Posted by: Nik Taylor

1.59am

Time to call it a night, I reckon. I'll be back online tomorrow morning for another blast around Liberty City. Hopefully there will be plenty of you who will have received your copies and developed a tactical cold in order to get the day off. Get in touch in the comments section or on this thread on the messageboard thread and let us know how you're getting on.

1.39am

The airport is a great place to go for some car chases. The gates are wide open - so it's possible to drive straight onto the runway. Doing that instantly gets you a four-star rating, so the cavalry aren't far behind. Once the rozzers turned up, I started weaving in and out of a taxiing jumbo jet. As they followed me they were mistiming it and getting crushed under its wheels. Great stuff.

Have settled on driving the Patriot (4x4) while on the first island. The steering is a bit twitchy but they can take a lot of punishment and are practically impossible to flip over.

1.01am

I really need to find a better car. I have a terrible problem with wanting to drive everywhere at top speed, even in a clapped out old Buccaneer. The trouble with that is that the slightest tap of the handbrake sends you into a huge spin. Driving more sensibly is the key, but where's the fun in that?

Have opened up quite a few more characters who are offering missions now. My favourite so far is Little Jacob - a slightly unhinged Jamaican drug dealer. Nico's a great character as well though - possibly the best central character from the GTA series as he really has a story to tell.

Hope those of you who've been midnight shopping have got what you wanted... :-)

12.04am

Well, I made it up to six-star wanted level - and it was a bit easier than I expected to be honest. I got hold of an assault rifle and used it to take down hordes of police in a stand-off. The new targeting system is very slick in these situations. That got me up to four star - then the SWAT teams got involved. Finishing off a few of those quickly got me up to the top level.

Escaping was also surprisingly easy. Maybe it's because I'm still early in the game, but I was able to stay comfortably ahead of the cop cars even in an average people carrier. There were no stingers on the roads, no road blocks and no FBI that I saw. I suspect it's a learning curve thing and the chases will get tougher later in the game.

11.46pm

Nico can't handle his drink. Have just been to a bar and, when you leave, his legs go to jelly. Very amusing (though not for the girl Nico was trying to impress). Try to get in a car and your vision goes haywire - which makes it very difficult to evade the cops if you happen to knock into one on the way back.

11.07pm

There's one thing that really transforms this game beyond the levels of San Andreas - and it's so simple. It's the fact that you never lose your weaponry when you've been killed (so no need to go find a nurse girlfriend).

It totally opens up the game as you can go belting around the city without worrying about whether you're going to get taken out. They've also added an autosave after every completed mission, so the frustrations of going back several levels after copping it have been removed.

Getting taken out has become REALLY cool as well. As the final bullet finds you, the whole scene goes into black and white and slow-motion. Even the voices are slowed down - very cinematic.

I'm getting in with the local gangsters now - looks like Nico is about to become a serious player...

10.03pm

There is so much to see in this game that I've spent the last two hours just driving around exploring and watching the city unfold around me.

Driving is a blast - there's a ring road that goes around the area where you get started. I've been finding fast cars and hammering it round that. Get a clear run and you can get up to speeds that almost feel as if you're playing Burnout. There's a roundabout near the Schottler area which has an enormous ramp before it - I've been quite happy for some time just getting massive air of off that and causing chaos. Crashes are great fun too, with the car flying about all over the place when you (literally) hit traffic. This gets some great chat from Nico: "I'm glad this is not my car..."

Winding up the police is as entertaining as ever - and tricky to deal with. Even at two star level, there are suddenly five or six squad cars on the scene, which you have to outrun rapidly. I'm going to need some serious weaponry to get anywhere near six star level, but will give it a shot before the end of the session.

It's about time I got stuck into the missions seriously so I can open up some more areas. Keep posting and let me know if there's anything you want to know more about.