Grand Theft Auto VFollow

That's all well and good, but how is the game play? Do the controls still suck? Does the blur effect still look like someone vomited all over the screen? Does your cousin still phone you up every five minutes to play darts? Are girlfriends just as a bad idea as they were when they were introduced to the series?

There actually are quite a lot of little improvements to everything you mentioned, and more. Unlike GTAIV, they through you directly into sh*t. There are no long peaceful tutorial stages to start out with. I can imagine it being very difficult for people who have not spent a lot of time playing GTAIV-- although it is also very forgiving if you do ***** up, with checkpoints throughout each mission you can start at if you die or fail for some reason. You also have the ability to replay missions whenever you feel like it to try and get a better rating or just show your wife all the awesome parts she missed while you were up until 5am and she was sleeping.

Walking and running is definitely a lot less cumbersome than in IV, and so is driving. There are no more "friends" calling you constantly to do boring things you don't want to do. When people do call, it is to initiate a story related mission, otherwise they might send you a text message or email you can read on your phone when you feel like it. You can do pretty much everything on your phone from the beginning. No more Internet Cafe.

As for girlfriends, I haven't gotten any yet so I'm not too sure there are any... unless you include taking a stripper home with you to @#%^ them, and saving their number for later. <.<

There also seems to be an infinite amount of side jobs and things you can do in the city. The other day I had a mission out near the beach that involved combat on jetskiis. There's a part where you dive off a large wooden pier and into the most beautiful and realistic game water I've ever seen. I could go on about the ocean water for hours maybe... It is dark and murky near the shore where sand is kicked up by the waves. Go out a bit deeper and it becomes more clear, where you might find some very interesting coral reefs and wildlife. On the surface, the water looks and moves exactly as if I were at a real beach. I can't quite explain it. At one point I decided to swim out to a sailboat I saw on the horizon, and felt genially horrified after diving below to find I could not see the ground below the water, something I once experienced in real life after being pulled out by what I assume was a rip current... I had to remind myself it was just a game and that made it all the more fun. Fortunately your character won't drown so long as you keep your head above the water, despite the fact that it can throw you around a bit. Once I made it to the boat I found there was no one on board I'd have to kill. I fired up the engine and proceeded to see how far out I could go before hitting the invisible wall. It looked like the end of the Trueman Show, only I got bored after about an hour of sailing straight in one direction of endless ocean and turned back. I even checked the map and noticed I had exceeded the limit imposed by the map cursor. After a while of being out at sea, I started to notice an occasional red dot on my radar... yeah... those are sharks. I sh*t you not. They will come after you even when you're on a boat, or try to. I shot one in the face and it went down pretty easily though, just like the mountain lion I found in the wilderness...

Grand Theft Auto Online doesn't come out until October first, and honestly I can't wait to try it. It costs nothing extra but will undoubtedly have some FTP cash shop micro-transactions involved to unlock hairstyles and such I'd imagine.

Edited, Sep 20th 2013 4:35am by Kuwoobie

One other thing. Weapons. There are tons of them, and you can customize them with all sorts of nifty accessories like extended clips, scopes and flashlights. grips, silencers that look ridiculous on certain weapons like shotguns. There is also a great deal of bare space on the wall for when I assume they will add more weapons in the future.

Edited, Sep 20th 2013 4:41am by Kuwoobie

I was the opposite. I liked the city layout in 3 and 4, and didn't like Vice City and San Andreas'. But then again it might have something to do with 4 starting area was pretty close to the area I grew up in.

Seeing as no one asked the all important question, I guess it's up to me: How is Lazlo's show in this incarnation?

Game is awesome. If I had one complaint its that my vehicles occasionally go MIA. Then show up out of the blue again. Story was actually pretty good, the characters are kind of shallow I find but they do have some interesting progression through the story and side missions.

I kinda dig the 3 different dudes thing, it is interesting. But my second complaint is outside of the missions and such using the three dudes as advertised is not very effective, by the time you make it to a location with one, the other has @#%^ed off to do something else. So that to me is a downside. There are some things that I would love to try using the three dudes together but I haven't even been able to get 2 in the same location.

The small stuff is pretty awesome. I got stuck under a plane and instead of just popping out beside it or bouncing around like I am having a seizure my guy physically crawls until he is able to stand. Kind of neat. The random AI conversations are pretty neat, at one point when switching to Trevor I was riding a scooter following a dude on a scooter, with Trevor yelling various Scooter Buddy comments was funny enough to ride the freeway for 45 minutes on a scooter.

I don't know if stuff is missing, or if its just intended for the mindset to migrate to online, but I found the heists incredibly fun and another complaint is that they become non-existent. Kind of tying in with the above complaint is the fact that after finishing the game you no longer get the option to set up heists on targets, despite their being a rich environment of potential targets and options. This was really deflating to discover, especially with certain trophy items being tough to acquire.

On the topic of trophy items, the top of my list atm is the Titan, a giant military cargo plane. It is in the heart of a military base protected by tanks and jeeps, SAMS and Jets. Several dozen of attempts were made, ranging from Airborne assaults (HALO dropping stuff is very fun), and vehicular entries. Many many death were had, tanks running you over, tanks blowing you up, tanks blowing the plane up with you in it, tanks blowing the truck up, military shooting you in the face, military shooting you in the air, military shooting you in the face while in the plane, and helicopters that kinda don't do much of anything except shine lights on you at night vOv.

And that is just getting to the plane!.

Once in it your risk of death is increased by the long *** speed up time, there is no direct runway so you need to taxi to position. This gives tanks especially time to end your run! Getting off the ground takes luck, and a good parachute or driving entry. But once in the air you still have to worry about SAMS and Jets and Helicopters (Even though they seem to never shoot).

I finally managed to get it, it took me about 5 hours of trying. I got it to my hanger, and it disappeared. normally when you leave a plane at the hanger it saves it...however in the now 5 times I have got the plane it wont save it =( The trophy that eludes me. all though I do have a picture of it in my hanger to always remember!

That was still a ton of fun however, and I will keep doing it until it stores it....if it ever does...

For now though, my attention shifts to the crazy conspiracy with the central mountain, and a band of naked cultists. There is crazy markings, there is a map on the top of it, and there is a phrase "come back at the end of the story" (or something similar.) Ive seen a UFO, Ive seen a sunken plane, and there is still a whole map to discover. It is really quite a deep game despite its nagging negatives.

I can't wait for online, I think there is going to be some cool weird things being done by people. I only hope the online isn't being blown up to be a let down., and I hope once all the discovery is gone the nagging negatives are either fixed, or they are not nagging enough to kill future replay.

Edited, Sep 21st 2013 8:45pm by rdmcandie

I guess my next question would be how does it stack up against Saint's Row?

I'm having a blast so far. About 10 hours in & I haven't even unlocked the 3rd character yet. If I do the next mission, I think he'll unlock, but I've been exploring the world instead, doing side missions as I find them. Having traveled to LA a number of times, I think its pretty amazing just how accurate Los Santos is as a representation. Venice Beech, in particular, is SPOT on (& the running woman side mission was a pretty super caricature of runner culture, lol). Also smoked some weed, saw some aliens, killed them all. Banged some strippers (Lame) & some prostitutes (Boy, they have dirty mouths!). Towed some cars, got into an accident that caused the cops to ram the tow truck, which lead to me towing the cop car that was chasing me, lol.

The level of detail in this game is pretty great. Sure, the graphics aren't the greatest. But between the pretty accurate representation of LA & the AMAZING sound, it's very, very good. How about instead of barreling through the missions, try & have some fun with it? The world is HUGE & there's lots of stuff to do.

GTAIV is the worst GTA game ever made. It was so bad that I'm very hesitant to pick up V.

GTA: Online just started today... and they're having very Square-Enix-ish problems. I imagine it will clear up after a few days. The character creation is really strange. Beyond that there is not much to say since we can't get any further.

I was able to play it for a while today it was pretty fun, getting in missions is cool, the races are all right nothing super awesome. I spent most of the time free roaming getting skills street punching neighborhoods. Ive also had fun chasing people around, and either killing them or @#%^ing with them. Today while one dude was robbing a store, I stole his car, he died to cops unable to get away. Lost to a guy in Golf, beat a guy in Tennis, ran down the beach to build stamina! Drove around the map...bought a hooker and shot some folks looking at me funny.

That felt pretty awesome.



AFAIK you can not make it so others can't take your car.

- You can invite people to your house, they can not access your garage.

In free roam you can take anyones car and they can take yours, and it will be displayed with a car on the minimap where it was left off. Unless it gets destroyed in which case you can use insurance.

You can activate passive mode or something and play along without people being able to do stuff to you...I think...never tried it costs 100 bucks and that is Ammo.

Edited, Oct 2nd 2013 10:15pm by rdmcandie

Both.

...are you the same person, or did 2 likely fake accounts post one after the other about this coincidentally?

Anyway, I'm waiting for it to be on PC before trying it, but I'm very much looking forward to it.