First up is Tourist Mode, an opportunity to free roam, but with a purpose. Basically, the idea is to travel around these 25 square miles of London hunting for historical land marks, and once you locate them you're supposed to snap pictures, the idea being that you'll want all of the goodies that'll be unlocked when the goals are completed.

Next is Free Roaming, and it's exactly as it sounds, but there's a twist. You can walk around and do pretty much whatever you'd like as any character and in any vehicle, except this mode contains some interesting mini games. You can run from the law, put the shoe on the other foot and track down criminals, speed through check points as fast as you can (in a spirited homage to the horror film 28 Days Later) mow down waves of zombies that have infested the city.

If all Gangs of London contained were those aforementioned modes I'd be content, but there's more. The developers have inserted a handful of pub games such as darts, pool and skittles, each of which can be enjoyed by one to two players on a single PSP (so you'll pass it back and forth). Furthermore, there's Game Share mode, but this isn't typical game sharing. Instead of just beaming the same old level to someone else's system, the PSP with the game will analyze the other unit's serial number and send a randomly-generated mission to it, each one containing different characters, vehicles, weapons, and objectives.

Finally, there's Gang Battle, a Risk-inspired strategy game in which up to five players attempt to control London, and much like the pub games, this all occurs on a single PSP. No ad hoc, no online play.

There's two reasons why I'm bothered by this, the first having to do with these four other mystery people. I can track them down, but I'm not sure whether they're going to want to huddle around the fire and play Gangs of London all night. In fact, I can't even imagine that happening anywhere. I just can't picture someone phoning their friends on a Friday night and saying, "Hey guys! How about you grab a pizza and come to my place for some turn-based Gangs of London?" I don't doubt that there are a handful of people that are going to be into it, but it just makes more sense to do something online, which leads me to my second gripe. Where's the online play? Actually, I'm going to take that a step further by asking, where's the online death matching? Why can't I select a gang (or create my own character), then slaughter other people via ad hoc, online, or both? I'm not against Gang Battle. I think a strategy game has its place, but this sort of project, Gangs of London, screams violence. It just has a wealth of potential, but despite its developers shoving all of these assorted features and missions into it, the game feels like it's missing something important. Without any form of online play, I don't know how long I'll be interested.

Even without a dedicated online component, there should still be enough content to hold my interest, but I have a hunch that most of the press reviews will all mention how Gangs of London would have been even more fantastic had SCEE added death matching. It's a dark cloud that may ominously float above the game well after its release. However, the final product may be so incredible that the absence of death matching may not hurt its overall appeal.