Completed this tonight, the game kind of grew on me a bit. At first the poor framerate, easy missions and unforgiving physics was a bit offputting, making me rank it below VC and SA.
Now, I'm not so sure. They've done away with a lot of the 'grinding' that was present in SA, i.e. you don't need to hit the gym or go around running/swimming just to beef up your stats before attempting certain missions. They seem to have focussed a lot more on the dialogue and linear story development this time around. It's almost more of a traditional game now, more like the Driver series than GTA, although of course there's still a lot of optional extras you can participate in. They've just done away or improved on some of the annoying stuff, like those 'car collection' missions in VC where you don't have any pictures or anything to go on. It's a bit more streamlined and once I got used to the car handling I found it a very enjoyable game - certainly vastly superior to GTA3 which I was playing last month. Of of the best aspects is that (most of the time) you have a good variety of missions to choose from.
Best character for me was Brucie.
One thing which does suck hugely however is the unrealistic and unneccesary time constraints you get for the some of the side missions. I.e, you arrange to meet someone for a date/entertainment or whatever, and Niko says "I'll be there in an hour", even if it's on the other side of town and you're in some clapped out family sedan. It'd be much better if it gave you the option of choosing a time to pick them up.
Overall my 'gut feeling' is that it's not quite a good a game as Vice City, but then I haven't played that for a few years, if I tried it again maybe I'd feel differently.
