Also shock, horror as people who payed £50 or £60 or whatever it is for a new game validate their purchase by saying it was good!
Oh aye, it was the worst thing ever in every way. That's why I played it for 120 hours. That's why I did a complete playthrough, exploring everywhere and doing every mission, then did another playthrough completing all main and side missions and some of the background missions. Because of course that's what anyone would do in the circumstances.
Or maybe there are positions other than the two extremes. Like the positions most people who've bought the game have posted in this thread, for example. Have you even read any of my posts, or Rroff's? Probably others too - Rroff is just the example that comes to my mind at the moment.
You have to question why the hell they decided to release it in such a state.
Mismanagement. They made a complete pig's ear of managing the project. They had no bloody idea what was going on. They repeatedly moved the goalposts. They failed to secure and assign adequate resources. They failed to organise different teams working on different parts of the job. They made up whatever lies they thought would make the most profit. They grossly misused their employees and finally they pulled a release date out of the air and announced it without any understanding of how unobtainable it was because they had no understanding of the project. When they were finally forced to confront the epic scale of their failure, they were forced to delay release. Then delay it again. The reaction to that (which included death threats), forced them to avoid another delay, which meant cutting out everything that wasn't almost finished and hastily cobbling together something to paper over the gaps, anything to shove something out the door by release day. If Lord Sugar was judging their performance, I'm sure he would say "You haven't got a clue. Not a bloody clue".
Those street missions, you have to get in close (within that circle surrounding the star) or the game seems to register it as an unprovoked attack. Basically, if the enemies spot you before you open fire then you're fine. Quickhacking with things like Contagion works the best.
I tended to scan them, find the one with the worst criminal record and shoot them. That seemed to work just fine. Although maybe I was just close every time. I didn't do anything subtlely. Neither of my characters used sniping or much in the way of hacking other than to steal money or negate devices. The second one was a bloody nutter for most of the playthrough, crazed vigilante style.