I spent 100 hours with the game, even going out of my comfort zones to mess with the GTA: Online. Then spent way too long over last week writing and rewriting the review to make it sound just the way I had it in my head, and had mostly let slip my mind, while playing through the game, only to get chest deep into a draft I really liked to have Blogger eat it like a Cerberus with a years worth of homework in his bowl.
It's a drill to my skull having to rewrite the review again, and I almost didn't do it. But, really, what else would I have done (oh yeah, I could have written my Batman: Arkham Origins review...).
At least with this review, I can introduce my quick card system. And, ironically, this could have been possibly the best opportunity to really make the card shine.
Two aging, washed, up crooks drag a 20 something guy looking to get out of the hood into their version of crime, getting in over their heads and whining every step of the way.
The Men:
We live in a world where Breaking Bad; a television series about a marginalized science teacher trying to scrape by for his family before he assumes he's going to die, takes to making meth for the money, but becomes something of a sociopath when he continues to be be marginalized by the family he's secretly trying to help; is a beloved series that had millions of viewers and is lauded as one of the best television shows in very many years.
Often in game worlds, men are toted as the only heroes there can be. Hollowed entities that can do no wrong, who has everything go right for them. But in the world of GTA V, we have a landscape set up for us that's much the same, if not more twisted, as Breaking bad, where next to nothing goes right for not one but three guys who are just tying to scrape by, get treated like assholes by those around them, and have all kinds of folks looking to take from them at every turn. Just like real life!
The one thing GTA seems to take seriously is how marginalized men can be in a world where the individual is losing power to the collective, but is still expected to provide for his family and way of life. With everyone else talking about how misogynistic the game is (which, I honestly didn't see, I saw plenty of strong women -even to the detriment of the men around them), as if to fill some sort of quota for the month, this is what I actually saw in the game.
Trevor is basically the 99%. He's angry at everything about our way of life, but does the wrong things to help it. When he does do something that can be conceived as right for him and his friends, it gets taken away from him and "righted," mostly because he's psychopathic meth head that no one trusts to do the right thing, in spite of his weird loyalty and his messed up sense of honor. He's even looking for love, in his own twisted sense.
Michael is bi-polar. He doesn't know which end is up and how to live a "good life," even when that really means he doesn't have to do anything to really be happy. His kids hate him and are -basically- moronic leaches. His wife takes every chance to call him an asshole and tell him he's always cheating on her, when all we ever see is her cheating on him . And then the feds are always at his balls, chomping away because he's in their protection the hold over his head like a debt to be paid. He genuinely wants to change his ways, but everyone keeps pushing him right into being what they think he is. What else should he be but the maniac they tell him he is? If I had to say, Michael just really wants to die. He keeps putting himself in situations where it can happen, surrounded by people that should be more then happy to do it for him, but he can't do it himself.
Franklin is.. Well.. Basically he's a low rent John Singleton character. He's trying to get out of the hood while trying to get his girlfriend, who doesn't want him, back. Everyone around him aside from Michael and Trevor tells him he never does anything for them, even though he does everything for them. And that pretty much forces him into the arms of Michael, mostly babysitting Trevor, where he still can't bother to say no and simply walk away from everyone. He really is the weakest of the 3, I can't stress that enough.
But Franklin also proves something that also becomes one of the biggest problems that I had with the game: this game is more chemically imbalanced then Trevor seems to be.
Since GTA V features a 3 person system, giving us 3 protagonists, it does some great things with the way the story can be told, but it actually leaves the story and gameplay off kilter and unfocused.
Over the course of the games story I only played the story missions and didn't really go do many of the random things or cause all that much "me time" mayhem in the world; I just straight out played every thing marked as major by the characters portrait in the character wheel. During that time I played as Trevor more then any other character, which was supported by Rockstar Social Club and its background data recording.
Okay, thats fine because I liked being Trevor. When I sifted through the crazy and really listened to what he had to say, I liked, and even related to him, a lot. But, frankly, nothing Trevor really did in that time meant anything. He seemed meant to simply do what everyone does on the internet by beating their heads against an invisible wall of rage for no reason other then their own cathartics, while trying to push that catharsis on others. For all the rampaging, all the random murder, for all the stuffed bear sex, his end of the story really amounted to nothing more then pointing out the flaws of our world. It's not exactly wrong to have a character that does this in a game with 3 characters, but it added nothing to the gameplay but busy work.
For example, the one heist mission that Trevor -proudly- sets up himself basically means nothing by the end of the day. It becomes all for naught, not because the heist goes south, but because everyone looks at his excitement, looks at the item stolen, and decide it's better for the world if they just put it back. You net no money, and you get just as frustrated with everyone as Trevor did, for wasting your time. You try to do good by giving your friends a massive money making opportunity, make them go through all the motions to get them there, but it gets completely taken away from you and your practically scolded like a child for putting everyone through it.
Great for the character progression, but is rife with gameplay fluff that adds nothing to the core story.
But, the length of time we're made to focus on him, and asked to understand him, Trevor seems like the most fleshed out of the three protagonists, making me feel like they really wanted Trevor to be the main character. Even the games signature rampage events are completely Trevor's and Trevor's alone.
On the flip side of the same coin, most of what Michael does is meant to be important, but ultimately isn't because of too much focus on his life aside from Trevor, Franklin and crime.
Michael is probably the most meaningful to the gameplay aspects of the game. He is pretty much every GTA character you've ever played as through the series. Aside from that, he has a pretty well fleshed out personality, and most of his story is core to everything happening to the game. But problem with Michael is everything else that happens around him, that actually make up too much of his story.
He struggles deeply with who he is, because he wants a simple life that no one really allows him to have, but at the same time he doesn't necessarily want it either. Like I said prior, he's bi-polar. But when events happen (read: Michael is Michael, and everyone else is their lazy nagging selves) and he loses his family, the edges start to become as frayed as his psyche. During the time after the seperation, he muddles along whining about how much he misses them and begging them in emails to come back, while doing absolutely nothing to better himself or become a person other then what they keep saying he is. When they come back he hasn't changed one bit: he's worse. And they haven't changed one bit either, still treat him like an asshole. But everything is magically "okay." Because: why not? There really isn't anything fulfilling to any of it.
Even his "going straight" story, which comes as a byproduct of strong arming his way into becoming friends with an aging producer and breaking into entertainment, just sort of happens. And it didn't mean a whole lot that it happened at all. It becomes a bunch of fluff missions that don't really better him, but teaches us that, yeah, you can get pretty much everything you want, but you don't have to change anything to achieve that. That if insanity is the act of doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different outcome, Michael somehow proves that insanity is the key to prosperity. All for no good reason other then the story needs to end at some point. Usually, we just die. But here: videogames.
I guess.
Anyway, he's usually elevated to the position of heist leader, with or without his input in the matter by everyone around him. Or the fact that he's a control freak; I haven't decided. These people see his skill in this area and make him own it, even when he's not sure he wants to. And since they're the biggest, most exciting, missions in the game, this makes him important to the gameplay of the game, no matter how convoluted the reason it is that he's put there.
But all the trailers and everything leading into the game, even some of the way things are handled in the game, suggest Michael is the games focus. Things having to do specifically with his actions set the entire game in motion. However, the long tracks of time I wasn't playing Michael, because I had nothing to do as him, and what I did when I was him, say the contrary to me.
Franklin was basically a waste of space, and I really don't know what that was supposed to say about Franklin.
Nothing Franklin does means a whole lot of anything, and he doesn't add anything but a third person to play as. Remember how I say that things sort of just happen to Michael with little rhyme or reason, that are supposed to better his life? That's pretty much the entirety of Franklin's story. Things landing in his lap, including becoming a hired killer (which bares no weight on him what-so-ever, and feels forced considering he tries to be a -pitiful- voice of reason for everyone else through the game.).
At best he's everyone's Morgan Freeman, driving them around like Miss Daisy. Even when he takes charge, he's never fully in charge. He was boring, and was portrayed as being as ho-hum as he's played out. He doesn't really add anything to the game except his friend Lamar, who says some really really funny stuff during the course of the game.
In fact, I was just reminded of one character that Franklin claims keeps him and his friend Lamar down a few times, that only shows up maybe twice, only to kill him off later as a way to clean his slate so he can lead his own life (instead of simply walking away from everyone and everything the 50 times he could have). Unless I missed something, there really wasn't a huge reason to go after this guy other then to give Franklin a villain of his own. It's forced, just like the rest of Franklin's part in the game.
He was my least played character and he contributed almost nothing to the game by way of story or gameplay, but the game pretty much tells you at the very end that Franklin is the main character, after hours of evidence otherwise.
Overall, what happened for me is a game that had no focus. There was a clear beginning and an end, but along the way your simply meandering around from one set piece to another being forced to do things that really don't matter to us as the characters we play, but to placate the people that we call friends and family -who often hate us anyway. In any other media this would net a highly negative connotation, think: Michael Bay movie, and I really feel like it needs to here. I don't think it should be let go simply "because: videogames" or "because: GTA," no matter how fun those set pieces ended up.
The substance that binds those pieces weren't really as chemically coherent they should be, and we can see the holes left behind that we're supposed to fill with our own, made up objectives and sandbox gameplay, which doesn't work in a game that has such a hard set story it revolves around.
As for the 3 character system from a gameplay standpoint; the system was much lauded as this amazing new achievement in gameplay, but I barely found it handy. Interesting and functional, but something I just never bothered with.
There's no real reason to switch characters most of the time during missions that allow it unless your specifically told your supposed to do it to further the mission, and that only really happens a few times. It just caused a slow down in combat situations, instead of allowing it to become this strategic thing that allows you to truly control the battlefield of Los Santos.
You'll die just about the same amount of times you would have if you stayed in the skin of the character you started a mission off with, and not having to deal with the shift animation just made it easier most of the time to stay put, providing another big hit to the 3 man system outside of an unfocused story.
I also really don't know if I liked the way the game handled off-mission switching by doing a loading sequence that acted like an overhead satellite shots that hone in on where the character is. I understand its purpose, but when your in a hurry, it's just annoying, even if it's a stand in for the typical loading screen.
On top of that, after having to wait for the satellite to find your guy, you get a little sequence that sets up their slice of life; like Trevor being drunk and naked, passed out on a bridge. Thing is, while some are funny (mostly Trevor's), most of them are horribly pointless (mostly Franklin's). They add atmosphere, but they make you antsy when your really looking to get into the shit, and get things done. I started to actively avoid switching characters a lot of times because I didn't really want to wait for these things to finish up.
The Money:
I mentioned heists, the games longer missions, briefly when talking about Michael's role in the game. These lengthy affairs often have 3 or so prep missions where you'll have to gather the materials needed to make the heist work. During the heist you'll have hire-on guy/girls doing some of the leg work with you, and choosing the wrong people will mean a smaller take at the end of the heist.
These really were the most exciting missions in the game, and I wish there were many many more of them. I'd even go so far as to say, if they were good enough story-wise, that I'd buy DLC packs revolving around them, even though I really don't like the idea we've created of DLC being a go to thing to fluff a game experience.
All of the heists had some sort of story connection, possibly aside from the one I mentioned Trevor starting, but they usually didn't finish up anything, with the after events snowballing into so many more problems for the characters. Your reward was often frustration, but somehow it totally worked in the confines of the games theme.
I'll go into a big negative part about the games save function of the game later, but I do have to tip my hat to the games checkpoint system. It's great, especially during heists, when you'll possibly be using, and reusing, them the most. Very few don't keep you from having to do longer things over again, but the vast majority do, and it's very welcome improvement from prior entries to the series.
You can't talk about heists without talking about money. Heists will be the largest incomes you'll see through most of the game, even when things happen to sort of.. Rob you.. Of your score. The thing is, I had so many issues making money outside of those big scores, that I pretty much completely gave up trying.
The game is designed to leach money from you rather then allow you to become an easy kingpin most of the other games in the series allowed you to be. This would have been great if money actually came to you without almost taking you completely out of the game to do it.
The biggest way to go about making money seem to be playing the stock market. Most things I've read have people saying that if you really want to make huge amounts, you need to do it in the stock market, but to do that you need to take at least a few hours out of your time to day trade to get there.
This process is completely boring, and completely hit or miss. After taking time to try to find and read all I could on it, to attempt to at least try to do it "right," I didn't find one clear cut way to really play the markets "correctly". The game only makes it harder because the info you get in-game about the businesses are so wildly inaccurate, just just don't update, for the moment, that you really can't make good choices that work. In Los Santos, the internet and radio are of little help. It's unlike real life where you can at least gleam some sort of idea of where markets will go if you take the time for analysis. Or, you know, just open a news paper.
From what I understand of it, part of the market are controlled by the online end of things and how it all filters through the Rockstar Social Club, but because of how things can turn on a dime there, you can't really trust it unless you've put together a large group of people to start a "pump and dump." But that takes a lot of set up that really may not be worth it in the long run.
Basically, when all was said and done, I understood about as much about GTA's stock market as I do the one in the real world, which is to say: nothing at all. Only I know from 10th grade Social Studies that you can open a news paper, or from a baby in a commercial, go to a website, and find out something about trading stocks. In GTA there's a thick fog clouding up everything, making the system feel an impossible waste of time.
Other then stocks, the other way you can make money is buy spending it on business' around the map, but even if you could afford some of them (Michael has one that costs 150mil), they only pay out weekly, and don't really pay out all that much. Even then, some of them have certain requirements, like a scrapyard Michael can buy, that only makes money if you destroy cars while your playing. And even then its only $150 a car. Not money to retire on.
Causing mayhem and hoping to run around collecting from the dead NPCs really isn't worth it either, because most of the NPCs are far broker then you are. Makes carnage mean so much less. I would have loved to have been in on the meeting that discussed what businesses for sale, to add to the game, the EMT company I have in the back of my head would have made tons of sense here.
Also, as far as I can tell, you can't simply lend money to your other characters, making the cash you have very locked into the characters you make it with. I find this to be a flaw when there is such expensive things out there to buy, and the idea of a debt system that your other characters can hold over your head, would be an interesting concept to go with the themes of the game.
When your causing mass hysteria you want a big world to play around with. Well, you can hope for one, at least, because I wasn't seeing one here.
It was just too easy to make it from one end of the city to the other. From one end of the map to the other. Maybe its the wide open spaces of the desert, or the fact that Los Santos itself just feels to easy to get around, with its fairly easy to navigate streets, but I just didn't feel like this game was very big.
On top of that, it really left me not wanting to explore the crevasses that would get me to think deeper about the size, so much. This is sad because flying over the landscape doing stunts after the narrative was over, you see a lot of places that are simply never used, but would have been interesting to have story elements in. They just aren't that interesting on their own.
It left me, like the money issues, not really caring to cause all that much carnage across it. It just wasn't as much fun.
Also, I know this needs to be its own game, but there's a considerable difference between the Los Santos and outlying desert of GTA V and those of GTA: San Andreas. This is weird to me, and I would have loved to hear something in the game point out why. Like, I would have accepted something as simple and stupid as a story about how there was an earthquake that broke Los Santos and Blaine county off of San Andreas and made it an island. Or a volcano. Because those are the only reasons I can come up with after having played that prior game, that these areas would be floating in the middle of a large body of water with no bridges to get off of and sharks hunting you everywhere.
Everything from a bride running from her groom, to a guy dressed as a zombie on Vinewood blvd that just wants to talk in-character. It makes the world feel more alive then prior entries in the series, it makes you actually stop and think about whether or not you want to help or talk to these people, or pass them by in order to do your own things.
Sometimes stopping nets greater rewards, like more criminals you can contact to do heists with, or one guy who gave me stock (basically a large sum of money) in his company for saving him. This makes these people feel so much realer then the usual people just jibber-jabbering on to themselves in the streets that you'd normally kill for being annoying twits stuffed with money, and it made me wish that there were so many more of these things to do; specially in the end game, where I feel like things are lacking just a little too much.
That said, some of the best things about these games are the jokes and satire. But this time around there was just a few mission series that start as little side things that just took this a little too far, in an annoying way.
There's at least two missions that Michael goes through that can last hours, and these missions end up costing you more money then you make from them, which is the real pisser, seeing as how Michael has the most expensive properties to buy.
One involves a submarine, and for over an hour plus worth of work, you only get $10. Yep, $10 for possibly one of the longest things you'll do in the game. And the mission set up and ending isn't even remotely comical in the least.
The other thing is sort of hidden, but it's basically a joke on cults. From point A to point B you'll actually payout almost 100K and be asked to stop everything your doing to go meet with inane people for no reason other then to talk to them and not really be adequately told what to do next. Then you'll be asked to do something stupid for 10 in game days (which goes a little faster should you use a bed to speed up time). And then you'll be asked to simply run for almost 45 minutes.. All to get to a mission that's over pretty much as soon as it starts, and can either net you money (which I missed out on) or a rusted tractor that can't make it up Los Santos' hills. It started out as funny, but quickly became grating and unfunny, just one of those jokes that goes on for too long, yielding no worthwhile payout for the time spent.
This wouldn't be a horrible thing if these mission series didn't eat up hours at a time, if they had just been somewhat shorter they'd fit perfectly with the rest of the game. All they managed to do is make my time as Michael feel all the more pointless.
Okay, it is. It sounds like I'm trying to downplay how good it is to be able to play your favorite missions over, instead of having them locked away forever after you've finished them. I'm not. That part of the feature is great and I really love that its included. But the only positive is the ability to go back and play your favorites over and over, and even that will get boring after long enough.
My issue comes with the fact that every mission is scored like Olympic bobsledding, bronze - silver - gold. Your first run at the missions are basically summed up as trial and error gameplay, because they give you no indication what will net you a gold metal until after you finish the mission.
Trial and error gameplay. I hate it, and it will always lack points with me outside of puzzle or adventure games.
This makes the feature feel like it isn't set up to the benefit of the player, to allow them to have more fun in the confines of something like one of the games too few heists, but to force you to play through pretty much all the missions more then once, should you want all the gold medals (or at least the achievement for 70 of them).
What this feature does is takes a game series thats always been about playing how you want, to get the most from the game that you want, and forces you to do it their way to do it the "right" way. This is a series that's never needed this sort of unnecessary feature before to extend the play of the game, and I feel it says a lot about the game, and the world it builds, that they thought it needed it now, when there's 3 characters to play as that were supposed to blow the whole thing wide open and offer more. Almost two steps forward, 3 steps back.
But when your rolling around replaying missions, your going to want to go back to one of the series most tried and true positives: The soundtrack.
If this games soundtrack is like the soundtrack for other GTA games, then its a reflection of the time the game is set in. So if that's the case, the soundtrack that plays on the radio is a reflection of current radio. Well, then all this did is teach me not to turn on the radio. Or at least cemented why I don't really even listen to Pandora or Last.fm that much any more.
Now, I know music is a very polarizing thing, that's why I'll rarely ever review music in this venture outside of maybe directly telling people to listen to something I really liked personally. And that'll be rare because I don't listen to nearly as much as I did when I was younger. So I won't go out of the way to pull music apart and analyze it, because everyone really does hear what they want from the music that moves them.
So I know someone out there will love this soundtrack and tell me I'm crazy, and I accept that.
That said, the music in this game didn't speak to me at all because there wasn't a single metal or modern rock station in sight. There's a classic rock station, but the songs on it really aren't that great. True classics, sure, but not a set list that would keep me listening to an actual radio station, let alone keep me hostage to a videogame radio station that plays these songs on a loop.
The only thing I can theorize is that music for the radio stations weren't a huge priority, falling behind such things as the 3 man story and a gameplay system that supports it, that works, even though, usually, this is one of the things people love most about these games.
Licensing music is expensive. It really is. But it seems like they spent more money on the DJs they got for the channels (who can be considered generally well known names), then they did the music -but you won't know who they are unless you stick through the credits. It felt just as imbalanced as the story.
I really do have to say that the talk radio stations in Los Santos and Blaine county are was sustained me when I was driving or flying. They were better then the talk radio stations in any of the other games. Even though there was really only 3 shows per channel, and the same episode of the shows play endlessly through the game, without morphing as the story goes on like some of the prior games (if memory serves), the writing and performances were so hilarious in some of them that I just couldn't get enough. They really never got boring to me.
Huge points to J.B. Smoove and Annie Lederman for Chakra Attack. So hilarious.
I really did listen to the talk radio more then anything else -which really isn't what I do in GTA games. When I wasn't doing that, I was listening to podcasts outside the game.
As usual for Rockstar, the voice acting in GTA V was top notch. The voices may not have been people you necessarily knew, that seemed to be reserved for hiding major names as DJs on the radio, but they fit wonderfully into the roles they played, with superb performances.
I really did like Michael and Trevor the most, since those two yammer on like old women for most of the game. But the real winner in my book is was Gerald 'Slink' Johnson, who's portrayal of Lamar Davis was off the wall, yet strangely poignant.
One such exchange had Trevor and Lamar talking while on their way up north, Franklin next to them taking the moment (while "taking charge") to catch some sleep. During this back and forth, Trevor is lamenting life and it goes something sort of like this (not direct quotes):
Trevor: Ah, what a lonely road this is...
Lamar: Lonely? Man, it's just a road. It doesn't have abandonment issues.
Something about the way the lines were delivered that is both completely stupid, but so completely spot on, both in the confines of the game AND in life, and that wrapped it up in a nice tight box for me like a hour with a therapist. For whatever reason, I have a feeling that that one segment is going to stick with me for a long time. That's not something I can say about dialog from a lot of games.
The Mayhem:
In a game that craps on its main cast at every turn, I know this game shouldn't be easy and was never going to set out to placate us with the idea that it could be. I know things shouldn't be handed to you, and trust me: they aren't here. I'm fine with that. I like that. But I'm going out on a limb to say that, even when your staring down 3 or more cops, you shouldn't be torn apart by their hail of bullets within seconds. That you can't you can't out run these bullets no matter how hard you try, like this game suddenly depicted the real world.
This is a game based around the idea of a huge suspension of disbelief, so I don't think dying this fast is exactly the right course of action. There was a few times when I even questioned why they bothered putting in a health bar at all, because I'd get killed so fast that health didn't matter. Even with armor it felt like you'd just die too fast.
One of the biggest issues seemed to be that every NPC is a sharpshooter. I got instant killed by these self-made snipers what seemed like thousands of times. It was full health; dead. Full health; Dead. Over and over. What makes that fact worse is the next to worthless cover system that seems to provide NPCs with more cover then it does for you.
And thats if the savings bugs don't get to you first.
Oh lord. I can't even tell you how infinitely frustrating saving could be while I played the game, but I'll try. Trust me, it wasn't as frustrating as getting most of the way through a review that includes explaining it, and losing the review: but it comes close.
See, in the game there's a tiny spinney icon in the bottom corner that tells you the game is saving. The game also autosaves from time to time. But a little more then what I'd call "sometimes" the game would keep making the spinner spin, meaning the game was stuck in a perpetual state of saving. In this state you can keep running around and playing, but it doesn't allow you to do anything important: Can't quick save, can't load from a save, can't take or end missions, can't use the dashboard to exit out. When it happens, there's no way to stop it short of manually turning off your console.
Problems really start when this happens and you don't notice it happening because the icon is so small. You start doing things, running around like you do in GTA games, and you go to quick save your progress or a short list of other things, and find out you can't do anything. I lost over about 8 hours work, at least, because of this bug, over it occurring a multitude of times during my playthrough. That's at least 8 hours of trying to retrace my steps to redo everything I had lost and holding my breath that it didn't do it again -which it usually did. After one point it was doing it at least twice an hour.
I've read a lot of this and that about how the driving is bad, but I don't see it at all. The driving is fine. The driving stat does seem to tighten things up a little bit, but does seem to go up far too slow for how much driving you do in a GTA game, compared to things you don't do so much like holding your breath or flying. Aside from that stat, it's really about your car choices and mods too.
I actually took to flying planes like it was second nature to me, which was great. I loved flying in this game. Helicopters were a pain in the ass to get the hang of, but when you do it can be pretty rewarding. Specially since they give you a really weird amount of helicopters in missions, with little to no training in them when they do. Even the flight school sort of just throws you in one, tells you it's easy, but doesn't really help you enough to make it easy.
What I will say about driving is that its impossible to do while trying to aim a gun, and the game has you doing this a lot more then I remember others doing it (but that could very well just be me). It's pretty much a lost cause if you have to. Even with a lot of practice (AKA restarting from those awesome checkpoints) I'd end up missing, driving into a car/pole/rock/river/building, and end up getting so behind the target that I'd lose them and have to reload anyway.
Also read a lot of people saying the shooting was terrible, but I didn't see that either. Yeah, I didn't like the pin point reticle they use by default, because it was so small that it was impossible to see from my couch, in a pretty small living room, but I'm pretty sure I was able to change that in the settings. In fact, there's a few shooting options to change that may help you if your having problems.
Again, really the only problem shooting is what I said about doing it while driving.
Also, it's not a big deal because the game really does give you enough ammo to make it through pretty much every situation, but I've seen a lot of people asking or assuming that there would be weapons caches, and wanting to know where to find them.
There really isn't any. I found out that there are actually some special melee weapons hidden around the world that you can't actually buy in a store, but I didn't find any caches of ranged weapons that you'd usually find laying around, like the occasional rocket launcher. The game makes it pretty easy to simply buy these weapons and their ammo at an Ammu-Nation, so caches really weren't missed.
Health packs and bulletproof vests are floating around, but were few and far between, and I'd say I'd probably miss them more, considering the issues staying alive I had..
And you'll need all the ammo, armor and health you can get to combat the scores of cops and thugs you'll fight through during the course of the game. Including the not-so-elusive ninja lions.
I'm not even joking about how infuriating the 1 shot kills some of the animals in the game can pull off. Dogs, sharks and mother F-ing mountain lions.
Mountain lions who seem to really just pop out or no where and slough off bullets like you're throwing jellybeans. Being in the woods, hearing their cry, made me physically fear for my life.
Yes, this was enough for me to elevate it above a nitpick. Mountain Lions are the stuff of nightmares.
The Back of the Box Quote:
Crime is a blast, as long as it lasts!
Should you spend your time with this game?:
In the short term, yes. It's an extremely fun game as long as there are missions and new things to do.
In the long term? No. There just doesn't feel like a reason to stick around and cause as much mayhem as possible in Los Santos after the narrative is done. This game felt much more story driven then prior Grand Theft games, and that leaves things sort of blowing in the wind when there isn't anymore story left.
GTA V has put me in a pretty strange place with how I view the series. I'm not sure if that's something Rockstar intended to do to people.
Bias Factor:
I've played all the 3D GTAs in Rockstar's series. The series keeps drawing me back with each iteration, even to the point where I've bought most of them again, for prosperity, for the PC. That said, I wouldn't call myself a super fan at all. I like playing and exploring these games, doing like we do and cause as much trouble as we can, but I certainly wouldn't rip my hair out if I miss an installment on launch day. In fact, I was actually going to let this one slip by for a little while until I saw some other people play it on release day, on Twitch. Watching other people drew me in, and made me buy it a few days later.
Oh, and San Andreas was my favorite GTA game. So I was a bit partial to coming back to Los Santos. GROVE STREET YA BUSTAS!
Disclaimer: I bought the game myself, so Rockstar doesn't know me one bit so they probably won't sent me a review copy of anything any time soon. I played just shy of 100 hours of the game, finished 98% of what the game had to offer and spent 6 hours playing GTA: Online. That said, I obviously didn't include GTA: Online in this review, and for good reason: Other then some stuff with a portion of the stock market (from what I understand of it at least) GTA: Online really isn't a part of the game at all, and is more or less being treated as a completely separate entity by Rockstar. That said: I found it boring. Really. So there's your review of that.
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