to buy upgrades and health refills, and the “civil unrest” meter will go up. When it gets too high, people on the street will start to attack you, and the LAPD may even start to track you down. So generally, you want to avoid hurting people in the city.

That is, until they step across the line of the law, and then it’s time to throw down. While walking or driving around LA, the chief will radio in reports of various street crimes in progress or criminals on the run. Sometimes a mugging will start literally right next to you; one second two people are walking past each other, and the next minute they’re slogging it out or negotiating a drug deal. Some street crimes are much wilder. I’ve already had to stop a bum brawl, a turf war among prostitutes, and a drug dealer operating out of an ice cream truck. These are all just randomly generated events which you can attempt to resolve or simply ignore. The real missions all tie into the storyline, and they tend to be much more complex and intricately staged, with extended kung fu battles and/or warehouse shootouts.

The game world of True Crime deserves further description. It is a very accurate and absurdly huge scale model of the real Los Angeles. You could go to MapQuest and get directions from West Hollywood to Chinatown , and they would work in the game. I even found the LA Convention Center, where E3 is held every year. If you live in the greater Los Angeles area, you can probably find your exact neighborhood and where your house would be in the game. It’s pretty crazy. One big downside to the environment is that there isn’t much to see or do off the streets. You can go up to the fronts of houses and sometimes even step onto the front porch, but I haven’t seen any cases where you can go around back or explore alleyways in the deep city. In keeping with its name, True Crime seems to be very focused on the streets themselves. I doubt there are going to be places to climb up on a villa balcony and snipe passersby, which is the kind of psycho stuff that GTA is built around. This game is more about getting from one place to the other, handling a few small-time criminals along the way, and then playing another story mission. Though the world is huge and there is certainly plenty to do and see, the game design is essentially linear in a subtle but significant way.

The gist of it is that True Crime is beginning to reveal itself to me as more of an action game than the kind of free-roaming adventure that GTA represents. Activision’s game leans heavily on its strong storytelling and beefy mechanics, including hand-to-hand combat and shooting abilities, and uses these features to skew the overall feel surprisingly far away from what I had expected, but it is still very fun and addictive. It’s definitely a big, complex game with a lot to say and show, and I’m looking forward to digging deeper with it. With a pretty meager selection of mature GameCube titles this holiday season, True Crime looks to stand out as a major third-party offering on a system that has seen too little content in this area. Look for my full review near the game’s release date.