With the release of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar Games once again raises the bar for video games. Centered around three player-controlled protagonists in the fictional city of Los Santos, (based on the city of Los Angeles) which feels like a city that people live in, rather than your own personal playground. With the hype and pressure surrounding Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar managed to exceed expectations and create an instant classic video game.
Three people, one story
Instead of focusing and completing missions with one playable character like every other Grand Theft Auto game, Rockstar allows the player to complete different missions from the perspective of three different characters.
Franklin Clinton is a young hustler who repossesses cars while looking to make it out the hood and make something of himself. Each playable character has a special ability that helps when completing missions. Frank’s special ability is being able to slow down time while driving to avoid collisions with other vehicles and make clean getaways.
Michael De Santa is a retired bank robber who constantly reminisces about his glory days while dealing with his dysfunctional family. Michael’s special ability is to slow down time during gunfights to improve accuracy. His ability is very similar to that of John Marston from Red Dead Redemption.
Trevor Philips is the complete maniac of the three, acting off impulse, which leads to funny dialogue and complete destruction. Trevor instantly becomes your favorite character with his psychopathic approach and the need to look for the next big adrenaline rush. His special ability is a rage, which increases the damage of your bullets and allows you to take more damage.
The game is centered around a series of heists that are set into motion by these three characters that are looking to increase their wealth. A certain amount of planning goes into these heists and the decisions you make effect how successful the heist goes. Each heist you are given two options of how to complete the job.
The different options are to either move stealthily or go guns blazing. You then have to steal the equipment required to pull of the heist and hire the right criminals to aid you. When selecting your crew, you have to consider each crew member’s take – their asking price of the total score – against their abilities, and your greed can come back to bite you if you’re not careful.
During heists you switch between the three characters that each have specific jobs for heists. So instead of hearing what another character is doing over the phone, you now control the other player as well, which makes a successful heist seem like a team effort.
Excellent gameplay
Rockstar Games focused on making game mechanics smoother than previous games. They successfully made gun fights better with auto aim not locking on from one bad guy to another almost robotically. Also cops/bad guys no longer have health bars, an X pops up when they have been killed like in Red Dead Redemption.
The city of Los Santos is a paradise compared to the very gloomy Liberty City from Grand Theft Auto IV. A big part of any Grand Theft Auto game is the driving, which has seen an improvement. The roads in Los Santos are wide enough so that you can weave in and out of traffic if you’re in a hurry.
The radio stations in GTA V feature music from every genre and include music from ASAP Rocky, Tyler The Creator and Kendrick Lamar to name a few. As you can imagine, the talk shows are over the top, as they’ve always been.
In GTA V, police cruisers seem to only appear when you have a wanted level and increase in amount whenever your wanted level increases. When you continue to play the game your notoriety increases which means that police will continue looking for you, even if you’re out of sight.
If you plan on going on a mad rampage, having the right weapons and ammo is the key. Furthermore, you can customize your vehicle to withstand damage, for example having bulletproof tires to deal with spike strips and also police trying to shoot out your tires. Customization is one of the areas where Grand Theft Auto V excels.
Customization
The level of customization in the game is very similar to past Grand Theft Auto games. Being able to choose different outfits to wear is nothing new to the series. But when it comes to customizing guns and vehicles, the possibilities seem endless. Being able to equip silencers to various weapons while being able to attach flashlights, scopes and custom camos. Other weapons include grenade launchers, stun guns, RPG, and a Mini-gun.
In GTA V, there are a total of 257 vehicles, which include SUVs, sports, and classic vehicles that can be customized in different ways at the garage. Favorite customizations include increasing the armor on the vehicle, bulletproof tires and turbo to increase the speed of your vehicle.
Putting it together
Despite the fact that Grand Theft Auto series is now in its fifth game, Rockstar games has managed to exceed expectations and created a game, that simply is, the best of the series so far. With excellent action packed story, amount of detail put into making the game and the sheer amount of fun things to do in Lost Santos, there isn’t anything not to like in the game. If you’re new to the series, now is the time to buy the game. If you’re fan of the series, you’ve probably bought it already.