It looks good, it has all the potential to be great but falls flat...
Eager to play it I installed it, and immediately started the game up. The campaign allowed me to choose a character although I learnt it really made no difference who you picked in the end ,the characters you didn't pick still crop up in the game to lend assistance and give you tedious missions.
The game started well I thought, wake up in a hotel room, gun shots and all sorts of noise coming from outside as a full blown gun battle erupted in the street outside the characters hotel. This was really only one of three moments I can really recall as memorable and fun aspects of the game. As soon as I got onto the main game and started undertaking the missions I found myself bored, the same missions again and again. Respawning check points also litter the land, and the rate at which they respawn makes it pointless and tedious to even bother clearing the guards out of them.
Of the features I did like, the first time you make a buddy (one of the characters you didn't pick to play as will become your buddy and if you 'ready' them by meeting them at safe houses will help you out with the fighting) and the first time you get into something a bit more than you can handle and you think your dead, your buddy turns up guns blazing and ready to help you out. It is a nice touch but was underused since you really don't care too much about these random people as they are never fleshed out. Another neat little feature for me was the map and gps system, basically to see a map you need to put your weapons away and actually pull a map out as if it were one of your weapons, it adds a touch of realism. But this for me was where the game fell down, the realism it did have started to grate on me and made the game a bit boring after I had done a handful of missions. Much like Assassin's Creed for those of you who played it, the missions are all repeated over and over with slight variations in some situations and there is only so many times I can blow something up that means nothing to you or the character before I become bored.
In short, it's a decent action game, has good gun battles, good graphics and a large open world… but the game allows you little leeway in what you do in this 'open world'.