A couple weeks ago now I finished GTA 5. It was my first time ever playing a Grand Theft Auto game. And honestly, I can’t really say I had any serious complaints about the game. The story was good, clever, and entertaining. The missions kept me engaged. The world was huge and had many things to do inside of it. I think it’s a 10/10. I don’t think anything I really have to say about the game would detract a whole point from it. And, mind you, I’m usually not the type to just go around handing games 10s all the time. I just think this game warrants it.
I don’t think the story was necessarily that great for its overall narrative, but the world which it creates. All the characters are interesting and always are engaged in something amusing. From Life Invader, to Micheal’s daughter, and the constant news reporting that comes on the radio while you’re driving. The characters are very over-the-top but I think this game manages to handle that well. I’m glad they didn’t try too hard to make it some deep narrative, most of the game was just fun. I thought the whole betrayal thing and Trevor’s outrage was a little lame, but, again, the fact that it didn’t take its story too seriously was what made it okay to me. My favorite protagonist was Michael, then Franklin, and last Trevor. Michael was a great character. With Franklin, I’ll be the first to admit, that I usually don’t like black characters, but here it’s actually done well and he’s actually quite likeable. And I just wasn’t into Trevor. Thought he was by far the weakest of the three. At the end of the game I chose to kill him.
In terms of the gameplay, the shooting I thought was satisfactory but not great. The fact that you had to drive everywhere was annoying. I never figured out the whole taxi thing until I watched a video about the game after finishing it. The whole thing with getting the cops off your back wasn’t that enjoyable for me. Most of the sidequests I had not much interest in. The helicopters and planes are awful to control. Though, in spite of all that, there never really was a time where I got really bored and just took a break from the game. I thought some of the quests were a bit tedious too, like the one at the port and you’re loading cargo.
I think my most serious complaint with it was the DRM. I had actually bought this game a long time ago and had connected my Rockstar account to an email I no longer had access to. So what I had to do was figure out a way to get around that without paying for it again (even though I clearly owned it in my Steam library). So, technically, I probably illegally accessed it. So annoying, especially when I didn’t touch the online component at all. All in all, I had a great time with it. Makes me want to go and play GTA 4.
