You're laughing but I have GTA4. Awesome game, but SR2 shows more promise. GTA4 is graphically an amazing game, and from the amount of work put into it you can see there is an insane amount of detail. The story is entertaining and the characters are good too.
However:
-Most of the music sucks, and you don't have an option to go to the music store to just buy a song you like. 360 owners have it good, since we can play out own music when playing.
-You play as a tall skinny eastern european who's like thirty something. He's cool, but he's not relatable. I found an outfit that makes him look cool. It's like a leisure suit, but the clothing options aren't that cool.
-Driving can be awkward at times.
-When you initially buy the game, you have to earn your right to play in "manhattan" and "New jersey", Algoquin and Alderny respectively. Why pay sixty bucks of real world money to have virtual police wait until I finish story for a free roam game. And it's not even like you can sneak over or anything...if you try to get over it's automatically a 6-star. In SR you can, from the beginning, go wherever you want. SR2 will follow suit..
-"Homies" Honestly, the only comparable GTA to SR is San Andreas. In GTA4, you're mostly on your own and you can't clearly see your partner's health if you even have a partner for your mission. In SR, you can free roam WITH a partner! And in SR2 the partner doesn't even have to be AI.
-Online...GTA copied SR for the online.
Which reminds me, a few things were borrowed from SR that were not in previous GTA games.
-Cell phone and everything involving that
-GPS
-The more fluid, ragdoll-esque bodies..to name a few
I'm not saying SR invented these things or that they are solidly SR traits, BUT..How can people treat SR like some kind of half-assed copy when even Rockstar acknowledged cool gameplay mechanics?
Playing the game makes me want SR2 more. Disagree, you will, but Yes...to me it WILL BE a better game.