Bit late chiming in on this one but I've just played through one run of SR2 and loved it. Not in the least because Tynesha (what I call my lead) blasted half the freaking city apart, killing gang members left, right and centre before finishing with a cliched but enjoyable boss fight.

And it is better than GTA 4 for exactly the reason Yahtzee has stated: fun. I got progressively bored of the GTA series after Vice City and trying the Stories sagas for PSP didn't enthrall me too much either. GTA4 is stodgy by comparison to SR2 but I would argue that it isn't competing with GTA4 but something between GTA 2 & 3.

I loved being able to customise my character (my first being a blue-hair fox who fit nicely into the world and the next a hardened cockney bastard who still makes me laugh as he plays off against the US cast (Mreow, Eliza Dushku)), the missions have plenty of black humour in them, the action sequences are pretty well scripted out...

... it sucked me in. When Tynesha tackled Merrow in his tattoo parlour and bricked the musician friend to filleting the Ronin's leader on a boat, I was drawn into the world more so than boring Niko. Which drew me back to playing the earlier GTA series and what I wanted most to happen with them: put myself in the game. Putting the pieces of my character together made me feel like I was more than just the voice in their head telling them to go left or right.

Then there's the whole gang ideal. Part of what gnawed at me whilst playing GTA installments was that you were a solo master criminal, doing all the tasks yourself. SR2 on the other hand allows you to recruit helpers and has fellow gang members patrolling the streets of neighbourhoods you capture. Brilliant. What good is being a crimelord if you don't have a few lackeys to help you out? Multiplayer with a co-op mode too? Fantastic!

And I'd actually like to thank Yahtzee for being such a discerning gamer. Were it not for his rev... appraisal of SR2, I might not have bought it.