May 16, 2003 - We've already given you a peek at the very same version of True Crime that graces the show floor with tasty screens and an even tastier interview, but after spending a little more time with Activision and Luxoflux's good cop gone rogue, we're ready to wax ecstatic just a little bit more.

After a decent bit of play time and digesting as much as we could in the midst of Activision's thumping techno superbooth, it's clear that Luxoflux isn't trying to bust out a quick and dirty Grand Theft Auto clone. What they are doing, however, is making us antsy for a final build of the game.

If you haven't gotten the skinny on the game, head here and get the poo on the basics. If you can't be bothered to click, we'll fill you in Cliff Notes-style. Violence-prone cop gets booted from LAPD active duty. Cop likes to break stuff. Like people's faces. Cop breaks stuff on a one-man assault on organized crime. There's plenty more depth than that, of course, but all you need to know is that violence plays a big role in whatever you.

A whopping 300 miles of Los Angeles have been squeezed into the game, allowing you to (theoretically) drive anywhere in LA that you want. Side streets may not be included, but if you happen to live in LA, there's a good chance that if your house is on a main street that you could drive to it. Luxoflux obviously didn't photograph every single house in LA, but the layout is sound. The driving aspects of the game definitely draw from Luxoflux's earlier work on Vigilante 8, but this simply makes the act of screaming through Santa Monica with the top down on your convertible that much more fun.

What makes True Crime, truly compelling, however, is the simple, open-ended nature of, well, everything. You might be out driving around and get a call over the radio to your next "mission" but that doesn't mean you have to take it. You could continue to drive around LA, running red lights and locking bumpers with cars as long as you wanted.

When you do finally decide to advance the story, there are still multiple ways to tackle an objective. You can go in guns blazing and drop every one (using some bullet time-style moves you can learn in the game's dojo-style training levels if you so choose), or you can take the stealth route, the choice is almost always up to you. What's really interesting, however, is how the game can adapt on the fly to your play style. Sneak around and you might not have to fire a single shot, but get spotted by some goons and the game segues into a Hard Boiled-esque pistol ballet.

At this point, the game's graphics won't drop any jaws. It's pretty, sure, and there's still a bit of tweaking here and there, but by and large the game just feels solid. Things move along at a smooth clip and the control - whether driving, throwing fists and feet or introducing a little more lead into the bad guys' diet - is rather intuitive. The combat feels a bit clunky, but again, things are still being locked down.

E3 is always the worst way to get impressions of any company's work; you can't hear anything, the flashy lights and copious amounts of boobies make it hard to stay focused on the game, and half the time your questions fall on deaf ears. Even with all these distractions, however, True Crime manages to stand out as one of the more ambitious titles of the show.

If Luxoflux can pull together the driving, fighting, and shooting aspects of the game, we could be looking at a more than worthy hold-over until Rockstar's exclusive contract with Sony runs out and we all get that car jacking and hooker pumping game that seems to be so popular these days.