Overall a great game but with a handful of annoyances.
You're set in a pretend version of New York called Liberty City, to progress you do missions for people around town. While not on a mission the entire world/city is your playground and you can go anywhere and do anything you want.
Now then, as everyone knows the main character is Niko and I must say, imo, he's the best out of the previous three (GTA3 guy, Tommy & CJ). I love his personality cause you always get the sense that he's a tough guy that no one can mess with. He never comes across as overbearing or boring, he always keeps his cool until he has reason enough not to do so.
Also Id like to mention how great the graphics are. Everything looks photo-realistic, especially at certain times when the weather changes like during a rain storm or when just the right amount of sun is shining.
Now lets get to those annoyances I mentioned in my opening statement. We'll start with the cops. My gosh they are everywhere, 95% of the time you can't jack a car without getting a 1 star wanted level because theres always a cop on every corner either walking or driving by. In the previous games, even if you were just going around wrecking havoc for fun, it would take a little time before getting a wanted level unless you purposly did something in front of the police.
Also the cops will follow you just about anywhere, even if you're plain out of sight they'll find you and go right for you so don't count on being able to hide anywhere...plus they are alot tougher now.
Next the way you escape the cops. Instead of just going to a Pay N Spray or driving over a bribe icon you must literally out run them. You have to escape the wanted-zone which flashes on your radar and map and depending how many stars you have depends how big the zone is. This may not sound annoying but now your forced into making a bunch of detours in hopes of loosing the cops because if you just drive really fast in one direction the cops keep spawing down the road which means the you'll never escape the flashing wanted-zone.
You can use a Pay N Spray but now you have to make sure the cops don't see you enter it, which is pretty much impossible since the times a Pay N Spray is needed most is when you have 3 or more wanted stars and by then the cops are all over you. I understand this is all to make it more realistic but it just comes off as too realistic for its own good. Before it was fun to go on long police chases now your actually scared to even get a wanted level.
The last major annoyance is your Cell Phone. You can't drive 10 minutes without someone calling you to invite you somewhere or sending you a text message. The thing is once you complete a strand of missions for someone they can become your friend and by hanging out with them they open speical services that you can use for help. Truth is these services arn't that special and they certainly dont make a huge diffrence. The rewards are not worth the hassle of having to goto a bar or strip club everytime someone invites you...which is alot. Luckly you don't have to do any of this but its still annoying having to answer your phone all the time.
If that werent bad enough sometimes your thrown right into the next mission when you answer your phone. This becomes so frustrating because most of the time when you complete a mission your not ready to jump right into the next one, whether you need to regain health or buy some more ammo or maybe you just wanana take a break and drive around, you should not be forced into a mission when your not ready.
A few other annoyances include you flying out the window if you crash hard enough, not a big deal but if your trying to get away from the cops is can be. At night it becomes so dark you can't see anything, unless your in a car of course, so its best to never do missions at night. Last, Liberty City is pretty big & detailed now, which is nice but it means you can still get lost even after spending alot of time with the game where as previously it was pretty easy to remember your way around town once you played a few times. The developers must have agreed cause now you can set a path on your radar/map that shows you exactly how to get to where you wanna go.
Again, most of this is to give the game a more realistic feel but like I said it just comes off as too realistic for its own good.
Bottom Line, it's still a great game but its nowhere near perfect.