You can grab your opponent and slam them against various surfaces, throw them through windows or off the roof, etc. It reminds me of the Punisher with its environmental torture sequences and tons of animated finishers.

The ranged combat is less interesting. There's a lock-on auto-aim, which is a mess because you can accidentally switch targets when just trying to move the reticle towards the head. Oh yeah, you can shoot different body parts and the enemy will react accordingly, i.e. fall down if you hit their knees or drop their weapon if you hit their hands. Which is kinda wasted here because there's no incentive to do that and you're unlikely to do that accidentally with this lock-on system. You can also aim freely, but then the camera moves to over the shoulder, and it's not dynamic, so it may be over the wrong shoulder, becoming a nuisance more than anything. There's also a really rudimentary cover system that you're better off not using.

The driving is fine, but a lot of the driving missions are way too hard even from the start of the game. Not to mention the chaos you cause on the streets is really immersion-breaking. This game is supposed to be more grounded and realistic than GTA.

Easily the coolest feature in this game is taking over businesses. You walk into a shop, threaten the owner, beat him up if that's not enough, then force him to pay you income every week. Of course you also gotta murder all the members of another family, who own and guard the place, to even get inside, but the money's worth it.

Unfortunately, it seems like that's all you're gonna be doing in the game besides the story missions. And it gets old very fast. I did several of these in a row from the start just to clean up the neighborhood and establish a steady flow of income. And after about an hour of doing that, I was so over it. It just takes way too long, and there's basically only a few templates of these businesses that repeat over and over again. So after a while it becomes a chore.

The world is empty. Essentially a big hub. There's some property you can buy, and some gun dealers, but that's pretty much it.

I feel like they should've introduced more strategic and management elements, and cut back on all the action. But there seems to be no real way to manage your owned businesses or conduct diplomacy. All you do is run around beating people up and shooting them.

Far as I can remember, there was some kinda strategic mode on PSP to compensate for the lack of the open world. Might actually be a better approach.