I'm sucking in the early game -- what missions should I undertake?

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

My personal recommendation would be to ignore the activities early on and focus on the Saints Book activities.

These are split into two categories; car thefts and assassinations. Each have a reasonable respect value built in meaning that they're great for building respect in the early part of the game, and they give you practice in navigating the city and doing things to get results. The cars are pretty straightforward in that you just have to steal them, and drive them back to a given location. You're going to be attacked every step of the way, but just keep driving and most times you'll make it. If you get into trouble with one, either try it again or try an easier one as you build your skill. The important point is that the activity has almost nothing to do with respect level, it's all about the car.

The assassinations are also useful because they involve killing one (possibly 2 or 3) people, then the notoriety resets (more or less). These require you do do something, like make a call, buy something, steal something, rob a store, etc. to draw out the target, but once you do you can kill them in short order and get out of there. This also builds up your respect levels without needing much to begin with.

Just remember that these activities get added to as you progress through the storyline so check back after you've got Kinzie and the crew, and also after you meet Mayor Reynolds to see what else is required of you at that point.

In the interim however, they're great tasks to help you to get to know the city and build up your respect in the process.