I'm color coding the title in relation to my opinion. green is good, red is bad.

This is based on about 69.50% completion and 50 hours of gameplay at the moment.

freezing problems fixed with 1.01 patch for PS3. It requires you to update the game if your ps3 is connected to the internet. (the only reason it was freezing to begin with was because of the connection to the playstation network... turned it off and BAM it works perfectly)





1. When you die you don't lose guns:
very nice. when you get wasted you don't lose any guns... but it does cost you a bit of money, I think it was costing me $3,000 each time when I had $50,000 or so. Couldn't have been that much when I had less money.

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You do still lose all of your guns when you get busted, but when you have 2 stars the cops are pretty much shoot first ask questions later. With two stars they'd rather stand behind their car door and shoot you than try to get you out of the vehicle.

2. guns/armor/health hidden more:
Okay, one of the first things you notice is that the guns and armor and health drops are basically impossible to find. there's between 30 and 46 weapons on each island. (this includes melee and molotov cocktails etc)

I don't know if it's just the fact that their hidden or not, but i've personally only found like 2-3 weapons in 45 hours of standard playing.

also, there's no minigun, katana, chainsaw.... some of the more fun weapons.

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3. new cover combat system:
Best addition to the combat mechanics, takes a little while to get the controls down, but once you've engraved them into your mind the combat system becomes your best friend.

In SA I pretty much would lock onto a target, then hit L2/R2 to switch really fast to the next target once i had pummeled the first with bullets. I miss those controls alot... now, while you are able to adjust the aim and get headshots(really cool feature) you have to switch targets using the same right joystick. Not a big deal... I can see some people maby having problems with it, but The L2/R2 switch would be better for me.

The way it works is you hit R2 near a wall or car or crate or anything you can take cover behind. Niko will put his back up against the wall and you can target, then press the fire button to jump out and shoot (I always adjust so that it's a headshot also =) You can also use I think L1 to fire your weapon without leaving cover. So Niko will put his gun around the corner and fire wildly in the rough direction you have the target set. (much less acurate, but much more safe... i rarely use this though)

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4. Can't free aim:
This is probably because I switched the controls to "Classic" in the settings, but if you press L1 to go into free aim, he starts shooting automatically when on foot, and R1 automatically locks onto the nearest target to the center of the camera's view.

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5. Auto lock is based on direction camera is facing:
really annoying when your getting shot from behind and you have to turn the camera all the way around just to lock onto them. It should be somewhat based on the camera, and also realize when your trying to lock onto something that Niko is looking at and not the camera.

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6. losing cops is different:
So basically in previous games you would go to the pay and spray or collect those police bribe things. no more!

At 1 star you have a "wanted area" which is this large flashing red/blue circle that appears on the map. when an officer of the law even see's you when you are wanted, that circle gets centered on you. Your objective is to leave the circle of attention and not be seen long enough for the alert to fade. at 2 stars it's larger, and at 3 stars it's even larger... I haven't spent too much time with more than that, but I believe it doesn't get too much larger if at all past 3 stars. (the most i've lost successfully is 5 stars after a bank heist mission)

You can see the cops on the radar now to help you avoid them. (still really hard with 2 stars if your not in the right vehicle)

You can still lose your wanted level by entering a pay'n'spray There's only one on the first island, but there's 2 on each of the other islands. However, if a cop sees you enter the pay'n'spray it won't close and will give you the error "the police saw you enter" or something similar.

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7. driving waypoints calculate route for you now:
Basically you set a waypoint on the map and it automatically calculates the fastest legal route to get there and outlines it on your map/radar. I remember you could set waypoints on the map in SA, but i don't think it calculated the route for you.

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8. Vehicle Damage Mechanics:
Vehicles don't explode as fast once they start on fire. More time to escape, but you don't get to see them explode as often.

Vehicles can have their engines killed by too much abuse before they even burst into flames.

I've hit cars really hard before and seen the driver jump out on fire... kinda weird/funny.

You can now be ejected from cars if you hit something really hard. Similar to how you fly off motorcycles when hit. I've also done this to Cops before by hitting them in a head on collision... pretty damn funny. Doesn't seem to work for regular civilians, but you can knock them out by doing that and they'll sit there with their head on the horn.

If you hold the gas and brake and spin your tires for long enough, they'll start to smoke then eventually explode.

You can drive with a flat tire for a bit and still have pretty good control. eventually it will come off and you'll be stuck on rims and no control. The police don't seem to shoot out your tires as much either... and i haven't seen them use spike strips at all.

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9. motorcycles:
Just not as fun to drive as in VC and SA. Not as fast, not as controlable. However you can now do flips and go backwards on them without falling off.

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10. hailing taxi's:
Driving not your thing? hold down L2 near a taxi and it will pull over for you, then you HOLD DOWN triangle to enter as a passanger. (just pressing it will jack the cab =) took me a few accidental jackings to read the tooltip and realize that.)

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11. beginning cars feel really loose on road:
I guess this is bad, but it's not that bad. The cars, especially the low-end one's are really lose on the road. Also, the E Brake is best used to do a 180, and not to help you make turns... because you'll basically do a 180 no matter what after a certain speed.

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12. drunk driving:
you can now go with a friend/girlfriend to a bar and get piss drunk... the conversations are always better, you stumble around and can fall down easily, and you can even get in a car and drive drunk back to their house. The cops don't like drunk drivers though, so watch out. You can also puss out and hail a taxi after they're done talking.

The drunk effect rapidly wears off once you drop them off.

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13. stunt jump speed control:
When the game slows the camera on a stunt jump you can use the right joystick to manually adjust the speed. you can go faster and get the jump over with or slower if it gets interesting and looks like your going to do some flips.

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14. Cinematic Camera Speed control:
kind of a cool little feature, but I haven't used it much. when in a car, pressing circle puts the camera in a cinematic view, if you press L3... or maby R3 while holding it in the cinematic view, the speed slows down. (don't know if it works if you change the camera to permanently be in cinematic using the select button)

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15. No more L2/R2 side camera views:
In VC and SA I used to Hold L2/R2 to see what was behind me or to the sides really fast... you can't do that any more... i'm guessing because in the new control scheme they have L2/R2 set to gas and brake/reverse and never though to use them for anything in the classic control scheme.

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16. cell phone:
shortly into the game you get a cell phone that you receive texts and calls from characters in the game. come related to the story, some are just asking you to hang out with them (friends/girlfriends).

There's been cellphones in atleast one of the previous games, but this one is more full featured. you can manually dial 911 with it and "order" a cop car to your position if you're in need of one. (there are a couple missions where this is a convenience) you can also talk to the ambulance and fire departments.

later in the game you get an upgraded phone that also has a camera on it because there are a couple missions that require you take a picture of someone and send it to someone. As far as I can tell you can't take pictures like screenshots and save them. you can take pictures on your own but i never saw anything to suggest you can save them anywhere. (what a complete waste of the PS3's harddrive... I was taking pictures hoping that they would be saved somewhere so I could use them on the intARnetZ.)

what a stupid oversight, hopefully they'll patch the game and add that as a feature. you already have the option of calling a number in the game to pinpoint a song on the radio so you can BUY it from their "social club" site.
http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/

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17. Car theft missions are still in game:
A little ways into the game there are 10 car theft missions from one of the characters you meet. These are pretty easy, you read his e-mail and reply to it to start the mission. The location of the target vehicle appears as a blip on your radar and the path is automatically mapped for you. There are a couple interesting one's where you need to kill people that are standing around the vehicle before you steal it... or my personal favorite is a car that cops have pulled over and are arresting the former driver. You just walk up and steal it infront of them =)

Later in the game there are 30 more cars to steal, these are a little different in that you get a text message from the guy and are given a picture of it and told where it is... but there are no directions or blips given. This hearkens back to the car theft missions from GTA3.

This is actually one of my favorite features of the game, i did like 9 of the first 10 immediately after they became available. (i actually didn't know there was only one left or I would have just finished it)

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18. accessing police computer to find criminals:
I've only had a chance to use this on a couple missions and not on vigilante missions. When in a cop car and not moving, you can press L1 and access the police car computer. there are options to look up the most wanted, people by name and photo, and i think an option to call for police backup.

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19. pay phone assassination missions:
They're back. I think the last time they were in a GTA game was GTA3. Anyway, later in the game you meet someone who tells you about someone else who needs work done and that he'll call you at a certain payphone. I haven't completed any of these yet, but they look like alot of fun.

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20. strategy guide:
The strategy guide is setup like a retarded monkey smoking weed. It makes sense if you want to play through the game mission by mission as the guide does it, but if you're trying to locate something specific it's impossible.

basically it's setup chronologically and not categorically which means a big fucking pain in the ass.

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21. flying rats:
instead of hidden packages there are "flying rats" aka pigeons to kill. SO MUCH MORE FUN to shoot them and watch/hear them than the hidden packages. However I don't think there's any bonus like in older GTA's where guns would start spawning at your safe houses.

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22. Clothing/outfits:
They didn't really go completely overboard with the clothing like they did in SA, which is good, but The changing clothing function of the game is still really tedious, you have to scroll through them one by one and wait in between for each one to load. no preview, load time seems to be way too much... they should have preloaded all the textures beforehand so it would be instant changing between outfits.

seems like another stupid oversight on their part.

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23. Graphics/loading/graphic poping
Even on the "next gen" ps3 system, there's still texture poping, far better than previous games I think mostly due to the fact that it requires you to install it onto the harddrive of the ps3. When I play Vice city or SA on my ps2 with a hard drive, the loading and texture poping is basically nonexistent, as a matter of fact, the loading screen on SA is actually TIMED. the hard drive finishes loading content, then the game just sits there letting the "load bar" finish.

The graphics themselves are pretty substandard, the character models are polygon sparse, especially the non main characters. (pedestrians, girlfriends, police etc.) The city itself seems to be done very nicely, aswell as the vehicles.

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24. Story/characters - Highlight for spoilers
I wasn't soo impressed with the story, there were some things later in the game that just didn't make sense. You start dating this one girl sort of part of the story niko doesn't really seem to like her, and she just wants to be friends, then shes murdered and niko's somehow affected a shitload by it... wtf?

The only mission I really though was cool, and kinda of got me feeling for the characters was the one where dimitri kidnaps roman, and you have to stop in the middle of whatever side mission you are working on and go save him. Niko's starts yelling out some cool lines while you're in that gunfight.

Vice city was the best, then SA. haven't played liberty city/vice city stories enough to get a feel for them.

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25. Characters: Little Jacob
I hate these missions sooooooo much! You can't understand him speaking because he mispronounces EVERYTHING. it's like ebonics for jamaicans. What's worse is that you can't even read the subtitles because they're spelled out phonetically to the stupid shit he's speaking.

Later on you get the option to do stuff with him like a friend, I turned down every time he called up. fuck you! speak english. goddammit.

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26. Story choices. choose who lives or dies.
This was a little cool, you get to choose on a few occasions whether to let soemone live or kill them. I think the only effect in the game is in the dialog in some places. There is one mission right at the end that actually does effect what the last three missions will be though.

Actually come to think of it, there was another time where you had to choose who to kill, killing one person looked like an easier mission, and killing the other person while harder would get you another safe house.

Being a GTA game, I of course choose to kill the person every time, and choose to get the extra safe house.

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27. friends/girlfriends cool...and quite annoying.
You get to be "friends" with several of the characters in the game... which basically means they call you up when you don't want to talk to them and ask you to go bowling, play darts, go drinking, go to the strip club, go see a show of some sort etc.

girlfriends behave the same as friends, except they complain about your car, your clothes, your driving, and let you have sex with them if you spend enough money on them.

if you spend the extra effort to actually make your friends/girlfriends happy there are perks like roman will send you free taxi's, little jacob will bring a car filled with guns close to you to buy from as a discounted rate, one of your potential girlfriends kiki can get rid of upto a 3 star wanted level when you're not on a mission. (she also calls up randomly and accused you of cheating on her... get her drunk and she'll do the same thing)