It’s as baseline as any sandbox open-world can be which is to be expected considering this is what popularized it in the modern age of gaming. Still, this doesn’t negate how playing this feels like a very barren concept that future games would try to actually do something with. Liberty City is gray and grimy looking but it sorely lacks in any impulsive need to fuck around than just trying to actively look for it which beyond just flattening pedestrians there isn’t anything to do. The actual driving is terrible. It’s too slippery and chaotic at even the slightest short turn which makes missions expecting you to be somewhat precise annoyingly difficult to do. And since that’s really the only thing you can do in the game it only worsens the experience laid here. There’s also the shooting which is finicky to aim and shoot but Rockstar has never been great about this even today so I wasn’t too surprised to see this is where it all originated from. I’d say I would give this another shot in the future to see if it pulls itself together in any way that redeems it enough but I wasn’t engaged by an awkwardly told story featuring a protagonist who feels like he shouldn’t be silent in these cutscenes but he is I guess and you can’t just magically improve controls like it’s some switch you have to flip yourself after the first three-four hours.