Grand Theft Auto V - Rockstar Games

 

there's one problem that open-world games usually struggle to overcome it's the tension between the stories that the writers are trying to tell and the story you create yourself within its systems and its world what makes Grand Theft Auto 5 such an outstanding achievement is that it accommodates both masterfully allowing neither to undermine the other it gives you tremendous freedom to explore an extraordinarily well realized world and tells a story that's gripping thrilling and dark II comic in nearly every way it is a leap forward in sophistication for the series he sits on his ass all day smoking dope and jerking off while he plays that boo game gta5 is also an intelligent and sharp-tongued contemporary satire taking aim at post economic crisis America and relentlessly ripping into its materialism superficiality corruption and hypocrisy a shootin porno here they shoot porno all over town mom rented our house to them last summer if JC a four is a targeted assassination of the American dream GTA 5 takes aim at the modern American reality it rips into the Millennial Generation celebrities the far right the far left the middle-class the media nothing is safe including modern video games they're always the attention to detail that goes into making its enormous world feel alive and believable is also what makes its a tire so biting that must feel good what a prog patriot you are at the same time it's immediately noticeable that every aspects of grand theft auto v s fundamental design has been greatly improved over gta4 the cover system is more reliable the auto aim less touchy cars handle less like their tires are made of butter though they're exaggerated handling still leaves plenty of room for spectacular wipeouts Grand Theft Auto 5s plots happily operates at the boundaries of plausibility but it's three main characters of what keep it relatable as just lost in an 80s movie fantasy yeah Cassie you spend a lot of time near the well written and acted interplay between them provides the story's biggest laughs and this most affecting moments and the way that their relationships with one another developed gives the narrative its power Michael is a retired con man in his 40s who settled down in a Vinewood Hills mansion with a family that pretty much hates him ma was right about you you don't know anything you can't help Franklin is a young man from downtown Los Santos who laments the gangbanger stereotype even as he's reluctantly seduced by the prospects of a bigger score so you giving me a lecture by not being a good enough gangbang who is bad then hello Missy well then there's Trevor oh look this is all I got all right I had a tough upbringing my daddy was not nice to me oh hey Trevor Trevor feels like a bit of a gets out of jail free card for Rockstar providing an outlet for all the preposterous antics and murderous behavior I found his violence insanity little overblown and Tyrus of it first but then his over-the-top missions become some of Grand Theft Auto 5s highlights importantly switching between the characters is a brilliant way of accommodating both serious storytelling and wanton mayhem that alleviates some of the narrative inconsistency that troubled Grand Theft Auto 4 it's effective even off mission I find myself acting like a midlife crisis guide with anger issues as Michael a thrill-seeker is Franklin and a maniac as Trevor each also has a special ability like Franklin's slow-motion driving which gives them a unique touch if Grand Theft Auto 4 is Liberty City felt like a living City san andreas feels like a living world and it contains a bewildering multiplicity of things to do the missions are an able guide to both san andreas locations and its activities touring you around the map and whetting your appetite for independent exploration it pushes the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 further than it has any right to and it looks incredible the biggest jump in quality since grand theft auto 4 is the character animation but the world is also much more detailed and populous san andreas is extraordinary sense of place is heightened by the fact that so much of it isn't on the map there's such a lot going on that it's easy to find things organically without the need to spend your life following a mission market I once stole a passenger jet from the airport for the hell of it then parachuted onto the top of the tallest building in Los Santos I bought an expensive mountain bike and cycled around in the hills enjoying the view the music selection is also typically excellent leading to many of those serendipitous moments where you're driving along and the perfect song comes on the radio these little moments can be captured on your phone camera which brilliantly can also take selfies the price we pay for all of this is occasional framerate dips and texture coffin which I find became more prominent the longer I played but never significantly detracted from my experience for such a gigantic and flexible world it's also remarkably bug free I encountered just three minor ones in the 35 hours I spent on my first playthrough the story that Grand Theft Auto 5 tells through its missions takes full advantage of all this variety beyond the simple joys of driving and shooting the days of drive here find this guy shoot this guy are behind us you never know what you're going to end up doing even missions that would otherwise be formulaic are imbued with novelty and excitements by the potential to play them from 3 different viewpoints in this shootout Trevor's firing RPGs from a rooftop as Michael and Franklin flank the enemy on the ground and that long last rockstar has finally slain one of GTA's most persistent demons mission checkpointing ensuring that you'll never have to do a long tedious drive six times if you repeatedly fail a mission ever again it's the heists multistage huge scale events that serve as the story's climactic peaks the show Grand Theft Auto 5 at its most ambitious and accomplished liars usually each offers a choice between a more involved stealthy approach and a guns blazing option that will be less tense but more explosively chaotic all of GTA 5 s missions are replayable at any time letting you relive favorite moments or try out another approach sometimes your own approach won't be the way that rockstars designers expected and though grand theft auto 5 is usually very good at bending around you when that happens there were one or two occasions where it wasn't prepared for my personal brand of chaos most of the time the scripting is good enough to be invisible but when it's not you really notice it if only because it's otherwise so seamless it's worth mentioning that when it comes to sex drugs GTA 5 pushes boundaries much further than ever before you shouldn't me know if the morality police were worried about hot coffee there's a lot here that will provoke moral hysteria it's deliciously subversive and firmly tongue-in-cheek but once or twice it pushes the boundaries of taste - there's one particular scene a torture scene in which you have no choice but to participate that I found so troubling I had difficulty playing it even couched an obvious criticism of the US government's recourse to torture post 9/11 it's a shocking moment that will attract justified controversy some other stuff like the ever-present prostitution and extensive strip club minigames feel like it's just there because it can be rather than because it has anything to say but there's nothing in San Andreas that doesn't serve rockstars purpose in creating an exaggerated projection of America that suffused with crime violence and sleaze Grand Theft Auto 5 is not only a preposterous ly enjoyable video game but also an intelligent wickedly comic and bitingly relevant commentary on contemporary America it represents the refinements of everything that GTA 4 brought to the table five years ago it's technically more accomplished in every conceivable way but it's also tremendously ambitious in its own right no other world and video games comes close to this in size or scope and there is sharp intelligence behind its sense of humor and gift for mayhem it tells a compelling unpredictable and provocative story without ever letting it get in the way of your own self-directed adventures through San Andreas it's as one of the very best video games ever made for more on grand theft auto 5.