![]() Some sequences are straight out of an action movie : a car chase around an airport, and a n espionage mission that sees you burrow ing under a building so as to sneak in undetected via a subterranean tunnel. Elsewhere, you’ll pose as a tech nician in order to infiltrate LifeInvader’ s social media offices a gleeful dressing down of casual work culture, complete with a brainstorming room with young staff doing air-guitar. GTAV is packed with fun pursuits: stealing a car from a film set that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain classic Aston Martin, which comes equipped with deployable tacks from the rear as well as an ejector seat. The side missions (Strangers & Freaks) are some of the most varied and riotously satisfying you’ll find in a modern sandbox. There’s nothing quite like seeing a plan come together. Here, the game utilises the excellent character-switching mechanic, as events blend in an exciting spectacle that jumps between the roles of getaway drivers, gunmen and techie saboteurs. The highlights are unquestionably the heists. T hanks to a decent cover system and improved shooting sequences, there’s a lot more scope for excitement and variety in the missions. still drive s rather dozily, swerving across lanes or drifting into junctions. GTAV comes with the more familiar city driving aspects, with a giant toybox’s worth of vehicles that remain a great deal of fun to try out, even if the A.I. Los Santos is Trevor’s playground, as much as it is the player’s. As he puts it, he enjoys doing bad things and doesn’t feel the need to justify his action s. A psychopath with a heart of gold and an occasionally volcanic temper, he’s a refreshingly blunt figure in a gaming world desperate for meaning and self-reflection. A wonderful, terrible, terrifying mish-mash of contradictory philosophies and personality traits, he symbolises the series’ anarchic spirit perfectly: act first, think not at all. He frets to a personal psychiatrist, his quick temper eaten away by dysfunctional children and a wife who cheats on him with her tennis coach, her yoga teacher and everyone in-between. ![]() Then you have Michael, a retired bank robber who is the living embodiment of the plastic LA (or should that be LS?) dream-life. Things begin with Franklin, desperate for a break but chained to a small-town neighbourhood existence of unfulfilling vehicle repossessions and amateur robberies that offer greater risks than incentives. ![]() T he player can switch between them whilst roaming the city, as well as when teaming up for certain missions. The action is split between three very different personalities, archetypes fans of the series will be familiar with. Movement and combat controls have undergone much-needed modernisation, whilst the story and its characters are easily the best and most strongly developed the series has offered so far. Put simply, it sets right what was wrong with GTAIV. Rockstar isn ’t spoiling your fun: they’re just letting you know that they know.Īs such, it marks possibly the smallest jump, instalment-by-instalment, yet is one of the finest and most complete-feeling Grand Theft Auto games. R ather than relying on lurid, hire-and-kill-prostitutes shock ‘n’ awe or hidden sex mini-games to set chins wagging, GTAV ’s biggest successes lie in its unflinching dissection of American consumerist culture and the endless contradictions it so gleefully (and so effectively) sends up. The most noticeable changes are thematic, not technical.īut fans shouldn’t worry: it’s as outlandish and enjoyable as ever. From a design perspective, this appears to have been acknowledged. The developer realised that whilst being able to do whatever you please in a big, living city remains hugely edifying to its fan-base, GTA isn’t the only firestarter on the block these days. ![]() In its pomp, Rockstar loved nothing more than stoking controversy, gifting players a sense of counterculture nihilism, encouraging them to revel in morally questionable cartoon violence. It’s also because GTAV shows greater signs of nuance and refinement, of moving with the times. Sandbox gaming had come a long way since Grand Theft Auto IV, and it would be unfair and unlikely to expect the game to represent as giant a leap as GTAIII or Vice City had taken all those years earlier, at least in technical terms. A Lindsay Lohan lawsuit aside, there were fewer establishment figures, panic-bating newspaper articles and morally-outraged parenting groups ( yes, it still carries an 18+ age rating) calling for the game to be pulled from shelves, virtual or otherwise. For once, Grand Theft Auto ’s fifth instalment didn’t ride in on a wave of controversy or industry -changing technical feats.
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