First and foremost, I hate to go with the flow, but this game is great. There's unfortunately little you can do to deny it, apart from a few features.
To start with, there's the performance. On near ancient systems, Rockstar have done a great job getting GTA V up to scratch, and it is a technical milestone for this generation of consoles. However, the frame rate of this game (for me at least), varies around 20 to 27, or in layman's terms, almost unbearable and hardly acceptable. That was a constant flaw that unfortunately most people will have to put up with, until a PC or next-gen release.
I would go into how the three lead characters are all really awful people, but the game understands this, and they even point this fact out occasionally. However, adding depth to your characters is all well and good, just like making them come from all walks of life lets you explore different lifestyles, but at the end of the day, this is GTA, and the first thing on everyone's list is to go on a machine-gun rampage, get in a huge police chase, and steal a fighter jet. What's the point of serious characterisation when these kinds of activities are inevitably the first things players will do?
I did really enjoy the story when it got all serious, and the three different characters allows for some great opportunities that couldn't have been done before. The variety of things to do, whether in mission or out of it is great, but I can't help but feel that some of the mechanics featured in these activities could have been a bit more refined. Take shooting, arguable one of the most important features of the game; when you choose a gun from the convenient radial menu and are desperate to fire it, I genuinely lost the reticule several times. It's a tiny dot in the middle of a screen layered with colour, and usually, explosions. Also, the guns feel solid, but aiming them is clunky in comparison with the slick UI and cover mechanics. How hard would it have been to put a standard reticule and smooth up the controls?
To start with, there's the performance. On near ancient systems, Rockstar have done a great job getting GTA V up to scratch, and it is a technical milestone for this generation of consoles. However, the frame rate of this game (for me at least), varies around 20 to 27, or in layman's terms, almost unbearable and hardly acceptable. That was a constant flaw that unfortunately most people will have to put up with, until a PC or next-gen release.
I would go into how the three lead characters are all really awful people, but the game understands this, and they even point this fact out occasionally. However, adding depth to your characters is all well and good, just like making them come from all walks of life lets you explore different lifestyles, but at the end of the day, this is GTA, and the first thing on everyone's list is to go on a machine-gun rampage, get in a huge police chase, and steal a fighter jet. What's the point of serious characterisation when these kinds of activities are inevitably the first things players will do?
I did really enjoy the story when it got all serious, and the three different characters allows for some great opportunities that couldn't have been done before. The variety of things to do, whether in mission or out of it is great, but I can't help but feel that some of the mechanics featured in these activities could have been a bit more refined. Take shooting, arguable one of the most important features of the game; when you choose a gun from the convenient radial menu and are desperate to fire it, I genuinely lost the reticule several times. It's a tiny dot in the middle of a screen layered with colour, and usually, explosions. Also, the guns feel solid, but aiming them is clunky in comparison with the slick UI and cover mechanics. How hard would it have been to put a standard reticule and smooth up the controls?
The thing is, Rockstar have made third-person shooters before, and their fairly recent Max Payne 3 had solid and smooth controls. While Rockstar have clearly taken some inspiration from their other games, they missed out on the opportunity to make their flagship game the benchmark for third-person shooting mechanics.
But I suppose these are all small faults in a massive game, and in a world with so much to do, these little issues are easily overshadowed. The missions are great, the driving and flying is great, customisation is immense and the soundtrack is superb. You've got tiny details too; in tunnels or certain parts of the map, certain radio stations will be unavailable. If you run into someone or honk at a stationary vehicle, you'll get the according abuse, rude gestures and even the odd person who gets out demanding a fight. And this is only half of the game. Now that the highly anticipated online portion of the game is out, people have been striving to get online to be part of the inevitable madness and multiplayer anarchy.
And so far, we've learnt that Rockstar need to invest more of their money into servers and maintenance, as people have found it notoriously difficult to get online, or either lack a constant character due to the short term inability to save online or occasionally getting kicked off for seemingly no reason. This is understandable when you've got potentially hundreds of thousands of people trying to get on at once, but as Rockstar made over $1 Billion in the first 3 days of GTA V's release, it's not like they're short of cash.
Unfortunately for me, whenever I attempt to get into the online mode and partake in the array of multiplayer activities that Rockstar have prepared, such as fleeing from fighter jets, racing, shooting or even just good old fashioned robbery, the courteous and respectful community proceed to either shoot my car tires, or my face. It's a great concept, but it is best played with friends.
It's certainly a ground-breaking game that will nicely see off this console generation, and for its technical faults, I certainly hope it'll be coming to the likes of the Xbox One and PS4. We all expected it to be an astonishing game, but for me it's slightly less great than I anticipated. In the same way that a few hundred thousand pounds are slightly disappointing in comparison to a whole million.
I'll be right back; I'm going to steal a plane or two.
