What are your thoughts on Grand Theft Auto V? Single-player specifically

The Game Room
1

I’m not trying to turn this into a “what Mahaloth is playing” forum, but I do like to discuss games I’m playing and just kind of have an open discussion about them.

I beat Red Dead Redemption 2 on Sunday and am taking a break before going back to mess around in that world again. I grabbed Grand Theft Auto V free-of-charge from Epic during the big giveaway back around May or so.

I have never played a GTA game….except for the first two, which were top-down and really different. I figure that GTA V is one of those “all time great” games and I liked Red Dead 2, so I should go back and experience it.

What are your thoughts on it if you have played it? I’m a single-player focused game. I came with the online game, but I will likely never touch it.

I’ve played around 8 or so main missions and driven around for fun looking at stuff, but I bet I’ve only got less than 10 total hours in it so far. My thoughts:

  1. I guess I’m a huge wimp or overly sensitive, but I was initially turned off by Franklin’s buddy Lamar and all the n-words, super vulgar language, and so forth. I think I was just really surprised they went that borderline stereotypical(racist?) portrayal of these black criminals. I actually began to like Franklin once he met Michael, but initially, I kind of hated the crowd he was hanging with.

  2. I did, however, find myself laughing at some of Michael’s personal problems. His son hanging off the crane(?) while I had to drive under and catch him was a pretty funny incident. I kind of hate his son, though. I guess most of this game is horrible people that we can’t see the silver lining in?

  3. The driving with the mouse and keyboard is really bad. I’m going to have major issues driving if I ever have a real big-time getaway sequence. I may have to skip a checkpoint if super precise driving is required.

  4. The open world is big, but I thought the game’s graphics would be better. I am quickly realizing this is a PS3 game, not PS4 or higher. I have the graphics set to almost ultra, but the difference between this and Red Dead Redemption 2 are massive. Only 5 years separate the games, but there is a big improvement graphically for RDRD2. Some of the textures in GTA V are pretty poor.

It’s a fun enough game, but I am hesitant to give it a hugely positive review this early on. Am I having fun? Yes, but I’m not sure even this game is totally my cup of tea.

Still playing it, just not sure what to make of it.

2

It’s an absolutely incredible game but I haven’t played red dead 2 yet so not sure how they compare.

I got rather emotional when it ended but there are still so many easter eggs to collect and other side missions to finish.

Use a map like this to find things outside of the storyline: GTA 5 Map - Los Santos and Blaine County - IGN

Finding all the parachute jumps for instance is a lot of fun.

The only bad thing about the game is there is a lot of commuting.

Also worth saying is that the game has a British background and the humour is definitely more British - sometimes it gets quite dark.

3

I am at the beginning of the game. Can I only store 1 car in my garage at a time? Or could I, in theory, steal every car off the street and park them in my garage, adding them to my collection?

4

I like having general chat about games, please continue.

5

Vague spoilers ahead (as in general themes rather than specific plot points)

Unpopular Opinion, as the kids say: GTAV was probably the most overhyped and disappointing game I’ve played. I’ll preemptively state that I played it several years ago and was uninspired so I’m not going to be able to debate fine details at this point. Only Franklin was remotely interesting, Michael was a putz and Trevor seemed solely designed to appeal to 12 year olds wanting to be edgy via video games. The repeating plot seemed to be “You’re crime guys! You do a crime! Oh, actually you fucked the crime up because you’re stupid as fuck… and now everyone is laughing at you and stealing your lunch money. Crime guys!”. By the sixth time I watched my crew of idiots being emasculated by other crime guys or government guys or car theft guys or whoever, I was ready to uninstall.

The city, in many ways, was duller than other similar games. Sure, you can play golf and ride a rollercoaster… but you can’t rob a store unless it’s one of a handful of gas stations? Really? Even Mafia II, where everyone wanting GTA 1950 and whined when it wasn’t, at least allowed you to rob any store or restaurant you went in. I mean, I’d really rather be able to rob a store than play tennis in my crime games. I found the inability to hold onto cars disappointing (again, compared to Saints Row, Mafia and similar titles); you could jank around with the impound function and PC allows you to mod in ways to hold cars but it felt weird that your grand auto theft was so ephemeral.

Looking at recaps for the story, it looks like I was at maybe the 80% point before I couldn’t wring any more interest out of it. I only lasted that long because everyone kept saying how great it was that I was waiting for any part of it to hook me. But the plot fell flat, the “fantasy fulfillment” of a life of crime wasn’t there, the shooting and stuff wasn’t anything special and the city was detailed but not really fun unless I wanted to do weird side shit or just drive around YOLOing through civilians and cops. Mafia had much better stories, Saints Row was a better “let’s do fun crimes” game, Watch_Dogs had better wandering civilians if that’s your bag, etc. I did like the talk radio though – Chakra Attack!

6

There’s a lot of crass humour and stereotypes, which is pretty typical for a GTA game. Michael’s family is a bunch of whining entitled jerks (himself included), for instance. Trevor is completely ridiculous.

Personally, I liked the game but didn’t love it (which is what I’d say about RDR 1, as well). My favourite parts were planning the heists, but there were only around four of those (and as noted by Jophiel, there is a lot of “psych! you don’t get a big pile of money after all”). I found the switching back and forth between protagonists more jarring than intriguing.

My sentimental favourite is GTA Vice City, although I’d probably find it unplayably clunky nowadays.

As for garages, eventually you unlock the ability to purchase large multi-car garages. Although it’s somewhat pointless for me because I tend to wreck cars so frequently and it’s easy enough to just steal a new one.

7

Well, I think you’re pretty much on track with most of these observations.

Lamar is supposed to be annoying as hell. A big part of the game is Franklin realizing that his old “friends” from the hood are seriously holding him back.

But at the same time, you realize that Michael is just a whiny fucking putz. He gets a free ride out of a life of crime, and then spends years moaning about how useless his life is, and how much he hates his family, which is pretty much all his own fault.

Trevor, as a literal serial killer/cannibal/rapist is the most sympathetic character in the game, because he’s literally the only one who realizes exactly how fucked up he is.

8

Let’s say I’ve played a lot of it, both as a single-player experience and a lot more online, under special circumstances.

The game is rather crass, and the series has always been rather crass. After GTA IV, however, it’s a breath of fresh air because it’s kind of a return to bombast rather than an attempt to tell a really significant story. GTA V in particular, however, is a moral dystopia: there isn’t a single major character you meet that isn’t terrible in some way; I think the most sympathetic individual is “Chef” the crack chemist.

Trevor, in particular, well, you’ll know when you meet him. He sucked the air out of any scene he was in, but as far as that sort of thing goes, I appreciated it. It was said he was patterned after typical player behaviour, and I kind of can believe it. I may have driven for ten minutes, just flicking off traffic (equip no weapon, aim and “fire” at cars) just to hear him be insulting.

The solution for most of the driving is, if you have to do it and you’re not good at it, do it with Franklin. Franklin’s “power” is bullet-time-in-cars, where you also get near-infinite grip. Also the more you use any given stat (super powers included) the better it gets, so it may be worth just pootling about and doing as much slow-mo driving as you can to max out your gauge.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. Except for one part of the game I had difficulty with which I’m going to spoiler, along with a way to get through it faster.

When you’re working for the FIB, you need to do an “enhanced interrogation” sequence as Trevor, and then have to find a guy to snipe as Michael. You can just pick off any random jamoke right away and skip most of the torturing as a result.

I appreciate them trying to slide a political message about government-sanctioned torture, but I’m not interested in being lectured about stuff I already knew about, and while I’m not normally squeamish, this was really uncomfortable.

Apart from that, I thought it was great fun. Though I had vastly more fun online, where you can make your own custom mute psycho and get involved in all sorts crazy online rambunctions, some of them cooperative and some of them competitive. But if you choose to do this, play in private “servers” and only with your friends, because the cheating in public worlds is obnoxious and unpunished.

9

The two times I can remember having trouble with a driving sequence (e.g. having to try more than twice) are the boat chase on the freeway and a sequence where you have to jump a motorcycle onto a moving train. It sounds like you already completed the boat chase, so I don’t think there are too many big driving challenges ahead of you (IMO).

10

I’ve never played a game that worked so hard to get me to dislike it. Saint’s Row 3-4 are better. Mad Max is better. Sleeping Dogs is MUCH better. Play those games instead. The graphics are a bit clunkier (except for Max, which is gorgeous), but everything else is streets ahead.

11

So do I and I have enjoyed the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla journaling that is similar. I may never play it, but I like hearing thoughts. I’ll continue.

12

I’ll toss my vote in for open video game discussions. Ones that don’t interest me, I just won’t read (like I don’t read most of the sports stuff but don’t begrudge it being here)

13

I liked GTA 5 but much of the ‘why’ will go over your head if you’ve not played the previous GTA games.

Franklin is an nod to “Grove Street,” the street gang at the center of GTA San Andreas. This is why he wears green all the time and drives a green Harley. Their rival gang (the Ballas) wear purple and there’s a 3rd gang wearing gold as well. This is just the back story of one character. GTA 5 is filled to the brim with references to previous games.

You can still enjoy the game without knowing the back stories of course. But when you see your attention being directed at something which doesn’t make sense, that’s probably why.

14

I keep trying to play it but always lose interest after you switch to Trevor. I just don’t like his character at all, and I don’t like playing characters I don’t like. The forced “character switching” mechanic doesn’t appeal to me in general (I didn’t like switching to John Marston in RDR2 either, the game could have ended when Arthur died as far as I was concerned). Never completed the game.

15

Agreed, I hated Trevor at first and lost much of my will to play when forced to use him. It does get better and he’s a little more likeable when he’s around Michael.

16

I am ready to do a big jewellery heist, so it kind of feels like it has built up to that. I guess the game is pretty good and I looked at a printed map and realized how big the open world is.

The heists and shootouts in RDRD2 were really great. I’m hoping we get some great moments in this as well. I’m happy to re-do shootouts, etc.

Hey, can I carry any kind of healing item? I remember the prologue telling me to walk over healing items to heal, but do my characters every carry any kind of healing items?

17

I found the story in Saints Row 3 to be pretty thin. If you’re just playing for goofy mayhem it’s possibly superior, though.

18

I absolutely loved GTA V. I upgraded my video card when I got it (back when it was pretty new). What a fun game that was!

I would switch to a controller for the driving part, and then back to mouse and keyboard when I was out of the car. We had some XBox 360 controllers which work just fine on a PC.

19

Healing items: Okay, bear with me. In multi-player, you could nosh on snacks for healing. These were in the form of chocolate/energy bars, mostly. The snacks menu was bound to your “special action” key which you could access, and holding the button down meant your character ate more of the food and got more healing from it.

You could also swap out armour, but doing that was a tedium of navigating that M menu, which in the online game, got more bloated over time.

You could also drink beers and get shitfaced. This had no practical benefit but when your teammates catch up to you and your pile of empties, it was convenient shorthand to let them know how tired you were of waiting.

I don’t see why that isn’t in the single player game, but I’ve been wrong before. I recall that my approach to healing in the game was mostly putting him in cover and hot-swapping to another dude, and they’d heal passively to some extent.

(And tangentially, I had a LOT of fun in Saints Row 3, because after Saints Row 2 the hilaribombast was awesome. AND COOP, OMG. But the joy from 3 came from 2 being so schizophrenic. That’s a tangent for another time.)

20

Was Saints Row 3 the one with a mission where there’s a tiger in the passenger seat, and it starts mauling you if you drive sloppy?

I need to replay that.