To Live And Die In L.S.

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!

Grand Theft Auto Online Revealed

Wow.  Just wow.  Before I even get into this, if you haven't seen the reveal trailer, that's where you need to start.  Don't worry, I'll wait.

As exciting as that is, it's easy to not fully understand what +Rockstar Games is doing here, so I'll break it down.  First off, it's important to understand that while Grand Theft Auto Online access comes free with Grand Theft Auto V, it's actually an entirely separate entity that will change and evolve all on its own.  Yes, it uses the same map and assets from GTAV (for now, anyway), but it's really its own thing - if you're thinking of it as just the online mode for GTAV, you're not seeing the big picture.  You'll be able to create your own character that you'll access via the same character switcher that we've seen in the previous GTAV gameplay video (remember that fourth empty spot?  This is what it's for), and once you're in that online world you can use your in-game cell phone to call up your friends and have them join you, even if they're currently playing just the single player.  You can do minor robberies on your own to earn cash and reputation, but to get the big bucks you'll have to form a crew and plan a heist.  There's also different ways to spend downtime, doing things like races, base jumping, tennis, golf, and more.

Some other points that need to be mentioned:

• You can set bounties on other players if there's someone you really want dead.
• You'll need to deposit your money in banks because if you don't, you can be mugged and robbed.
• NPCs react to your voice when you speak into your headset (your character's mouth will even move).  Example: if you're doing a robbery and you're shouting at someone to hurry up and give you the money, they'll move a lot faster.
• You can also invest your money in the online stock market and even bet on the outcome of online matches.
• While some missions are always there, others will be totally dynamic.
• You can customize cars and they are yours, but they can be destroyed or stolen...but if you've insured it, the car can be replaced for a fee.
• When I say that the world is dynamic and consistent, I mean it.  If some of your friends (16 people exist in a game world at any given time) are in an epic police chase, you can turn on the TV in your apartment and watch what's happening in real time.

Earlier on I mentioned that the world of GTA Online uses the map and assets of GTAV for now, but Rockstar has already alluded to the fact that the world of GTA Online will expand.  I wouldn't be too shocked to see San Fierro and Las Venturas added to the mix at some point in the future.  While GTAV is a current generation title, I also wouldn't be shocked to see a stand-alone GTA Online come to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 at some point in the future.

This is the most ambitious thing that Rockstar has ever done, and I really can't wait to get my hands on it when GTA Online becomes available on October 1st 2013.

E3 Is Next Week!

The big show is right around the corner now.  I know that MS dropped a hell of a bombshell yesterday that I should certainly have words about, but I'm going to wait until after the press events when we have more details; at that point I'm digging in.  If my understanding of Microsoft's game policies on the Xbox One are even halfway accurate, then you can be certain to see a rant here in very short order.

Anyway, that's for another time.  What are you guys/gals looking to see next week?  Let me know in the comments!

The Next Xbox - What I'd Like To See

Earlier this morning we broke the news on +Geeks of the Round that Microsoft would be revealing its 8th gen console next month on May 21st.  Rumors have been flying all over the damned place about it, getting particularly heated after Sony revealed some details on the upcoming PlayStation 4.

Some of the rumors are good, and others are freaking horrible.  I'm sure most of you have heard the one about requiring an internet connection to function, which would probably be the stupidest fucking thing they could ever do.  Seriously, they go that route and they may as well just hand over the 8th generation to Sony (who said very specifically that they would not be doing that).

We'll be getting some much-needed details soon enough, but for now I just wanted talk about some things I'd really like to see in the next Xbox (whatever they end up calling it).

• Less Hardware Issues - Let's face it; the 360 was a damned trainwreck when it launched back in 2005.  The Red Ring of Death is something that still plagues the system to this day, but not as badly as it was back then when it had a fucking insane 30% failure rate.  That seriously cannot happen again; people will be far less forgiving if the same thing happens two generations in a row.  Fix that shit!

• More Real Exclusives - Let's be real here: the 360 sucks at exclusives.  Don't get me wrong here; games like Alan Wake, Gears of War, and the Halo series are fantastic, but most of the 360's bread and butter has been multiplatform titles like Assassin's Creed and all the Call Of Duty games.  Meanwhile Sony has been taking risks and gave us awesome exclusives like inFamous, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, LittleBIGPlanet, Resistance, Killzone, White Knight Chronicles, God of War - the list goes on.  Microsoft needs to get on the ball and and get their game studios working on content that simply cannot be found anywhere else.  If your best games I can just as easily play on Sony's console or my PC, what the hell do I need your console for?

• Seriously, Don't Require Online - This has been the rumor that has been killing their momentum for pretty much every gamer who's looking forward to buying a next gen console (sorry Wii U, but you don't count).  There are still people in lots of places around the world, even here in the U.S., that don't have access to consistent high-speed internet.  I know soldiers that take their 360s with them when they're on deployment so that they can play some Madden when they're off duty.  By requiring the console to be online at all times, you've totally eliminated all of these people from wanting to own your console.  This is stupid.  Don't fucking do it.

• Larger Storage Format For Games - Back in the early 2000s, DVD was a perfectly acceptable storage format.  It was fairly large, scalable to a degree, and was enough for most games at the time.  By the end of the 6th generation we were starting to see games that came on two DVDs, so clearly something larger was needed.  Sony's answer to this was the Blu-Ray format used in the PS3, which had more than five times the storage of DVDs.  Microsoft's answer was...to do DVD again.  What the fuck were you thinking!? This idiotic move single-handedly held back multi-platform 7th gen games because developers were unable to take real advantage of Blu-Ray's storage capacity to avoid alienating 360 gamers.  Games that were two disks on the 360 quite easily fit onto one of PS3's Blu-Rays with room to spare!  Don't do this shit again, Microsoft.  Swallow your pride and put a damned Blu-Ray drive in your next console.

What do you all want to see in the next Xbox?  Let me know in the comments below and we'll find out details on what we can expect next month!