Better than San Andreas and will fulfill your needs until GTA 4 comes out!
When I first put it in I was expecting another True Crime style game but I was mistaken. I thought the ability to fully customise your character was a very good and original idea for this genre.
To get used to the controls of the game I decided to get into a car and drive around and the first thing I heard was a song by Twista, which was surprising as I didn't expect any licensed material for the game.
The further I progressed into the game the better weapons I got and I found a nice little rocket launcher which got me excited so I shot a through rockets at cars and was surprised at the detail of destruction and the detail of the explosion.
The storyline is a typical GTA style go out and kill people sort of plot but with different twists such as missions where you have to break into the police station and rob back drugs and fight off the FBI, rescue your friend from enemy gangs and even blow up a recording studio.
I enjoyed the activities you can do but I got annoyed about how you have to do these activites to get your respect bar up to do the missions, but you can gfet respect by hostage missions and killing gangs which is relatively easy. Also the Stronghold missions are a good idea. These are when you go to an enemy hideout and take it over.
I was very surprised at actually how good it was but a little disappointed on how easy some of the missions can be and how not hard, but annoying others can be. This game I believe is better than GTA:SA but I don't think it will be better than GTA 4, but maybe a Saint's Row 2 could knock the wind out of GTA's sails!