GTA in HD. Is this a dream???
You play as Niko Belic, a Russian who has come to America to live the dream with his Cousin. Except it doesn't quite happen like that and you are soon thrown into the depths of the under-world once the comfortable opening 2 missions are complete. Missions are thought out, varied (as in you don't seem to do the same thing twice in a row). There are even a few spontaneous missions which occur randomly and become No1 priority no matter what you were planning on doing. This does bring a fresh feel to the game.
The game does have many unique characters, some of which add more missions (strangers) and some are part of the story. The story based characters will call you via your cell-phone and ask if you would like to partake in activities like bowling, pool, drinking etc. You can do drug missions, race others etc just by calling the right people at the right time.
There is so much added to GTA which makes it feel like real, for example Niko can e-mail and surf the net via an Internet Café (sorry, not a real internet). What he gets upto appears on the front page as well. And like the busy life, you can do online dating as well. Just make sure to keep in contact otherwise it will be date over. 2 females you meet/go out with are through the story anyway.
Online multi-player is a hoot. You get to choose what weapons appear on the map, if you can get wanted by police, what area the battle with others takes place (from a small area to the whole map you decide). With this choice, it doesn't limit you to travelling across the whole map, but it does limited where the ammo and weapons are placed.
There are learning curves to be had, especially with the car handling. This can be completed with ease (basically just drives around until you feel comfortable, which should only take 2 minutes).
An annoyance is the Pidgin Hunting, gets tedious and as you got to shoot them causes the Police to come after you as well.
Multi-player does have lag from time to time, and it will get annoying with a full house of players just jumping about making it impossible to shoot them near enough.
There is DLC available, being in "Ballard of Gay Tony" and "Lost and Damned". I shall review these at a later date.
Other than that, this is a great game and one to not miss out on