Great game if you like GTA/Burnout games. Much better than I expected since many reviews gave unjust ratings.
Yes I agree, the story makes no sense and is hard to follow since it goes back and forth. Who really cares about the story, we don't buy games to watch a story, we buy games to play and the story only makes the game more interesting. I think the story did its best to attempt to give you reasons to do some of the innovative missions created for this game. Some of the story missions were quite hard but they all have mini save points that really help balance out difficulty.
Kudos to the development team for adding innovative game play. Air jacking is a blast to do but can be frustrating at times if your not lined up perfectly to get the green arrow required to perform the jump. The Focus mode and cyclone maneuvers were very well done and it was a pleasure to do all of them in races, story missions and pretty much at anytime.
The story can be completed without doing any side missions but supposedly the side missions help with car damage and other stuff. Most of the side missions are fun like fugitive, taxi, made to order and contracts but I found rampage to be extremely annoying. Who wants to drive around destroying stuff not exactly knowing where to go and with such limited time. Side missions can be very addicting when trying to get the best grade possible.
Good: Game play rocks and is very fun especially in vehicles, good side missions. The explosions are amazing. The game is well-balanced, difficult but not too hard. On foot missions are not as bad as everyone claims. Whole city is destructible
Bad: Once completed, there is not much replay value. Rampage side missions are annoying.
Achievement Difficulty: 6/10. Almost all can be obtained by just doing story and side missions. Side missions require "A" or better for next one to unlock and each catagory has about 15 side missions. Make sure you make multiple saves before you do one of the take out gang leaders or you might miss out on 2 other story achievements. Getting "S" grade on all the side missions is extremely hard, I got many but I refuse to waste time doing anymore rampage missions. I have no interest in destroying cat statues or finding the stunt jumps either.