never said the visuals were bad. the performance is bad to the point sometimes i just wanna quit playing it cause it hurts my brain to watch such high levels of sloppiness

shooting is mediocre at best...autoaim and cover and shoot cover and shoot....over and over and the cover system doesnt work flawlessly as it should
driving is also not any better. actually San Andreas had better driving and felt more real

all in all its a good game a solid 7/10
killing cops and innocent civilians is always fun for a frustrated phsyco like myself

but game of whatever.....hmmm god no!

just my opinion

This is exactly how I feel. I was not hyped about it at all, Decided to pick it up and it was really good. I think the story was well thought out. Some gameplay mechanics piss me off but they have massively improved over past GTA's.

The game is overhyped, but it's fun. The world is large and enjoyable to play in and explore. The missions for the most part are diverse and more complex than you'd see in other GTA titles, and, most importantly, unlike GTA IV it's fun. Sure Roman was great but the game never really felt fun to me.

I also replayed SA in anticipation for this, and though I love that game and I think it's one of the best games ever made, I think you're remembering it wrong. San Andreas had painfully small cities, missions which affect overly involved drive somewhere and do one thing (and were much shorter), and the controls were much worse. As for side activities, there were far fewer than in this title. If you don't like the races, triathlons, property management, parachuting, hunting etc. then that's fine, but it's unfair to say there's not a lot to do because you don't like them and Rockstar made one activity which really actually annoyed me which you enjoyed in SA.

Is V better than SA? I don't know. Haven't yet finished the story, but having played SA recently there's no question V is by far the better game. Whether. I remember it like that or not is a different question.

I think SA for its time felt far more epic as we never really had that big of a map before.

In GTA V we have seen very big maps now.

Also SA storyline was much more clear cut...

It ended up as a fundamental battle between Good vs Evil.

The city is in a riot and you have to kill your friend who betrayed you, save your brother and kill a corrupt cop and stop all the drugs.

Not being hyped for the game was probably the approach I should have taken. I didn't like IV, yet against my better judgement I came to believe that GTA V would correct all the mistakes and fly past my expectations.

Good game. Just dissapointing considering the hype.

I'm not saying there is not a lot to do. I'm just saying the stuff to do is not very compelling. You can fill a game with a million mini games but if they are not really taking advantage of the open world setting then they just aren't very compelling imo. The reason I preferred the SA side activities is because there were activities that felt more like empire building. There isn't really much empire building in GTA V and you can't even purchase multiple homes so the money you do have feels like a waste. 

Would SA cut it in today's game industry? Ofcourse not, but that doesn't take anything away from how incredible that game was when I played it in '05. It was an open world revelation at that time, it was brilliant. I quite literally LIVED in SA for three months and never got bored. There was a sense of discovery and atmosphere that I felt back then that I'm not feeling with GTA V. And I know its not just because I'm a jaded gamer because Rockstar recreated that feeling with Red Dead only a few years ago. And yes, even in '05 I remember the shooting controls not being very good but the driving was amazing and I actually remember the npc's being more interesting and unpredictable than the ones in V. If GTA V is better game its only because of production value. Its definitely not fun factor.

5 years was worth the wait in between GTA IV to GTA V. ESV Skyrim was also a 5 year wait after ESIV: Oblivion. The game play and story in both games were refined but the graphics look rather dated.