L.A. Rush departs from the arcade racer style from previous games in the series to join the street race genre trying to surf the wave generated in the early 2000's by The Fast & Furious movie saga and and games like Need For Speed Underground.

The action takes place in (you guessed it) L.A. and you play as Trikz, a famous street racer whose big car collection gets stolen by Lidell and his gang. Your mission is to get all your cars back and show Lidell who's the boss. All in all a very cheesy story full of the typical gansgtah stereotype, but it does no harm to the game.

In my opinion, the highlight of the game is the scenario: the city is huge, with a day/night cycle, recognisable landmarks, filled with traffic, pedestrians and plenty of destructible stuff. Crossing from one area to another is seamless, without any loading, which is quite impressive for a game at that time. It's the ideal scenario to cause mayhem in your car.

The meat of the game are the races through the city, going from point to point at full speed trying not to crash, in which case a fairly spectacular slow mo replay will follow like in Burnout. You'll need money to enter most of the races and if you finish 3rd or higher you'll unlock more events and get prize money to spent in entry fees or "pimping your ride" by West Coast Customs (yes, the guys from the MTV show). Aside from the regular races there're also Retribution and Acquire events for you to take vengeance on Lidell and get your cars back, and also KO races where each lap the last car is eliminated.

The car rooster is big and fully licensed except for the fantasy cars. The control is "arcadey" but fun and the races very much felt to me like the crazy races one can enjoy in GTA V online.

Regarding the graphics, they still look good today, with some nice sun glare effects, although cars look too shiny most of the time.

All in all the game is quite enjoyable until you start to realise...

THE FLAWS

• Free roaming between events looked like a good idea (I liked it!) but going back to where you were from your home after an Acquire mission can be painful in some cases and there's no way to fast travel.

• I reckon the game is very decent in the graphics department but this takes its toll with some scarce but annoying framerate drops in the middle of the action.

• Pimping your ride feels pointless; the modifications are purely cosmetic and you have no input on them. What's the point? You're better off saving the money for the race entry fees...

• Some of the trucks, cops or other cars getting in your way are clearly scripted and I find it a cheap way to raise the difficulty, quite often forcing you to repeat the race. Either this or the sudden turns after a check point will definitely test your patience.

• And for me the biggest flaw: abusive entry fees. Mind you, this wasn't a problem until the very last race and the bonus races, but those are hard and the entry fees are twice as much of what you can get in the highest paying race. Considering you'll have to repeat each of these a few times until you find and remember the winning route, it quickly becomes a grind. After beating the game and watching the credits, chances are you still have a few events left to do but you won't feel like doing them because of the painful grinding.