Grand Theft Auto 5 is receiving a lot of hype, game of the year, game of the generation, I've actually said both myself prior to playing the game. Rockstar's games always have a high production value and are always, highly rated, but are they as good as people make them out to be? I thought Grand Theft Auto 4 was a great game, and Grand Theft Auto 5 is no different. By no different though, not only do I mean that it's a great game, but I also mean that Grand Theft Auto 5 is the exact same game, just a different area, different characters, and a few changes to the overall mechanics and graphics.
You control three characters this time around, Michael, Trevor, and Franklin. The writing is good between all three characters, and even though you're playing as some bad guys, these people are still likeable, or atleast as much as someone could like a psycopath meth dealer. I'm sure a lot of people thought Trevor would be the best character, but after playing the game, my opinion is that Franklin is. Franklin as a main character is the one that most people will be able to identify with the most, whether you're more like his friends and family or if you're closer to being like him, whether you're from the hood or not. He's the kind of character who ends up going out of his way to help friends and family, being dragged into situations from a friend who's trying to make money but has bad connections, or friends and family that feel like you owe them something because you've known each other for so long. Michael is a family man who's family pisses him off on a regular basis and everything that happens always seems to go wrong, except when he's pulling off some sort of theft. Trevor, while not my favorite, is still a great character. He's a psycopath who craves destruction and you never know what he'll do next, but despite his appearance he's pretty smart. He's modeled similarly after one of my favorite characters in movies or television, Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell from Prison Break.
There are several gameplay elements and while they're not the best, everything Grand Theft Auto 5 does, it does well, even though each element of gameplay has been better in other open world games. While it does everything well, everything is also pulled straight from Grand Theft Auto 4. The targetting system is a little bit more tighter and still retains the same auto aim mechanic originally found in Scarface the World is Yours and later used in Grand Theft Auto 4. The driving, which many people disliked the heavy somewhat realistic style of Grand Theft Auto 4, has been toned down and it's halfway between how the old titles controlled and how Grand Theft Auto 4 controls, so slightly arcade like but no taking perfect turns going 100. Helicopters control worse than they did in the predecessor while other aircraft control very well. The minimap is far worse in this game than any other though, as they gave it a sort of 3D look like a traditional GPS. The minimap GPS seems to calculate slower than your driving and it's angled forward in 3D so you look further back than you are, so when driving you'll have to start counting the roads when you come close to make sure you take the correct turn instead of relying on the map to be completely accurate. There's also the inability to hail a taxi, or if there is, the game doesn't tell you how to do so and I haven't found out.
The world in Grand Theft Auto 5 is once again San Andreas so no longer are you contained to a city, but also a mountainous countryside alongside rivers and desert. Asphalt roads and dirt roads around the mountainside, biking trails, etc. You can sky dive, hunt, race, dive and explore underwater, go to the shooting range or pilot's lessons, play darts, or play tennis for anything on the side that's not a mission. However a lot has been downgraded from what has been in past games. Don't expect hunting is going to be similar to Red Dead Redemption, as while there are animals out in the wilderness, when you shoot them you get nothing for it and you can't skin their hides, but rather hunting is an activity where you'll find where the animals are at and kill them without them becoming aware. While the world is large and well developed, after you're done with the game though, it gets just as boring as it does in any other game. Unless you're one of the few who don't care about driving or taking a helicopter to the top of a mountain and repeatedly drive or jump off the edge, then the game is going to becompletely dead to you when all missions are completed.
Heists were the main attraction to Grand Theft Auto 5, but that's not all the game had to offer. There's a large variety of mission types with over 60+ main missions with a number of other side missions. Main missions ranged from prepping to heists, acquiring vehicles and bringing them to specific locations, to more unique missions such as shooting a plane down with a high tech sniper rifle out of the back of a van. The problem with some of these missions is that they tend to be trial and error, because you're not immediately given a clue on what to do, while story wise it sounds as if you're required to do something else, so you usually fail at one point during the mission because you don't do exactly what you're supposed to. A lot of the time this isn't the case, but sometimes it is and it really just slows the pace of the game down, especially when you're given a rating that is no longer going to be gold because something with the game rather than you as a player. I've given other examples elsewhere, but an example I'll use here is after I've tailed a character for awhile and he gets out of his vehicle, the one character with me says "get acquanted with our new friend" so I walked right up to the guy and failed the mission since I wasn't supposed to be seen, yet from the dialogue it doesn't sound like that.
The game runs on the same Rage engine that Rockstar has used for their previous titles, and graphically it's mostly the same as Grand Theft Auto 4, but is also noticeably better. The draw distance has increased, there's a very large amount of traffic and people, better textures, and some of the best lighting I've seen this gen. Pop in is very rare when you're on the ground, whether walking or driving, flying however, the pop in is noticeable as you'll see cars disappearing while shadows and foliage pop into view when you become closer to objects.
Grand Theft Auto almost always has a great soundtrack. While Liberty City Stories had the worst, Grand Theft Auto 5 isn't too far behind it. If it weren't for the talk shows, there wouldn't be too much music worth listening to in this game. With as big of a budget as they had for this game, it'd have been nice if they put more music in the game that was good. It's not like there wasn't any music that was good, just too much that was average or that I didn't like.
Grand Theft Auto 5 was a great game that employed many different gameplay styles that all worked well with one another, with a large variety of good missions, in a beautiful large open world.
Gameplay-8
Story/Presentation-9
Graphics/Sound-10
Balance-9
Overall-9
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This isn't part of the review itself, but I do want to point out the differences between GTA5 and GTA4. There are many people out there that are praising GTA5 when these same people bashed GTA4 for having less content, not counting online to either game or the DLC that GTA4 has released later.
~GTA4 and GTA5 have around the same completion time completing all main and side missions, though I'll list rampages and side missions below as they're more like activities.
-GTA5 has target practice and flight school.
-GTA5 has random missions where you either retrieve someones car, wallet, or drive someone somewhere(you can gain stuff from this though, like a person to hire on heist missions.)
-GTA5 has stunt jumps, 50 packages, and 50 aliens parts to collect.
-GTA5 has taxi missions.
-GTA5 has tow truck missions.
-GTA5 has weapon delivery or weapon facility bombing missions and weapon pick up.
-GTA5 has golf.
-GTA5 has tennis.
-GTA5 has darts.
-GTA5 has yoga.
-GTA5 has skydiving.
-GTA5 has hunting.
-GTA5 has triathalon.
-GTA5 has 16 races.
-GTA5 has five side missions that are rampages.
-GTA5 has five side missions that are assassinations.
-GTA4 has vigilante missions that require a cop car, but three random crimes to choose from indefinitely.
-GTA4 has 30 most wanted missions(large group of enemies in a unique area.) Also requires a cop car.
-GTA4 has stunt jumps and 100 pigeons to kill.
-GTA4 has taxi missions.
-GTA4 has 10 drug delivery missions.
-GTA4 has 30 car delivery missions(text.)
-GTA4 has 10 car delivery missions(email.)
-GTA4 has bowling.
-GTA4 has darts.
-GTA4 has pool.
-GTA4 has Cub3d.
-GTA4 has nine races.
-GTA4 has nine side missions that are assassinations.
When it comes to extra side content GTA4 has just as much, if not more than what's in GTA5, although not as much variety(barely.) You can fly in an airplane in GTA5, but just like flying a helicopter, who really cares? There's nothing in the air, and how much enjoyment can you really get jumping out of the airplane and parachuting to the ground? You can do the same thing with GTA4 without the parachute. You still have to go collect another airplane or helicopter to repeat to jump again or use a cheat. It's still a waste of time. People always complain about it, but there's not any content with that.
Most people complain about the lack of content in GTA4, but more than likely, these same people that have beaten and are praising GTA5 like they did originally with GTA4, are going to be complaining about GTA5 in the coming months about how it's overrated and after you finish the game there's not really much to do outside of online. Even after the content in the DLCs the complaining still hasn't stopped. So it's less that there's not as much to do, it's that once they've done it all, what's the point in repeating what you've already done?
This is what has additionally been added to GTA4 with the release of DLC.
-BoGT has club mini games.
-BoGT has Skydiving.
-BoGT has fight club.
-BoGT has drug wars(random area, large group of enemies, and indefinite.)
-BoGT has 50 seagulls.
-TLaD has Hi-lo card game.
-TLaD has Air Hockey.
-TLaD has Arm Wrestling
-TLaD has 12 motorcycle races that are kind of Road Rash-like.
