Yes the most awaited game review is here. Well we’ve not been able to share it justifies that we’ve loved the game so much 😉 GTA V kickstarts in heist mode, with you and your crew already earning wanted stars speaks pretty loudly about Rockstar’s intentions here. There’s no consequence to the game proper though, because this fauxtorial takes place years earlier than when you’ll settle into the greater world of Los Santos and Blaine County.
Rockstar’s one of the biggest additions to V, is character-swapping — a feature that can generally be used at any given time in the game, but is most fun and dynamic while each character is part of an event in V’s rich and expansive narrative. One such event transpires during your prologue, but like the rest of this review I’ll keep it spoiler-free — just know that at its core, changes and all, the flavour of the series remains triumphantly intact, though there’s an undeniable maturity to pacing now, even from the outset and this remains at the fore regardless of your playstyle.
Interestingly, throughout my time with the game I’ve found that it has more in common with Red Dead Redemption than GTA IV. Freaks and Stranger missions are on offer as distractions from the main quest[s], and you’ll often come across a random, emergent event in your general travels. These might be related to performing a good deed, or just being duped by a bunch of stooges. None are essential to take part in or complete however, they’re basically in play to help bring the world to life, though a few of them do offer pretty interesting rewards if you’re willing to roll further down the rabbit hole.
Missions come packaged with much more forgiving checkpoints, but are also graded on a variety of achievements (none of which you’re made aware of initially), obviously leaving them replayable for all-important bragging rights, or to just make yourself feel better for making the Rockstar bar. Submersibles are available for an underwater jaunt, or you can just go for a very healthy freedive.
The final piece of the puzzle then is the open-world as a whole, and it’s here GTA V stands loud and proud. The game’s peds are always doing something natural. They could be taking photos of stars on Vinewood blvd, or hovering about on their mobile phones or in a smoking group outside a workplace, oblivious to what’s happening around them. You’ll even see police dealing with citizens by pulling them over or making chase with someone who’s just broken the law. That being said, I’ll go on record to say the cops in this installment are among the most aggressive yet and you’d better hope you have the means and ability to escape their tenacious pursuit. But, like most GTA games this is one of the more fun and arcade-driven aspects to the game, so it hardly takes you out of the core experience.
As a single-player offering, and pretty much at the end of the current-generation to boot, GTA V couldn’t have more to offer. Even if multiplayer doesn’t stack up (and that’s a big “if”), the game is still worth the investment. Heists alone are value for money, and make the multi-character swap-on-the-fly aspect an enjoyable and rewarding one through the aforementioned skill and abilities aspects of the main characters. They vary in tempo, style and approach as well, which mixes things up for players and helps in the decision-making process with hired help, but overall it just makes them engaging and fun.
