Yeah, this is everything that's fun about GTA without any of the downtime, plus an absurd sense of humor that thankfully permeates the entire game, including the main story, and the game also has a far, far better sense of progression between taking over the city and the fact that you can upgrade practically every fucking usable element in one way or another.
Agreed.
There's so much to love about this game. The opening mission was just insane and jaw-dropping...
[spoiler]...the bank-robbery dressed as yourselves w/ big-head masks; chopper pulling the floor out w/ the vault; and then you shooting enemies while they're pulling the vault away w/ the chopper was incredible.[/spoiler]
There's so many moments in this game...
Penthouse Mission
[spoiler]...Taking over the guy's penthouse party, while jumping down out of a plane to Kanye West's "Power" was so masterfully put together...Couldn't pick a better fitting song here.[/spoiler]
I'm honestly amazed, and this has completely changed my opinion of this franchise. I used to think it looked like a stupid knockoff for thugs... but this game is a masterpiece.
I really liked SR2, despite its problems on the PC (performance issues, DLC was never released here on the PC).
But, yeah - SR3 takes the series in a totally new and more insanely-awesome direction. While the activities were really good in SR2, the missions weren't always great. SR3 - forget it, pretty much ALL of the missions are just flat-out incredible. The missions are memorable. There was one mission that was REALLY annoying b/c it was a pain for me to get through, even though it was still an awesome mission....
[spoiler]...which is the "don't damage the computers on the truck" mission. I failed that one so many times, it drove me nuts. The AI, just seemed to want to do its own thing, too much...shooting at the damn computers. Luckily, I did eventually get by it.[/spoiler]
