Review: Grand Theft Auto V

Over two thousand words into the review and it doesn’t feel like we’ve scratched the surface of Grand Theft Auto V. This is a sprawling experience, offering countless activities ranging from practicing yoga to smuggling guns. Playing around in its virtual sandbox is enjoyable enough to fill five game’s worth of playtime, but ignoring all of the world’s amenities and solely playing the missions still puts countless other action games to shame. More still, it features arguably the best story of the series that’s greatly enhanced by the added dynamic of three contrasting protagonists. There’s multiple hyperbolic statements that we could pile on to convey the excellence protruding from nearly every facet of the game (like that one), but all that matters is this: Grand Theft Auto V is both a step forward for the franchise and an amalgamation of the best parts of its previous titles.


The term Easter egg-- or a joke or message hidden within a video game-- originated from the 1979 Atari game Adventure . Atari did not allow their developers to display their names during the end credits of a game because they feared competitors would recruit and steal away these employ


Patriots bringing an old fashioned domestic terrorist group that has to butt heads with the elite of the elite? Sign me up. As long as the gameplay sees only a few refinements and that the developing team doesn't go overboard with adding micromanagement. That's what made the series so great in Vegas , an emphasis on shooting with an easy to manipulate team management sys

I find GTA V ’s issues especially interesting because Saints Row IV released barely a month before it and Saints Row IV succeeded in every aspect that GTA V failed. Fast, exciting transportation? Check. Lots of missions that are close enough together to reach? Check. Varied challenges that offer inherent value to improve your character? Check. 1255 clusters in town to improve your skills, carefully placed to catch your eye. Lots of wacky and entertaining missions that use the game mechanics in smart ways. Unique topography to keep missions engaging on a design perspective. All of these things made Saints Row IV a prime example of open-world gaming that not once felt like padding or busy work.

After Michael went into "retirement," Trevor relocated to Sandy Shores and decided to do what he does best -- be a redneck. He lives in a trailer, has terrible hygiene, is promiscuous with all the wrong people and associates with...let’s just say the "the wrong crowd." Even though he has delusions of grandeur thanks to his shell company "Trevor Phillips Industries," he’s a broke loser with little to show in life. After finding out that former accomplice Michael is alive and well under a different name, he decides to drive down to Los Santos to pay him a visit. Soon all three characters are thrust into the plans of a crooked FiB agent (guess what initialism that’s a play on) and some notorious gangsters in the city and have to work together to survive and bring in a handsome payday while they’re at it.


All jokes aside, this is a pretty apt description of what playing GTA 5 Harry Potter mod V Online is like. Imagine the hectic, unrelenting carnage of someone going berserk on the AI in the campaign and now take about a dozen or so of those same people and put them all together on one server. It’s not pretty. Luckily, Rockstar implemented things like Heists and various multiplayer elements and game modes to keep player blood lust at a low. But that doesn’t stop someone from spamming you with a machine gun every so often. It isn’t all that uncommon for players to completely lose sight of their current goal once they pass another player on the road... and proceed to spend the next five minutes trying to kill them for no rea


As anticipated as GTA V was, the hype gradually subsided once the game finally dropped and fans were more than content while playing through its campaign. But Rockstar upped the ante with the announcement of GTA V Online as it promised players four person heists with friends. People were really looking forward to it, but even when Online was made available on launch day people had to wait a little longer for heists to make their way into the fold. That isn’t the only disappointment fans had to deal with though, as —for a period of time— Online itself was just a busted mess. It was incredibly difficult to get into a session, and most players had to wait days before actually getting in. Some of those that did get in even lost their characters and had to start o

Rockstar’s mentality of "bigger is better" is what is making Grand Theft Auto less interesting of a series than it should be. For such a maverick of a series, one that broke ground for gamers, critics and politicians alike, it sure hasn’t been as ambitious as its peers these days. While Skyrim was displaying a smart array of carefully placed activities and Saints Row was slowly chipping away that obnoxious padding between missions, Grand Theft Auto was just putting on more and more unneeded pounds. I like the idea of big games with lots of stuff to do, but simply making a game bigger and smugly putting down your competitors for their "lack of ambition" isn’t a good way to evolve your series, especially when your game is big and empty enough that you need to include yoga as a legitimate side mission.