Well its been a long wait, after after getting the game yesterday and playing on it for the past five hours, here is what I think. Graphics are stunning and very detailed. People's breath in the nights when it is cold, steam from the drains in the road, sound effects are very realistic, having been to NY and Brooklyn parts are easily recognisable to me.

The script and scenes in the game are excellent, with some very funny dry humour, as is some of the comments from the pedestrians and other drivers you come across. You can do literally anything in your surroundings, watch tv, have a hot dog from a street vendor, and stealing cars has added variety with some needing the window smashing which then activates the car alarm!

The variety of music in the game is excellent, and the mobile phone use is a good innovation. Load times between scenes is very quick, and walking into a doorway on occasion has no load time whatsoever. Overall its a very impressive game and well worth buying.

However, I have found some downsides, compared to previous GTA games I have played...

1) The control of the vehicles is awful. Every car seems to handle the same (like a boat) and whatever speed you do, the car lunges around the corner like its on 2 wheels. Its very difficult to control, and using R2 as accelerate and L2 as brake does not help. Its a pity cars were not more varied in the way they drive according to the type of car you have. The interior driving view is good though.

2) Fighting is dull and slow, maybe too realistic now, I much prefer the old San Andreas GTA where the fighting moves seemed quicker and with more accuracy. Plus you now have three different buttons to use when fighting.

3) The game as crashed on me twice causing my console to freeze requiring a restart.

4) The SIXAXIS feature is complete waste of time. Trying to control a vehicle is bad enough with usual controls and near impossible using the controller as your steering. Thankfully you can turn this off, but was a waste of time including it in the game.

5) The multiplayer does not work at the moment, says cannot connect to the game servers, even though every other game I have plays online with no problems.

6) There have been instances where you are driving, with nothing infront of you, look behind for a split second, then all of a sudden loads of cars will appear from no where infront of you and you crash into them which can be highly annoying.


Hopefully some of these bugs will be resolved with online updates, but overall they do not spoil the enjoyment of the game. Oh yeah, you think you have seen amazing water effects in Drake's Fortune, well, the water in GTA is equally as impressive.