A very good game, but it has its flaws...capeesh.
When you start the missions you start to earn money, and quite alot of it, you end up making on average $20,000 in the game missions, the last mission you get $150,000. This is both good and bad, the good being you can buy good things early on in the game, such as new clothes, ammo and upgrades for your weapons, but the bad being you can afford almost all of it by the end of the game, i finished the game $50,000 short of buying the tommy gun up-grade.
The graphics are probably the best thing about the game, they look very impressive for a ps2 and the detail of the characters are also very good. However, the drawing distance isnt as impresive, to see rival gang members outside a rival store you have to be pretty close.
The sound is also very good, probably better than the graphics, there is great voice overs (most by the real characters) and the cars and guns also sound very realistic.
The control layout is great and easy tto get to grips with, the right analogue stick to punch is ingenius and removes button bashing. The targeting is the only fault to the controls i can think of, i have come across many occasions where im being shot but havnt been able to target the enemy becuase the enemy wasnt on the screen and by the time you have turned the screen around you might have died.
The gameplay has some great features but are spoilt by others. The driving is great, easy to get to grips with and fun, but there is no sense of danger of flipping the car, i have tried and all what happens is that the car turns on its side then turns back over to the right way up. The cars can also seem to get badly damaged very quickly, your car could be steaming, and whilst your driving all of a sudden start smoking for no reason...this maybe over heating but whats the point in that?. The extorting system is great and alot of the times very fun. Again, this is spoilt by the interiors of building being extremely repetitive, theres about 4/5 different types in total.
A nice feature to the game is the ability to walk into a bank and well...rob it. This sounds alot more fun than it is, and pretty much all of the banks have $20,000 in or less, with the exception of 1 holding $50,000. The problem with this is that there is no skill needed what so ever, you cannot use stealth becuase your always caught and the guards die very easily, you would think they would put heavily equipped guards in the vualt, but they put guys that can die with 2 shots from your weakest gun instead. The layout to the banks is even worse, you can get all the way down to the vualt (like down the stairs behind a door) without being shot at...pointless, i feel its only there as easy access to money...robbing delivery trucks is harder than robbing a dam bank! The final disadvantage to this game is the choice of veuchles, they are basically cr.ap, theres about 4/5 different veichles in total (not including the police cars or the ambulances - which are very rare)
The upgrades to the guns are very cool...very cool indeed, you can really feel the power increase of some of the weapons.
Finally, im going to finish with the worst thing about the game, this is deffinitly the missions, they are extremely easy, and the last mission is rediculously wide in time, you have around 15 minutes to kill each target, and most of the time i killed the guy in less than 5...way to easy.
In conclusion this is a great movie to game production but just lacks in certain feilds, i found it entertaining playing through it and it is probably worth buying to any fan of the gta series.