I never understood the insanely high praise that Grand Theft Auto IV got from critics. Sure, it was a great game for its time, but I had some fundamental issues with its story and gameplay that stop me from calling it a masterpiece. I wasn’t much of a Niko Belic fan, whose empty words about chasing the American Dream meant nothing when his in-game actions reflected those of a cold-hearted sociopath. I thought the game’s story took too long to ramp up. I also hated driving in that game, as all of the cars were a nightmare to steer with any sort of precision.
Grand Theft Auto V goes well beyond simply addressing those faults to provides an experience that’s incredible in scope and detail.
Instead of providing players with one likeable enjoyable protagonist, Rockstar put in three. They’re all bad people any way you slice it, though they almost always make sense within the story they’re in and I always found them entertaining. Even Trevor, who is easily the most deranged character in any GTA, has a few redeeming qualities to him, as well as arguably the most exciting missions in the game.
Having the ability to switch between them at almost any time adds an interesting dynamic to the action that I didn’t expect going into this. Sure, during missions where they’re all together, the game strategically structures things in a way where you’re always switching to the character doing the coolest thing, which is an obvious plus. However, I really appreciated the ability to switch during your down time. Whenever I got bored with one character or was too far away from anything meaningful, I simply switched to someone else and carried on just like that.
When I think back on my time with it, the thing that stood out to me the most was how awesome the main missions were. They’re smartly designed in a way where you’re always doing something cool and almost never doing the same thing twice. In particular, the multi-mission heists are definitely worth experiencing for how extravagant they are and how you get some choice in the way things go down.
Grand Theft Auto V lives up to the hype. It might actually be the best overall in the series. By fine-tuning its core formula while increasing the scale of virtually everything to a crazy degree, this is one that will stand out as a high note for this generation of consoles.
In Third Person 