The game is great, but put together a little sloppily...
The game takes place 3 (or so) years before GTA3 and you play as Toni Cipriani, who if you remember in GTA3 was a guy who gave you missions. Liberty City is composed of three islands to explore, and all of them are pretty much exactly the same as how it was depicted in GTA3, but whats more noteable this time around is that this huge open city is on a handheld. The basic sandbox gameplay is still there, there are still plenty of side missions to be done, as well as mindless rampages to be had. The missions are a lot like how they are in most GTA games, except it seems there are ones that are a lot harder toward the beginning of the game, whereas most of the GTA games have very simple missions toward the beginning and the harder ones toward the end. Many of these missions at the beggining are hard to complete because they require different gear, and weapons that may not be at Toni's disposal toward the beggining.
The missions range from, easy to fun to hard to rediculous. There are some great missions like taking on waves of hitmen and a ferocious firefight, and there are some terrible ones like trying to get away from tons of cops in one of the flimsiest cars in the game. So its a very mixed bag in terms of gameplay.
In terms of graphics, this game is very good considering the massive scope. The effects, cars, and enviornments look great, as well as some of the character models, but quite a few character models suffer from being very blocky and undetailed. There are also a few frame-rate chugs but if you think about the scope of the game, its easy to forgive.
As always GTA games really deliver on the sound department. Plenty of great voice-overs and small effects like horns honking, and people yelling at you to make you feel like you are really in a city. Also, all the radio channels are great and are either hilarious, or have great playlists of really good songs.
Also like in most GTA games, you can play this one for a while, a long while. It will take you a damn long time to finish this game from all the story missions, to the side missions, to you just doing whatever you please in this huge, sandbox-style game.
This game definatley lives up to the GTA title, and for the most part is very good except for some poorly designed missions, and a few bad things in the graphics department.