Just don't expect as much to do as in Vice City or San Andreas.
Overall, if you like either driving games or open-world games, definitely get this one.
However, you can put in a cheat to open all levels, do the next one, and progress from there. Some missions are extremely hard, and you might give up. Between the presentation, story, graphics, missions, and the exotic Nice and Istanbul cities, this is definitely a game you remember and would want to replay. The presentation is pretty amazing-cut scenes, dialogue, cities, graphics (almost PS3 level), damage to cars. They don't drive like rally cars on ice anymore, like in Driver 1 and 2, but you can still drift and it's pretty fun, especially in chases. Most are awesome to play and pretty unforgetable-sneak into a warehouse, load cargo with a crane onto a semi, and drive a semi with the trailer through twisty mountain roads in Nice, ramming through cop roadblocks, or chasing a sports car at top speed through one lane Istanbul alleys, drifting every corner. Most driving ones last 10 minutes or so as opposed to 2-3 minutes for GTA, so you do a lot. The missions are really fun and the variety is great. The gameplay in the main missions is awesome. You would want to drive around just to explore, but there is still nothing to do in the cities. This is a shame, because the cities are awesome-exotic, realistic, detailed, with narrow streets great for high-speed chases, hairpin turns, trams, railroad tracks. This is the only weakness-they are no side-missions and nothing to do in the cities outside the missions. You have the story where you do missions one after another and separate free roam mode. It's a linear open-world game, like Mafia, The Getaway, and True Crime, only this game is much better than those. I am shocked it got such low reviews from game sites-I think it's just groupthink or something.