=== The game ===

This is your standard grand theft auto game really. You have to spend your time travelling around as a character, on foot or by car, taking part in missions, killing people, robbing people, generally just taking part in very naughty behaviour! In this game the character that you play is called Niko and you are basically someone who has travelled to work with their cousin who has fed you a load of lies about how successful he is and really is just running a two bit taxi firm! When left alone in the large city of Liberty City you need to find a way to earn some cash and there are numerous ways in which you can do this.

=== Game play ===

When playing this game you will be playing in the third person and basically you are the camera that is behind your character. You will be able to interact with numerous things that you see such as driving cars, swimming in the sea/lakes, running, walking, opening doors, firing weapons and much more. If you want to follow the missions and unlock the different achievements in the game then you can, however, if you just prefer to walk around randomly shooting people and seeing how many police stars you can get because you can no longer evade them and get caught, then that is fine also! It is really up to you how you play this game as it is your platform and you can play it however you like.

I found that the longevity of this game was only average as once I had completed the missions that I wanted to and unlocked the achievements I was after I was soon bored again. I did not feel like there was enough going on in this game to keep me occupied for hours on end at a time like Grand Theft Auto 3 did back in the day. Some of the missions were very difficult, as they should be really, however, rather than being challenging I just found this annoying and soon ended up moving on to the next thing and failing to unlock about half of the achievements and items that I wanted in game.

The map is well laid out, there are lots of different areas to explore and it is quick and convenient to get from one place to another. The markers on the map which show numerous things are very handy, however, the map is nothing special compared to previous games really.

=== Graphics / Sound ===

I absolutely love the city. When driving round there is much to be explored and the graphics are fantastic giving you a real insight in to the city and what it would look like in real life. There are changes in the day and night streets and you will notice a lot as it becomes night time again. There are people everywhere and they all have much to say and do if you happen to come across one of them and listen to their conversation. Some people are just going around their every day business and others are trouble but all of them have their own features and characteristics that have been brought to life wonderfully.

There is a vast array of music in this game, some well known, some not so, but each song seems to fit perfectly with the game. It is possibly to listen to the radio while driving around and I love this feature to the game as I can skip the radio stations until I find my particular favourite song at the time and then just drive away to the sound of the beat running people over and generally causing mayhem.

=== Achievements ===

There are a total of 65 achievements for this game totally 1500 and these range from the very simple (Complete the first mission) to the ridiculously hard (Achieve 100% in game progress statistics) and the long ones (find every secret package in the game) but the gamer score points available for each achievement do fairly reflect the effort that has to go in to earning them, in most cases anyway.

=== Where can I buy this & for how much? ===

This game can be purchased from numerous stockists and you can expect to pay around £10 or so for this game now and CEX.co.uk and CEX stores are currently (November 2011) offering this for £10.00.

=== Overall opinion ===

I would say that this game is worth a 4/5. The longevity of the game is not the best, however, when I do play this game I thoroughly enjoy the short amount of time that I spend playing it before I end up feeling bored and switching back to another game.

The achievements are not the simplest to earn, however, some of them filled me with a great sense of achievement (excuse the pun) when I finally unlocked them and it is fair to say that some of these achievements kept me playing the game for a few hours at a time just trying to do what I could to get them earned.

These is a multi-player available on this game, however, as the lobbies are usually incredibly dead when I try and play online I have just given up bothering with this now as most of the fan base have long since played and completed this game before moving on to something else.

It is fair to say that I have enjoyed this game. Rather than trading this in, like I do with a lot of my older games, I have kept this and return to it probably once or twice a month for an hour or two here and there. I occasionally still unlock another achievement or two but it takes real effort now to get in to the game for long enough to unlock some of the harder achievements and I generally just load this up and run around killing people for fun and generally just burning off some steam.