GTA missions in general are a pain. That you cannot just save the game whenever you want to is ridiculous game design. That and the sometimes quite hard missions coupled with shoddy controls drove me away from two or three titles in the series.

cqd mentioned that his PC system did not cost anything, as he had salvaged parts at hand. And indirectly that his PC cost about two grand. Well, then the notion that it is possible to build a gaming system for around four bennies seems to be a bit relative. An entry-level gaming system is not what he wanted, obviously.
What can easily be spent on a high-end gaming system is absolutely outrageous, not even taking into account the premium system vendors add on top, but the hardware people building it themselves have to afford.
Consoles are definitely dominant and PC gaming a good heap of dough more currently. Thankfully, the end result, the graphical fidelity a fast PC can offer, has nothing to do with what the console crowd has to deal with.