Grand Theft Auto 5 - Review

When Rockstar Games announced that they were bring Grand Theft Auto 5 to the new consoles, my first thought was why, but having spent even more time in Los Santos, I am very happy that they did.

One of the first things you need to know about this release is that the story is not changed, not one bit. Which is a good thing, each of the three characters, Michael, Franklin and Trevor were all rounded out in last year’s release. All of the story, characters and settings are the same, only better, in fact that is the running theme throughout here, and they have not really changed anything, but improved everything.

Firstly the game now runs much more smoothly than in the 2013 release and pop in is reduced immeasurably, playing the game when it first released required me to look past some graininess to the overall presentation and some significant pop in, which meant the vision the team had simply was greater than the consoles they had access too, but now with the power that the new consoles have, you can play the game it was meant to be played. The level of detail here has improved as well, grass out in the country now looks like grass, what was meant to be dense forest now has enough trees and shrubs to actually portray that and even the amount of things happening on screen has improved, with the streets of Los Santos behaving more like a real city with traffic everywhere.

Of course visual improvements are not all that was done to the game, they have tweaked elements to provide a more refined playing experience and also added a few elements as well, cats and first person mode for example. The cats, just give the city a more lived in feel, seeing cats just wander around, doing what cats do adds a charm that did not exist before. The first person mode however can be hit or miss, depending on what you are doing. Walking around the world works well enough, the game enables an auto run, to make movement feel faster in this view, using guns is also more refined from this viewpoint, but attempting to use guns while in cover does not work, you are unable to see what is around you and peeking out from behind cover to shoot, results in some awkward looking animations.

Of course, most of the time you will be in a car or other mode of transportation and here the first person perspective works and fails at once. Being able to see all the detail inside so many vehicles is truly amazing, some cars are stock, others contain little touches like air fresheners, even the planes and helicopters have a lot of detail to them, the problem is the handling of them does not work when you are moving at speed. Riding a bicycle or driving a slow vehicle is fine, but once you get into something that really moves it becomes a lot harder to maintain your path. Sometimes I was able to move around the traffic without a problem, but sometimes it was too difficult I had to switch back. Of course, you may find it is really worth the investment and spend the whole game there, but that is something you need to decide for yourself.

Taking the game online now, that depends on who you are playing with. Getting a group of friends together and running around Los Santos is a whole lot of fun, playing with a random group depends on that group. But in either case, you have access to almost every piece of the single player options, but with friends. You can compete in street races, off-roading competitions and soon the game will allow you to take part in online heists, something that has been promised for some time. The online experience is something you should try, even if online is not your thing.

The game is not without a few issues, lighting in open world games has always been a pain and here it rears its head again by causing issues with the shadows, this is not a game breaker by any means, but when everything else is polished to a level rarely seen, it stands out quite a lot. The other issue is the install and load times, installing the game took ages to get done, in fact it was the longest by far. But the load times in the game are also a little high, of course the game does a remarkable job of reducing any in game loads to a minimum, but that initial load as you start the game each time you pay, maybe a little much for some people.

If you played the game on the older consoles, there is nothing really new here to demand you play the game again, but if you don’t you will be missing out on some of the best gaming you could possibly have and of course if you have not played the game at all, you need to get it.

The Score

9.5

Review code provided by Rockstar

The Pros

+Amazing characters and a world that is ripe for exploration

+The heist missions are incredible and worth their long set up

The Cons

-First person does not work for this game, everything just feels off while in it

-Outside of heist missions, everything else is pretty standard for a GTA game