I'm not much of a FPS player generally, and have never gotten very far into the GTAs, so I'm a bit of an all-round newb, but I like the flavour and fun of SRIII. I'm finding it frustrating in the early game, though (I've finished all the sequenced initial meetings, up to and past the penthouse, and now I've got a phone and am in the sandbox).
I thought "Gang Activity" might be fun thing to tackle, but I routinely get swarmed and stomped in short order. What are the good early sandbox missions to take on?
Best Answer
Mayhem, Heli Assault, Guardian Angel, and Trafficking are all available fairly early, after you've completed just a few of the missions that come up in your phone. In fact, the phone will send you on another instance of those very missions as an introduction. Of those, I found Heli Assault and Guardian Angel to be the easiest. The missions I listed all have fixed weapons loadouts, so you don't need to worry about whether you've acquired the right weapons for the job: the weapons that the missions give you are the only weapons you'll get. (Admittedly, upgrading your weapons and your abilities will make the missions easier, but the early missions are perfectly doable without upgrading.)
The big key to surviving missions is not to get bogged down in a fight if you can avoid it: once you've annoyed a gang or the cops, they'll keep showing up and trying to kill you until you end the mission (if you're in a mission), start a mission (if you're not in a mission), enter a building you own, or flee the scene and shake off the pursuers for quite some time.
In all situations, if you're getting overwhelmed, hop in a car and drive off while your health regenerates. You won't be surrounded anymore, you'll be healing, and if you're low on ammo, you can drive straight to a gun shop to stock up. If it's a Gang Activity mission (or something else that requires you to stay in an area), then try to hide behind an obstacle or building while you heal. Except for Gang Activity, you never need to finish a street fight: just do what you came to do, kill anyone who gets in your way too much, and move on. (And even in Gang Activity, you only need to kill the targets, not the random schmoes who show up to shoot you.)
I found the early Gang Activity missions easiest by just running over most of the gang members and mopping up the last few on foot, but that will depend on the layout of the area and how quickly you can run people over before reinforcements show up. Grenades can take out concentrated groups, and rocket launchers make Gang Activity downright trivial.