GTA V Review

GTA V Review

GTA V is the latest part of the popular Grand Theft Auto series which takes place in a modern rendition of the game’s old location San Andreas, from the game’s previous incarnation Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. GTA V puts you in the role of three characters and allows you free reign, for the most part, to switch between any of them. With these three characters you are free to do just about whatever you want to with plenty of activities like Tennis and Yoga and Golf as well as races and much much more. The game does a lot of things very well and provides an overall enjoyable and addicting experience but there are some parts that fell flat with me. So on that note let’s drive further into my likes and dislikes of this potential Game of the Year, GTA V.

Likes

Loads of Customization (Stats, weapons and Cars)

One thing I enjoyed alot about the last Grand Theft Auto game that took us to San Andreas was that as you played and did certain things CJ’s abilities reflected that and got better over time and Rockstar has brought that back to all three of the characters in this game. As you shoot, drive, fly or sprint your way through the city of San Andreas you will see that character’s respective abilities increase. While there isn’t the drastic change in appearances that CJ would get from eating loads of Cluckin Bell of Burger Shot or going to the gym every day it is still good to feel like you are seeing some improvement in the characters’ abilities as you yourself get use to the game more and more especially since these stats increases are all permanent increases. The characters aren’t the only ones that can be improved though, the ability to fully trick out your vehicle has returned as well. GTA V’s vehicle customization allows you to equip your vehicle with armor, bullet proof tires, a turbo engine and much more. Weapons also have the chance to be outfitted to the player’s preference.

Fun Missions

What would Grand Theft Auto be without crazy, but fun missions. You’ll see some old classics from the other games (even alluded to in the post mission challenges) and you’ll also have plenty of new and more insane missions throughout the game as well, including (my favorite part of the game) a variety of heist missions. While most of it is planning the approach and picking a crew of ai to assist you with the score it is still pretty exciting and fun when you get to do the job and try to make off with the reward and try different approaches to the various heists.

Special Character Abilities

Another new part of the game is the unique abilities each character has. Franklin’s is my favorite, as I’m not the greatest driver in the game, it allows you to have more precise control over any vehicle you are driving and slows down time around you allowing to make some close last second maneuvers around police barricades or just the crowded Los Santos traffic. I also used Franklin’s ability to shoot out tires, aim at driver’s or plant bombs during chase missions.

Much much more.

Grand Theft Auto V has plenty of amazing and fun features to provide for new and old players. There are plenty of ways to make money in the game, from buying property (most had mini games or side missions involved in them), stock trading, or street racing, there are plenty of things for anybody and everybody to enjoy.

Dislikes:

Vehicle handling

Now as I said before I’m not the best driver in Grand Theft Auto (I like to drive on the wrong side of the road and take corners fast), but I think it only goes so far. Honestly for me most times, especially with some of the vehicles at the beginning I felt like I was driving on ice the cars were sliding around so much. This hurt me a lot during some of the chases. Another vehicle related issue I have is that even though the game prides itself on being somewhat realistic (at the very least about it’s driving) my character still refuses to wear a damn seat belt. Most of my deaths in this game were vehicle related more often than not from impacting a car with my car (front or back) and having my character rocket out of the seat and to their instant death.

No ability to plan heist outside of the main mission.

One of the things I was looking forward to in playing both GTA V and GTA Online was the ability to plan my own heist on a location. While you do get to do that in the game after completing it I was hoping to be able to pick my own location or even just a common location to hit but sadly if that feature is in there I have yet to discover it and it was just a little disappointing for me. Guess I’ll have to wait till Online comes to get my robbery fix but on that same note it does seem a bit weird to me that the accomplices level up if you are just going to use them on the same jobs through the replay missions. (oh look at that segue cause my next point is)

Scoring Missions - (Shut up if you didn’t like the segue I thought it was good, and if you did.... thank you)

Now I understand that this adds a bit of replayability to missions as people will want to do more and try to get gold on them all but it still just feels a bit ‘not Grand Theft Auto’ to me to score my completion of the mission. Now I say score but really it’s just there are a series of challenges for each mission, some equate to driving the cars without a scratch (hate those) and some are just as simple as buying a certain item or number of headshots or even just doing things a certain way (though if there is a hint to these beforehand or a way to look at them before the mission I just didn’t see them). So while i personally just saw this as a way for people to replay other missions aside from the heists I guess some people will enjoy going through them all again and trying different things.

Overall Opinions

Grand Theft Auto V is an amazing sandbox game and as my friends and I were discussing before we do think it is the best Grand Theft Auto game yet. Is there room for some improvements, yes but overall this is a very strong game and is worth checking out if you are interested in a good time. The characters are funny, the story is crazy and location is huge and full of things to do. So if you haven’t picked up Grand Theft Auto V yet (and why wouldn’t you) then I’d highly recommend doing so, I’d give it a 5 out of 5.

Endnotes

So I’m honestly considering moving away from a (and I use the term lightly) ‘review’ platform and more so on just giving my own opinions of the game and what I thought of it. I may still give it a number score at the end in terms of how much I enjoyed it but nothing explicitly judging the game’s merit or anything like that just my experience playing and how I liked it. Let me know what you think in the comments and be on the lookout for a possible GTA online review when that comes out and I think the next game I plan on playing is going to be Beyond Two Souls for the Playstation so be on the lookout for that and more coming soon.