Grand Theft Auto V Review
Grand Theft Auto: V (or 5) is an open world, action
adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar
Games. It was released on the 17th September 2013 for older consoles
like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Furthering this the games then was re-mastered
for next generation consoles such as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 and
re-released on the 18th November 2013. This introduced many new
features such as first person mode, new options in the online mode, and overall
enhanced graphics. Finally the game was then brought out on the PC on the 14th
April 2015. To this day GTA V is one of the top selling games ever released,
being 4th on the ‘list of best-selling video games’ page by
Wikipedia. This not only outlines the games success, but the quality of the
game for such ratings.
(SPOILER WARNING – DO NOT READ UNLESS WISHING TO LEARN WHAT
HAPPENS IN THE GAME)
The game has both multiplayer (called GTA Online) and
campaign mode, in which you partake as three characters - Michael, Franklin and
Trevor – to rob banks, steal aircraft and much more content that action seekers
will love. The game uses two original characters, Michael and Trevor in its
campaign which allows fans of the enterprise to relate to previous games in the
Grand Theft Auto series. From the beginning of the game you play as Trevor, and
Michael who are in their young stages of life and assist with the robbing of a
bank which goes horribly wrong, leading to close friend Brad dying and the team
splitting. After 9 years the player meets Franklin, a young coloured character
and soon meets up with Michael after a repossession gone wrong scenario with
Michael’s car. This then leads to a small heist with a jewellery shop and
causes Trevor (now living as a drug dealer in the `rough` parts of the state)
to hear that Michael is not dead, but alive. This causes Trevor to become
curious, and leads to the three characters forming an alliance. During this, Michael’s
family deserts him, The FIB (federal investigation bureau) catch up with the
team and Trevor discovers about the death of Brad, instead of friend Michael.
This leads to the team splitting but eventually regrouping
for the planning of their most dangerous plot yet, raiding the Union depository’s
gold bullion reserve. The plan is set ahead and is completed successfully, and
following this the three head their own ways, ceasing to work together but
remaining mutual friends.
(SPOILER END)
The campaign was a brilliant plot with many twists and turns
making you feel for all sides and even after the story is complete, players can
still spend hours upon hours of purchasing, customising and using cars, guns,
aircraft and much more; as well as exploring the state of Los Santos fully and
partaking in minigames that live up to solo game’s performance, including golf,
tennis, darts, and much more.
This is all without mentioning about the games multiplayers,
which unlike the games outstanding campaign, does fall short as some aspects.
As expected the games performance and graphics are outstanding, and this
transfers to the multiplayer as well. Features like online heists demand teamwork
whilst minigames like team death match or last team standing allow players to
enjoy the ‘shoot ‘em up’ approach, going against everyone else. If the player
doesn’t feel like doing and minigames, they can free roam the open world with
everything being customisable, including the player, cars, house, garage and
weapons. Players can also meet with friends and do daring stunts, like base
jumping off cliffs or skyscrapers; or diving in the ocean.
Contrastingly however, the game’s multiplayer does encounter
a few flaws, including the ‘must shoot everyone’ problem which occurs when
players feel unsafe around others, an example of which could be placed in the
scenario of two players (labelled player one and player two). If player one has
the feeling player two wants to hurt player one, then player one may kill
player two. This causes player two to become violent to player one which
further causes an escalating war. Unfortunately many players feel like this in
Grand Theft Auto: Online which in my opinion, has led to players not bonding,
or becoming friends.
Regardless the online multiplayer of the game is still very
good, and is amazing to say players get all the campaign as well for the $50
(~£37) price tag.
Online multiplayer has also received negative feedback due
to micro-transactions being in the game, allowing players with real world money
to purchase in game currency via ‘shark cards’. This would allow a player to
gain better cars, apartments and guns without the need of earning them. However
due to the overall good balance of combat and vehicles in the game, this wasn’t
much concern to me as many players found the game to still be incredibly fun
even if they weren’t driving an upgraded sports car. What’s more, the game also
allows vehicles to spawn in randomly, meaning that players can still fly the
expensive planes, drive expensive cars, and sail expensive boats without the
need to buy them.
Upon playing the game on the PC, I immediately felt it
needed to be played with a controller, as shooter games don’t feel the same
without the trigger feel that a controller has. Others may have a different
opinion but for this reason I felt that the game was made for console, even
though the port for controller usage on the PC has become widely accepted now.
The controls on both keyboard and mouse and controller were fast, responsive
and smooth as expected, and in game prompts for entering vehicles (press Y to
enter) made for an overall better experience. As previously mentioned the
trigger for shooting guns felt good as always and vibration sensors made for a
more immersive feel. However for new players who have never played a GTA game,
getting used to the different button mapping for the game may be difficult (for
example on many games the right analogue stick pressed in causes the player to
run, however on GTA the sprint button is mapped to A [on a 360 controller]).
For none tech savvy players, the game review ends here. In
my opinion the game is a brilliant addition to the GTA series and should be
really considered to be bought if you haven’t already, the effort that has gone
into the game can be seen when playing and aesthetically, the game is beautiful
and mechanics work great. I would personally rate the game 8.8/10 for in game
performance and beauty, with the only flaws being as stated earlier about the
multiplayer.
For the real geek, let’s get onto benchmarking results and
other advanced gameplay features. On a PC running a Nvidia GTX 760 OC 2gb, 8gb
Ram and AMD FX-4130 3.8ghz computer; the game runs on high graphics setting at
around 45 fps on a 1080p monitor, however with a GTX 770, the game should run
on very high with no problems. The game has some artifacting in places, however
this is only minor and can be dealt with quite easily by waiting for the
terrain to load. The games engine runs quite well with high attention to detail
on post rendering effects, and texture quality. On ultra-settings the game
could be compared to real life quite significantly, and character animations
run smoothly with no major out of place bone movement.
The game’s first person mode also allows for the spectating
of interior views of vehicles which are rendered to significantly good detail.
The only flaw for the rendering of objects, was the vehicles model structure,
which on the DLC vehicles has only a plain carbon texture on the bottom of the
vehicles, putting a negative view on Rockstar’s time usage with regards to the modelling
of DLC vehicles.
Online mode seems to also be in-effectively coded, taking
the user ~3-4 minutes to get into a networked session, compared to other games
in the genre, which take only around 30 seconds to get online with friends.
However this may be due to the amount of processing needed for the game to load
all server-side settings and player co-ordinates, as well as terrain placement and
player save data to be loaded successfully.
In conclusion, my review on GTA V with regards to
benchmarking results and rendering performance causes the game to drop to a
7.8/10 due to the lack of effort seemingly gone into making the game the spick
and span game it is made out to be. This along with slight artifacting can on
occasion cause a player to lose a fight, even though networking latency (ping)
is overall very good. In my opinion the game is still great to get if playing
on a next generation or high end PC, but not so much for budget gaming PC’s or
older consoles like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Thank you for reading this
review, and hopefully it has pushed potential buyers of the game to a well
thought out decision. This review is all the opinion of me, so gameplay may be
felt different to different players. Please take this into consideration when
thinking about purchasing a game. Thank you.
