Well well. I'm gonna write something quick, just to debunk some of the false "gameplay impressions".
I played the game for 40 min at least.
The framerate DOES suck. It's GTA damnit. It's not surprising. It does suck, but damn is the city big! Seriously, if you thought Vice City was big, wait until you see Los Santos. I didn't even go to the country side yet. The framerate sucks, but the most important thing, it doesn't change the gameplay at all. Yeah, you get some slowdown, but they last 2 sec max (well, if it's not a big crash a-la-Burnout 3), and then you're up to 27.5 FPS again. A stable 27.5 FPS.
About the graphics : It looks a LOT better than Vice City. Seriously, there is so much variety in Los Santos building and texture wise, it's crazy. Dust and blur effects are awesome, even if they are over-used nowadays.
Gameplay wise, the aiming system is a LOT better, you can do headshots and things like that. The shovel rocks. There's like a ragdoll physics, even though it's not really rag doll. It's just great. One cool thing, people just don't jump on your car if you hit them, but will try to hang on your car. Awesome, seriously. The BMX is cool, though a little useless (I don't know how to do tricks, well if you can anyway.)
As for "streaming problems" with an old PS2, I have an old PS2, don't take care of it much, and didn't see any problems yet. Yeah, there are pop-ups, and sometimes the PS2 make some strange noise, but who cares, you've got Kiss playing on the radio and you're driving in an awesome city. Really.
So far, the game is awesome. Didn't do a lot of missions, but hanging around is so much fun.
