A GTA clone that does a few things better than its inspiration. Sadly, it does more things worse.
You play as Nick Kang, son of a murdered police officer, who finds himself embroiled in a case that ends up having connections to his father. Patrolling around a near street-map perfect version of Los Angeles, you'll deal with various ethnicities' Mafias and gather clues to the head man in charge. Featuring branching mission paths based on previous mission success or failure, and civilian population and police reactions that differ based on how well you yourself followed the law, your path to the man in charge can be one of a few.
The graphics are the best part of the game, with cars and faces that are beautifully modeled and recognizable landmarks in the city. The soundtrack fits nicely, though if you don't like rappers like Ice-T and Snoop Dogg, you could be in for a long game. The overall sound presentation itself is done very well. Being able to aim for tire shots while driving is a very nice feature, and the precision shot ability at all times adds to the strategy, with neutralizing shots being 'good' and head shots being 'bad.' Random crimes of several varieties always provide something for you to do en route to your next stage. From breaking up fights and helping in drug busts gone bad, to apprehending street racers and recovering fugitives, there's a good bit of variety in these optional side-missions. The abilty to earn points based on your play to trade in exchange for an attempt to increase your gunplay, hand-to-hand, or driving skills adds a touch of RPG pizzazz.
Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good. The camera is so often your biggest enemy in this game, and consistenly fails you when you need it most. It locks when you don't want it to, free roams when you need it to lock, and whether moving the right analog stick to the right will move the camera left, right, or not at all is pure guesswork in many situations. Voice acting is fairly cheesy for the protagonist, who often says odd things that don't quite fit, and Christopher Walken's talents are wasted as a lowly background character, who narrates the opening and then mostly just teases/praises you during skill upgrade attempts. Missions requiring you to tail a suspect get agitating, as your distance to a subject car is measured via a straight line, rather than actual road distance, forcing you to back off even further at corners, then gun the motor as you rapidly lose sight of the subject as you round the corner. Hand-to-hand fighting is generally a button-mashing affair, with special damaging moves when you stun your opponents placed seemingly to even the odds against tougher enemies, who may land more hits than you, but do not have access to similar moves. The grapples you learn are a near waste, as in any fight involving the story, your enemies are too tough to land a hold to make your grapple. While the city layout is essentially a map of the city, it doesn't get used enough. Unlike GTA, which makes you use nearly every road over the course of the game, here the game really takes place in 25% of the city at best, and it'll be up to you if you want to depart off the main roads you'll usually be taking to see the rest of the city. The story is pretty much only B-movie in quality.
The camera quirks really make so much of the gameplay difficult, and drivers who pay no attention to the fact that there's a cop engaging a perp in the middle of the road, and then run you over, frustrate all the more. While the graphics around the city could have used a tiny touch up, you blaze by so fast most of the time you'd hardly notice, and in the areas that count the graphics are superbly done, with people's faces always matching their mood well. The background and main combat sounds are of the quality you'd expect, and the soundtrack is smartly kept at a low enough volume to never intrude on the gameplay. While the story can be done in no more than a dozen hours, any branching path you've bypassed becomes unlockable immediately after "missing" it, so you can go back and play those scenarios without being stuck playing the whole game over. While the use of a real city and adding some elements GTA doesn't have were boldly ambitious, this is a game that could've been a lot better, and I can only imagine the next GTA game will borrow from this, but get things right. Still as a rental it can provide a fun weekend, and even for only the greatest hits price of $20, it's not the letdown it would be for the poor souls who paid $50.