In the city of Los Santos, a young hustler falls under the wing of a former criminal living a difficult retirement. Circumstances lead to the pair to have to do a job to pay off a debt – a job which gets national coverage and draws unwanted attention from a former partner, corrupt cops, ruthless movie moguls, rival gangs, aggressive fitness fanatics and many others.
I have played this game series on and off over the years but (criminally) did not play the former one based in Los Santos but instead rejoined with GTA4, a game I enjoyed but not one without its flaws. The good news with V is that the game keeps the strengths of the fourth game but makes many improvements which produce a much more fun and enjoyable experience across many aspects. The first thing to say is that the world of LS is technically amazing in terms of its attention to detail and beauty – it is hard to describe to people who decide they do not like these games, but to see a glorious sunset from a hillside, with perfect shadow effects and vegetation movement and know that someone designed and made this, not just filmed it, is something that hit me over and over throughout the game. The map is enjoyably large with diverse landscapes and character and I still find great pleasure in just going around in it even if I have nothing specific to do.
The story is solid enough for the game even if it is rather generic and overblown. The characters are quite clichéd in some regards. Michael's story for instance is not so imaginative and generally I found him the least of the characters. Franklin is similar but covered by him being the "intro" character, so I stayed close to him throughout. Trevor is a wonderfully violent and funny character and his entrance is memorable and really shakes the game up. The events of the story are necessarily overblown but this is part of the fun and generally I liked the flow to it. The many supporting characters are great fun and the energy and color of it all does cover up for the fact that the story is not really that complex or engaging at times. As it is though, it is about events and set-pieces and the game provides plenty of fun memorable missions (admittedly as well as a handful of awful ones), and in this way there are loads of missions to replay and enjoy and, most importantly, this game actually allows you to load them to do just that.
Side missions add color and fun and, although I do miss ongoing missions like the vigilante ones from IV, there is still plenty to do. The range of vehicles adds to this and I also enjoyed how much easier they are to drive than in the previous game. Weapon customization and the range of them provide fun destruction, although the police are a lot more aggressive in this game than in IV, so it is harder to go on a rampage and make it last. In theory the Online world offers endless gaming – I tried it for one evening and it was fun despite all the issues, but the community seemed messed up and very reliant on having an existing group of players – it looks fun but I'm just more of an offline player these days.
Grand Theft Auto V is a great game, even if you "only" play the days and days of content in the single player game. Technically the game is astounding with its attention to detail and just the sheer beauty of the audio and visual design of the whole world. The plot is solid enough to do the job while the characters (main and supporting) are colorful enough to engage while playing through missions which are mostly enjoyable and offer plenty of big set-pieces that are overblown and fun.
