Sorry I've been a bit quiet these past few days. I've spent 41 hours in San Andreas with my buddies Michael, Franklin, and Trevor in a grand adventure that was full of excitement, trepidation, drama, danger, and ultimately triumph. Through their eyes I've base-jumped from mountain tops, robbed jewelry stores, woken up drunk on a beach in my underwear surrounded by dead bodies, driven an ATV out of a cargo plane, and much, much more.
Grand Theft Auto V is the culmination of every lesson that +Rockstar Games has learned as they've made games this generation - you can clearly tell that they've taken the best aspects of everything and put them here. Example: the constantly weakest point of every GTA game I've ever played has been the shooting mechanics, but for this one it felt so good that I did something I would have never dreamed of attempting in previous games - turning free-aim on; and it felt great.
Gone also is the slightly floaty driving physics from GTAIV and in their place is some of the best driving in any open world game I've ever played. Driving was a joy, plain and simple. Every car feels different, but just as important is who's driving because each of the three main characters have varying levels of skill behind the wheel. If you're driving with Franklin, you'll pull moves that you wouldn't even try with the other two because he's the only one that can handle it.
The map is huge and highly dense; you'll never be far away from something interesting to do or see. Random events also spice things up quite a bit - I was once driving up north to participate in a race on the water and happened upon a fairly ugly car crash that only had one survivor. Ended up deciding to help her out, and turns out that she was a very capable driver that quickly became my go to driver for any heists I had going on.
Ah yes...the heists. These set pieces will require lots of planning and forethought and were easily my favorite missions in the entire game. I won't give any of them away (except for the jewelry store thing I mentioned earlier), but I will say that they were incredible.
Another thing I particularly enjoyed was the writing and the voice acting, which is absolutely top notch. Each of the characters have their own personalities and viewpoints, and even when working together it's not unusual to have them bickering with one another. During a particularly long drive to a small town north of Mount Chiliad, Michael and Trevor had a conversation/argument that had me laughing so much that I had trouble keeping the car on the road!
I could wax on for quite sometime, but I'll sum it up by saying that this game is simply amazing and stands with +Naughty Dog's The Last of Us as being one of the finest games I've ever experienced. In short, games like this are why I'm a gamer.
Fantastic job, +Rockstar Games. Next up, GTA Online - see you all in San Andreas!
