Game Time ID: Grand Theft Auto V

Note: It took me so long to write this, because I was waiting to see what GTA Online was all about. As of writing this I still have not had a chance to properly do that. For some reason I can't connect to other players with any regularity. I can't tell if it's because it's still horribly busted or if it's because my internet connection is terrible. I'll keep trying it out every so often, because it seems interesting. It just isn't fun by yourself. Especially when almost any of the missions require 2 people to play. With that said this will only be about the single player.

Starting with Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation 2 Rockstar essentially created the modern open world sandbox game. With each successive entry in the series it got increasingly crazy and impressive. San Andreas was the last in the PS2 trilogy and it's still to this day one of my favorite games. When they moved to the current generation of consoles with Grand Theft Auto IV they also went for a more realistic world. Not everyone was very receptive to it, but that's the direction they went down. With Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar kept the realism of IV, while injecting the humor and zaniness of the PS2 iterations.

Somehow Rockstar always outdoes themselves with this franchise and I promise you that Grand Theft Auto V is no different. Initially I was expecting it to be earth shattering and filled with new ideas to reinvigorate the genre. That's what I thought I wanted. Instead what I got was what I essentially see as the apex of open world gaming. Rockstar has in my opinion perfected the formula for open world games and I don't know where they can really go from here. All I know is that GTA V was one hell of a game.

Epic Crime Saga

Unlike previous entries in the franchise GTA V has you take control of not one, but three main characters. When described it sounded like you would be able to seamlessly switch between any of the three characters at any time and they would be going about their regular everyday lives. In reality it doesn't work exactly like that, but it's close enough. Using the right stick you can switch to the character of your choosing. The camera zooms out above the city and within ten seconds it zooms back in onto your newly selected character. They'll be doing something random. They're all pre-coded events, but they give the illusion that the characters are living out their everyday lives when you're not using them. It's a really cool effect.

You take on the roles of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. Michael is a middle aged man who lives what most would consider a life of luxury. He has retired from bank robbing, but longs to have that same kind of excitement in his life again. Franklin is young hood who wants to get into some legitimate crime and with the help of Michael he's able to do that. Last but not least there's Trevor and he's quite literally a psychopath. He used to run jobs with Michael before their whole operation was put to rest. The story revolves around these three characters and their series of elaborate heists. 

You get to know Trevor, Franklin, and Michael very well by the end of the game,

These three unlikely friends are amazing characters. They may be caricatures, but they're extremely well realized caricatures. I often find that when games try to tell this kind of story they fall flat. However, that's never been the case in the GTA games for me. I think that the high quality of the voice acting is one of the major factors that sets this franchise apart from so many others. You'll meet all kinds of characters throughout the game and very few of them even give sub-par performances. The story really drags you in and it's hard not to keep going from mission to mission just to see what's going to happen next. It's an epic crime saga that's truly exhilarating to experience. It has everything you'd want in a crime story. 

It also helps that the amount of detail in the game is unparalleled. The world is gigantic and every single nook and cranny of it is filled with minute details. There's a scene early on in the game where you go to a hackers house. You can walk all around inside and see readable papers lining the walls, anime figures, computer screens filled with information, and food littered all over the floor. It's all so intricately placed and it's only in the game for a scarce five minutes. I don't know if you can every go back inside the house, but regardless it's filled with a ridiculous amount of detail for such a short scene. That kind of thing happens all the time as well, it's not just that one scene.  

Look at the detail in that city!

With Rockstar's track record they can take as long as they need to make a game. They did take an awfully long time with GTA V, but you can actually see it. It's not like with most games where it's apparent that they were just throwing money at it to try and make the game better. They created a living breathing world heavily based off of California. Specifically the city of Los Santos is based off of Los Angeles. I've seen people claim that there are tons of landmarks, even tiny local restaurants in the game, which is a level of detail that most games just don't have. Hell, the venue for E3 is even accurately portrayed. What other games have full blown fake movies and TV shows you can watch? How about a fully featured fake internet that you can browse? The amount of content in the game is absolute madness. 

Open World Mayhem

One of the major issues with the GTA games in the past has been the gameplay itself. GTA games consist of two main activities, driving and shooting. Driving has always been fine, but in GTA IV they changed the handling to be closer to real life. In the end everything handled like an unwieldy boat and it was generally very unsatisfying. With GTA V the handling is much closer to what it was during the PS2 iterations of the franchise. It has a very arcade-like feel. You can get up to speed very quickly and the handling is loose, which makes it very easy to take sharp turns. 

Driving still takes up a majority of your time in GTA V. You'll have to drive to a mission marker, where you'll be given a mission and sent to drive somewhere else. More often than not you'll be sent to a location to shoot some guys. When you're done you'll then have to drive back. This didn't bother me so much, because I enjoyed the driving in the game. I know that some people do not though and it can get to be a bit tedious when missions are far away. Sometimes it can take upwards of ten minutes to reach your destination. In that case you can forgo driving yourself altogether and take a cab to your destination. It's not quite as beneficial though, because you won't be gaining any driving stat points.

You do a lot of driving, but the handling makes it fun.

Just like in San Andreas you can level up your stats in GTA V. You may not have to worry about getting fat, but you can increase your skill at driving, shooting, and many other things. For example the more you drive the better your driving skill will be. Some characters are innately better at things than others are. For example Franklin is good at driving, so he will automatically be able to handle cars much better than Trevor can. To add a little bit more flavor to each character they have a special ability to complement their innate skill set. Franklin can slow down time while driving in order to make hair-pin turns, Michael can go into a bullet-time state in order to take down enemies, and Trevor goes into a rage state where he takes almost no damage. They're not game breaking, but the abilities are nice to have in a pinch and help differentiate the characters a bit.

The shooting mechanics have been tweaked in a way that makes the act of killing enemies trivial. Rockstar apparently got the memo that their combat wasn't exactly the greatest. Previously you could target an enemy and switch to other targets with the push of a button. You had to be facing the enemy though. In GTA V you can just push the button to target and your reticle will automatically snap to the nearest enemy. If you flick the stick in the direction of another enemy it will move to auto target that enemy instead. This makes it super easy to pop out of cover and mow down every enemy in your path with little to no effort. It's not the most satisfying system, but it takes away a great deal of the frustration from previous iterations of the franchise. You can also free aim if you like, which works fairly well, but isn't anywhere near as efficient. I probably would have used free aim if I wasn't trying to complete combat scenarios as quickly as possible to see the next story beat. Plus you go down pretty easy, so I didn't find myself aiming for very long.

The auto aiming makes it very easy to take down helicopters.

While it is true that most missions just involve you driving and shooting GTA V is actually good about mission variety. Moreso than in past games you're sent to do things other than shoot someone in the face. An early mission has you buying clothes so you can sneak into the San Andreas equivalent of FaceBook to plant a bomb in their new prototype phone. One mission, which I found to be quite disturbing has Trevor torturing a suspected terrorist. You're given a choice of what torture device to use and then you have to perform button prompts to actually do the torturing. It did an excellent job of making me feel super uncomfortable. One of my personal favorites had me repelling down a building in order to kidnap someone.

The missions that truly shine in GTA V though are the heists. Apparently Rockstar heard that everyone really liked the bank heist in GTA IV, so they made a whole game based around large heists just like that one. At first you'll be tasked to stake out the area so that you can formulate a plan. Once you have all the information the game draws it all out on a whiteboard and makes you choose one of two ways to go about the heist. You'll get the opportunity to pick crew members you think will be able to help you out. Each crew member has their own unique stats and will take different shares of the money you get from the heist. If the crew members live through the heist their stats will increase, or they'll die on the job and be gone for good. 

The heists are easily the best missions in the game.

When you select how you're going to go about the heist you'll be sent to collect the supplies needed. The heists are probably the best part of the game, which makes it a shame that there are so few of them in it. During a job there's a sense of tension unlike anything I've felt in a video game before. They're very exciting, because you took the time to get everything ready and can see it all play out. Supposedly GTA online will have heists at some point, so maybe I can get my fix there when the time comes.

Outside of combat and driving there are many activities you can take part in. The sad part is that I didn't really take place in all that many of them. You can dive for treasure in a submarine, golf, do yoga, run triathlons, base jump, and a whole slew of other side activities. The only one that I did end up playing was tennis, just because I had to see what it was like. Surprisingly it was actually a serviceable mini-game, but not anything to write home about. It's cool that the world is populated with all of these things to do, but there's really no incentive to do them. They're just there to fill up space and give you something to do outside of the missions. I don't know that I'd say content just for the sake of having content is the best thing in the world.

Where Can They Go From Here?

It's hard for me to imagine where the Grand Theft Auto franchise can go from here. Rockstar created so many excellent characters and a compelling story. On top of that they created a world so rich in detail that I don't even have the time or wherewithal to see it all. They've taken everything they've learned since GTA 3 and laid it all out there. The level of realism they've reached is both technically impressive and somewhat scary at the same time. 

I don't really know that I want another Grand Theft Auto game after this one. I'm sure that if they release another one I'll jump all over it though. It just seems like at this point there's nowhere for them to go but down. I've seen a fair amount of people who disagree with this sentiment, but the internet is full of complainers. 

Grand Theft Auto V is undoubtedly one of the best games of this console generation. If you haven't played it you definitely should. The gameplay isn't the most compelling out there, but it's well worth putting up with in order to experience the world class characters and writing.

     -Manny