IDK. I've heard this argument before. I feel that in that case, there should be more of a dynamic city, where driving around rewards/challenges you somehow, instead of just forcing the slow driving on you. Furthermore:
-The game likes to save at times where if you somehow fail or encounter a mission stopping bug (Happened to me a few times) you have to do the driving all over again.
-The compass doesn't help much since the city has 3 islands you have to drive around, and many of the area look similar, forcing you to use that semi-transparent map, making it so that most of the time you are just watching a yellow arrow move around.
-You generally take the same routes, making it so you see the same areas over and over.
-Cars are very slow, speed limit makes them slower, trying to speed and get there faster usually results in either getting stopped for tickets (annoyingly slow animation) or busted (start over). Unless you have a vehicle with decent speed acceleration (Unlikely), even then, the cops in this are much harder to avoid. (in other cases I'd see this as a positive, but not in cases where you are driving in an unchallenging environment otherwise)
-I can go out and take a drive like this whenever IRL. Maybe not in a 30's motif, but still.
There should have been an option for people to fast travel, and then rewards for actually driving from point A to Point B. I like exploration however, so making me have to drive someplace the first time is fine by me mostly.
Purposefully keeping players from regular stimulation in a game is pointless. There is better ways of setting a mood, and some moods aren't worth it anyway.
But yeah, oddly enough even with this particular set of complaints (really its just 1 broken down into smaller pieces) I stand by the game as very well done and fun to play.