GREAT STORYLINE BUT TERRIBLE....
The rare game where the storyline involved is actually better than the game. Better by a large margin. It'd actually make a rather good movie. And it's a good thing, because it didn't manage to make an excellent game.
You, in the single player game, are Lynch. You get busted out of prison by a wealthy group known simply as the 7 who attach to you, as your sidekick and basically the guy watching you, psychotic Mr. Kane. Your family is threatened if you do not return money that you apparently stole from the7 years ago and the game is your pursuit of the money to save your family and to return the money you stole.
Your missions take place in some amazing locales. A packed and pulsing Tokyo nightclub is one of the most genius areas. In terms of taught story-telling, few games have ever managed to compete with this. And the music only makes it better. And the online "Fragile Alliance" mode is a terrific distraction, but not something with a great deal of depth.
Sadly, the gameplay itself is lacking. First off, aim is a nightmare. Your guns all have lots of recoil and actually successfully targeting and hitting enemies seems to be random luck. Hitting an enemy from afar with anything besides a sniper rifle is an exercise in sheer frustration. Fortunately, your enemies (and this is playing on hard --- it will only be worse if you play on a lower difficulty) will just sit there and just wait for you to kill them until you hit a certain location which will alert them to your presence. You can occasionally get stuck in areas by NPC's that won't move and block you in. Happened to me late in the prison level and it required me to re-start that area, which was a bit irksome. NPC's should either be able to be walked through or moved physically out of the way if needed. The visuals are decent, but not the most amazing things you'll ever see. Moving the camera is a headache as wel