This game is more confused than a hermaphrodite visiting San Francisco a day before gay pride day. Originally thinking this game was going to be like Grand Theft Auto III, I quickly realized that it was just a Grand Theft Auto wannabee. The only part that this gamer mirrors GTA is the driving. Like GTA you are free to jack any car you wish and roam throughout the city of LA. The open ended style of play that GTA perfected is the only star of this game.

Graphically, the game is done pretty well. At first I was reminded of many early PC games that I had played. If GTA had these graphics it would be once scary game! Controlling your character is the most frustrating aspect of this game. Whether you are fighting, driving, or shootiing the contols are just not up to par. Even different controller configurations could not help salvage this problem.

The heart of True Crime lies in its story. Through out its span of eight missions, every episode in each missions serves the purpose to move the story along (there are an average of seven episodes per mission). The story is constructed in such a way that cut scenes are all linked by a single game type. An episode is usually simple stuff, such as driving to a certain destination (sometimes with a time limit), sneaking past a group of goons, beating everyone up, and filling your enemies with lead. The cut scenes lack the usual cinematics that we are used to seeing on the xbox and tip toe on the verge of shear boredom.

You have to take your hats off to Activision for at least attempting to take an unoriginal premise and trying to expand on it. These efforts gave us an awesome soundtrack as you will find more than 50 original music tracks performed by such renowned artists as Snoop Dogg, Westside Connection (Ice Cube, Mac 10, WC), E40, KAM, Caviar, Easy-E Jr., Lil ½ Dead, Bad Azz, Damizza, Young Billionaires, Sly Boogy, KoKain and Jay-O-Felony. The music to True Crime is undoubtedly ruled by hip-hop and rap, though there are the odd rock/metal tracks by Megadeth, I Mother Earth, and The Deftones.

Also like GTA some pretty good stars stepped up to the plate to lend their voice talents. Christopher Walken, Gary Oldam, Michael Madsen, Ron Perlman, and Russle Wong just to name a few. Unfortunately, the great characters (combined with very nice character animation meshing), better than average graphics, GTA open ended game play, and a kick ass soundtrack cannot overcome the cumbersome game controlls and all out boredom one gets rewarded for playing this game. Too much was put into this game to reach such failing heights. It's quite a shame. The title should read, "Streets of LA: True Failure".