Most people have covered the basics, so ill just get onto what i think...


Its fucking awesome, if you like gta games. Heck, people who dont like to play them will still probably love to watch. The game is just so damn entertaining, and all ive done is roam, no missions (my brother owns it, we got it at midnight launch and he went to bed after playing a little, so no story progression for me yet :( )

The massively improved graphics and, more importantly, physics just make everything more... awesome. The game is set up to play like a movie; heck they even have a cinematic camera mode when driving. The thing that has really stuck out in my mind is how much fun it is to die, which i did often.

Driving at high speed into something can actually kill you now. You go flying head first of a motorbike, as youd expect, and now if youre in a car you go crashing through the windscreen! Also, bailing from a moving vehicle will result in some epic tumbling across the ground, and you'll quite likely hit something with a sickening thud (that leaves a nice little patch of blood!). In all these cases the ragdoll physics is brilliant, a huge step up from the previous games.

Luckily, Niko is an insane tank, and can take all but the most brutal of hits. He does not deal with bullets so well, however, and if you fuck with the police they will hunt you down. Firefights are fun (the aiming systems are great, the weapons are effective, and the cover is not super great but good enough, like r6 vegas 2) but you will get shot down eventually, if you dont find a car.

I really enjoy the police systems. They take a fair bit of provoking and its easy enough to escape one star, but stick around and get another star and you are in trouble. If you can get in a car you can probably out run them, although if they get a helicopter in (and they will do this sooner rather than later) it can take some effort. If you get a 6 star level (crash into the barriers to the other islands!) you are almost probably fucked.

For the bad side of things, i did get the odd framerate drop, when i pissed the cops off and there was a ton of cars and guys charging at me. I dont blame it for struggling with that, tbh, and it wasnt gamebreaking, but its still noticeable.

I guess i will sum this up by saying, i have had a stupid amount of fun in this game by simply roaming, no missions, no weapons (to start with :P), on only the first island. The only issue is framerate, which is a fair trade for no loading such an insane amount of data, in my view. This game rules.