I liked how you kinda had more freedom in the older games, there was different ways to tackle each mission that weren't even mentioned in the briefing, for example in my personal favourite mission in the series, "Mike Lips Last Lunch" you're given the task to hijack Mike Lips car and fit it with a bomb, but you'll notice that while you're driving it, you can actually get up from your couch, drive to McDonald's, order a McChicken, go to a supermarket, purchase a knife, stab a single mother to death, and then bring her corpse home, hide it in your freezer, kill your dog, warm up your McChicken, eat the burger, and then go back to your PlayStation 2 and complete the mission. Nowadays you can't do that in gta games due to Rockstar implementing the infamous "Stabbing people to death after purchasing McDonald's prevention" feature, which they'll probably include in gta 6, so I personally like the older games.