Video Game Review: Grand Theft Auto Five (No/Trivial Spoilers)

The Grand Theft Auto series is a series that just about everyone has encountered at some point. Whether it be the top-down classic "You're Brown Bread!" for the PC, San Andreas or Vice City during your formative teenage years in which it was cool to have an adult game to play at a young age or Grand Theft Auto 4, a game released in 2008 set in a New York-esque setting. This was a game in which the almighty dollar is king, in a world of financial instability and sudden recession.
It's five years later, and Grand Theft Auto 5 is out. So is it an incursion upon the rest of the series? Or is this game familiar old territory?
Straight off the bat, this is no longer a game that's solely focused on one protagonist and has three playable characters available: Franklin, Michael and Trevor.  At the beginning of the game, you play as Franklin Clinton, a young male who just wants out after seeing what gang violence, poverty and criminal drug cartels does to all those he grew up with. Lamar wishes to be a street hustler, Tonya and JB are on drugs and Tanisha has left him to go and be with a hot-shot lawyer.
He eventually "connects" with Michael, and his lifestyle appeals greatly to the jaded Franklin. However, everything isn't all too peachy when Trevor, a friend of Michael's who ran heist operations many years ago, finds out that Mike was alive after faking his own death.

The characters are very fun, and very lively. Trevor, despite the fact that he runs a meth op and is indeed a psychopath, is a very endearing and likable character with intelligence and an odd sense of honour, after almost killing a television presenter for making fun of Mike's rebellious teenage daughter, recounting when he said he'd look after her at the age of two and Franklin and Michael seem to have a genuine connection. One's morally bankrupt with lots of money, the other thinks they're lucky.

Ultimately, the game focuses on a wider spectrum of topics and it seems that the running theme here is moral bankruptcy. Los Santos (Los Angeles, basically.) is full of phony lawyers, cheating spouses caught with expensive personal trainers, workaholics who check in and out every day and suffer from chronic stress, CEO's who murder hookers and snort blow, electoral candidates who hate the population, fitness freaks who try to murder themselves in the search for the perfect body...

If you imagine America, with every single hot agenda blow indirectly out of proportion, that's pretty much what you're getting in Grand Theft Auto 5.

The dialogue is surprisingly sharp, with characters often spouting one or two liners that sound like dialogue. Actual, genuine, conversation. Instead of awful stock phrases. Yeah, I'm looking at you, last weeks review.

The game is also very varied. Rainy/scorching deserts, snow, sleet, rolling fog, clear blue skies, overcast evenings, deep sunsets, slums, upper class areas, middle class areas, lower class areas.

Picture time.

HOWEVER,

Yeah, that's right, there are problems with this game. Let's go. Right now, faults it has.

And I should just note that I do it because I love you, video game. I am a harsh parent because I only want you to be better than all the other little children.

Occasionally, the mission failure screen is silly and unprovoked.

I'm landing my bi-plane and make a great landing but prod a lamp post with my left wing. It doesn't even fall over.

MISSION FAILED: THE PLANE WAS BADLY DAMAGED.

I'm riding my car away and it gets stuck on something or turns over.

MISSION FAILED: THE VEHICLE WAS DESTROYED.

I'm making a cup of tea.

MISSION FAILED: NOT ENOUGH SUGAR IN IT CHARLIE, YOU BITCH.

It's as if the game enjoys making me replay sections. I do enjoy replaying them. For a while. Then I'm doing the mission and mouthing the characters lines like some sort of psychic because I know them all for that bloody section.
It does give you the option to skip a section if you fuck up too many times, but if you press that then you do not deserve to have the game.

Ok, that's a little harsh perhaps.

You should have died at birth.

There, there we go.

Whilst we're on the subject of planes, even though we're not, what the actual hell.
It's easier to fly a plane in real life than in Grand Theft Auto 5. I've never flown a plane in my life, but I've done a lot of things and controlling a plane affected by the wind and how close it is to other physical things is almost impossible.

I also think hunting should be a bit more useful. I killed 50 animals and got 600 dollars. Then I get mauled by a mountain lion and lose 2600 dollars.
Do you know how that makes me feel, Grand Theft Auto 5?
Make it so that beast attacks halve your bonus or, more simply, just give you the option to retry like a mission rather than have your wallet stabbed repeatedly because you enjoy shooting elk.
And give me the option to customise my license plate IN GAME. Because this is the only time in my life I have ever remotely wanted an iPhone.

Should probably mention that.

You can download an app which lets you do stuff that gives you bonuses in GTA or respray your car/customize it. Only for Apple iPhones. No android currently available. Rockstar apparently working on one. Back to the review.

All in all, it's a great game. It's got RPG features such as character building, (Doing anything makes you better at that thing. Running improves running skill. Flying improves flying skill etc.) hairstyles, tats, clothes, the ability to buy apartments, the ability to buy shops which offer income + goods and services. It's got solid shooter action, with good animations and it's also one of the best open world games currently on the market.

Also, the draw distance is great. There will be some pop-in textures, but it honestly surprised me by how far away things could render.

Um, cheers. That's all for this this episode. 50% Friday will be GTA: Online if anyone can actually get online. If not it'll be FarCry 3. Next Tuesday will either be Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning or Steamworld DIG for the Nintendo 3DS.

I'll let Trevor play you out.

Uh-huh.