Pros: Only $20 if you want to see a gaming travesty
Cons: Terrible graphics, bad voice acting, and a confused plot
The bottom line: This game isn't worth your time. It's almost an exact replica of a necessarily crippled and obviously hurried game that was intended for play on a portable system only.
I am a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, and I loved the original version of this game when it first came out for the PS2. I don't own a Playstation Portable, so it was welcome news to hear that the GTA game they had released would be available for the PS2 as well. However, on playing this game, I am extremely disappointed at the lack of thought and effort that went into this game.

The Game

Once again, you play as Tony Cipriani in the late 1990s, the man who took over all of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto 3. However, for some reason when you arrive back in town, you have no authority, and you have to fight your way back up through the ranks. Not only does this not make sense, but it takes the most interesting aspect away from the game - what do you do when you're already the mob boss of a town? So you fight your way through the ranks, completing missions and the standard sidequests, but with a smaller map and less attention to detail than any previous Grand Theft Auto game. Yippee.

Gameplay

The premise of the game is that you run around freely in a large area in a 3rd person view, and you have the options of rudimentary fighting, shooting, and driving. The controls are almost identical to the other GTA games - triangle button is the 'steal car' button (my personal favorite), one joystick moves and the other has free camera rotation, and you can target enemies with the triggers. A nice addition is that you can aim at various parts on an enemy's body once you are locked on, for disabling rather than klling them. You have a variety of weapons available - guns, molotovs, grenades, rocket launchers, flamethrowers. Everything a growing boy needs.

Graphics

This game looks like it should be released for the Super Nintendo. Everything is blocky - the faces have almost no features, the cars look like boxes, and everything has taken a step backwards in progress from San Andreas to this game. I understand that it's set in a different time, but Rockstar Games (the production company) obviously has the technology to improve on this game, they just didn't bother. The maps look very similar to the original game, thus making it essentially a repeat of GTA 3 but with additional missions. Not much you couldn't guess at here.

Sound

I typically enjoy the voice acting in these games, especially the stereotypical Italian mobster gab and random shouts from people on the street. But the voice acting in this game is so bad that it's grating to listen to. The main character sounds flat and identical to everyone else, who all sound like they were voiced by some late-teenager with no acting talent. Everything sounds like a hokey home movie, and it makes sitting through cutscenes painful.

The music in the game is fairly lackluster. Unlike in the other PS2 GTA games, the music does not contain a wide variety of licensed famous songs beyond some rap mixed by DJ Clue - much of it was custom written, and just didn't do it for me. The old games had up to 8 CDs worth of music on them, but that's something else that is lacking in this game.

Replay value

If Grand Theft Auto 3 had replay value, then don't bother playing this game. It will ruin the good memories and replace them with contempt for a company that put forth zero effort to rush into distribution another opportunity to squeeze some cash from the consumer. San Andreas was a fantastic game, and unless you absolutely have to see what they put in this game in terms of plot extension - and I stress here that it is not a good plot to begin with - then don't bother with this game once, let alone multiple times.

Overall

Thankfully, this game will only cost you $20 if you can't live without it. But the game's overall unpolished feel, both in looks and sounds, just detracts from my experience in this series - constantly exceeding my expectations. Don't let this game mar your image of Rockstar or the GTA series - just avoid it.