Gangs of London hit PSP

Sony has announced Gangs of London for PSP, a crime-a-thon spinoff from The Getaway series on PS2 with solo and multiplayer gang battles and a free-roaming, pocket version of the city of London. Check out these screens to see some of the action.

With an interesting mix of both action and strategy, Gangs of London is split into two gaming halves - one is a dose of GTA-like action, casting you as the leader of one of five gangs pounding the city streets, while the other is a turn-based gang battle that sees you assaulting and defending territory.

Action missions task you with leading a multi-thug gang to victory through more than 60 different street skirmishes, and gives you the ability to instantly switch between your gang members during the combat - just like Battlefield 2: Modern Combat's excellently frantic solo game.

Up to five players can take part in the turn-based battles, which sound like a mix of Advance Wars-style strategy and Metal Gear Acid's card-based events.

You're defending or attacking areas of London represented on a map, and can collect bonus cards that we're expecting will award players with special attacks or tactics.

As well as all this, Gangs of London features a free-roaming mode where you trawl the streets of London looking for trouble, a taxi-driving minigame, a bunch of pub-games (like the darts and pool matches in our shots), or you can play as a clueless tourist, wandering around and taking photos of London landmarks.

There's a surprising amount on offer, and we're hoping that Gangs of London can overcome the dodgy camera problems that haunted The Getaway to create an exciting rival for GTA: Liberty City Stories. We'll have more info very soon.