A cake with a dead cat inside.
I was very hyped for this game, I would have loved to have lived through the 40's and 50's (well sort of) but that isn't exactly going to happen so this game had my attention considering it had so much potential to take the sandbox style and go to a time that I haven't seen very often in a game. Sadly this is the biggest wasted opportunity in a game I have played in a few years. If I remember correctly it took 6 years to make, which surprises me considering how dead everything feels.
I should start out by saying the graphics look amazing, but that is pretty much the best part. It is a beautiful game and the opening two mission are easily the most memorable mixing music, atmosphere and Christmas into an exciting trip home for a solider. That is really the end of it all though. There are no side missions in this game. Sure you can get extra money, which you don't need, by crushing cars you steal, or by doing work for that fat guy at the docks, but that is so insignificant I really considered no even saying anything abour that in this review.
For a city as big as this one I was surprised at how few people there really were. I expected busy street and loads of people our walking around on a brisk stroll or shopping perhaps. But really there is almost no one to be found, not to mention the amount of cars in motion or otherwise is also lacking.
Another thing that I feel is something you can't do to gamers is make them earn something and then take it away without allowing them to get it back later. You will loose everything you buy in this game twice! So you mine as well not even bother buying jack. (this said I stopped playing two missions to the end, maybe you actually do get the stuff back, I was just so turned off I couldn't finish the game even when I tried to push myself to do it).
Another I noticed is I felt bad killing people in this game. I'm not saying that I should feel bad for taking another life, but one of the fun things about GTA is doing drive-byes, or throwing a molotov into a crowd and any number of other insane things that end in the death of tons of pixel people. In this game I shot a woman in the back of the head, someone who had done nothing wrong to me, in a dark alley and felt horrible for doing it. Not to mention the police just showed up in 5 seconds to try and kill me.
My conclusion over all: if you're going to make a sandbox game you really have to focus more on free time in between missions, and making the place a lively area. The player should want to live in that city and it should be somewhere worth visiting again and again, making a giant city to explore without putting anything in it is like baking a hollow cake with a dead cat inside.
