GTA V

[Crafty+Mech]

The first GTA I played was Vice City... Loved it and finished 100%.

GTA IV was a wonderful looking game, but I just wasn't as into it, and just finished the story mode.

Just started playing GTA V, have not run over anybody yet as the game is still installing

.

Scratch that, ran over a guy in a fish costume.

.

A shark just ate me.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The first GTA I played was Vice City... Loved it and finished 100%.

You might try out GTA1&2 then. Both are freeware on the PC, though I'm afraid only 2 works about flawlessly on less ancient computers.

[evil_ash_xero]

I hear this is like THE game or something. I'm not into GTA or sandbox games, but does it live up to the hype? I know there was a lot of backlash to the hype that IV got. People saying it wasn't all that.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Has anyone who liked one GTA game didn't enjoy another one whatsoever?

[slk486]

I loved 3, absolutely hated 4, but quite like 5 so far, so yes

[Crafty+Mech]

You might try out GTA1&2 then. Both are freeware on the PC, though I'm afraid only 2 works about flawlessly on less ancient computers.

Back on the Xbox I played through GTA 3 when I bought it in a combo pack with Vice City. I definitely got the feeling that the richer environment of Vice was more to my liking, but 3 was fun to play as well.

I liked IV too, it just didn't engage me the same way Vice did. The city felt more alive, and the story was good, but there was something missing... maybe the fun 80's vibe from Vice. The city in V feels more like Vice to me with the neon, and bright lights at night.

And a jet ski.. the rolling ocean waves in V are amazing. I tooled around for around 30 minutes just hopping waves, until I went out to far and the jet ski died. Then a shark ate me.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Is it still like IV where you play someone too retarded to use a seatbelt? Or is it like San Andreas, where you don't have to worry about going through the windshield for every little fender bender?

It was way more satisfying when you could have plough through other cars or have serious collisions without worrying about dying (assuming your car hadn't exploded yet). SA giving you warning and enough time to usually escape the car before it exploded was a nice mechanic.

[SuperSoaker360]

Is it still like IV where you play someone too retarded to use a seatbelt? Or is it like San Andreas, where you don't have to worry about going through the windshield for every little fender bender?

They still don't use seatbelts and you still fly through the windshield.

The driving is much easier than IV and because of that it feels much more arcade-ish. Not too big a fan of it but it really does make you feel like a badass when you successfully weave through passing traffic while on an oncoming lane.

Haven't been victimized by a shark yet while swimming. I hope I never will, I have a fear of water monsters/predators

[Crafty+Mech]

They still don't use seatbelts and you still fly through the windshield.

The driving is much easier than IV and because of that it feels much more arcade-ish. Not too big a fan of it but it really does make you feel like a badass when you successfully weave through passing traffic while on an oncoming lane.

No bad driving mechanics can compare to the Vice City ambulance missions! Take a corner just a little bit to fast and you tipped over, reload and try again, lather, rinse, repeat.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

They still don't use seatbelts and you still fly through the windshield.

I read something where if you wait a second without moving after getting on a bike you'll put a helmet on (which reduces head injury damage if you're knocked off) and apparently the same happens if you get in a car, if you stay put for a second or hold triangle or something, you'll put your seatbelt on, as opposed to GTA IV which doesn't, apparently, give you this option. Can you confirm this? If that's the case, it seems a much better compromise than NO SEATBELTS EVAR.

[Crafty+Mech]

I read something where if you wait a second without moving after getting on a bike you'll put a helmet on (which reduces head injury damage if you're knocked off) and apparently the same happens if you get in a car, if you stay put for a second or hold triangle or something, you'll put your seatbelt on, as opposed to GTA IV which doesn't, apparently, give you this option. Can you confirm this? If that's the case, it seems a much better compromise than NO SEATBELTS EVAR.

I did notice that your character does put on a helmet when getting on a bike.

The vehicles seem to be able to take quite a beating in V, and the controls are definitely more "arcade" friendly then the tricky cornering of IV.

I'm really starting to enjoy the story line, the characters are well acted. Being able to switch between three different primary characters is an fun twist. Actually four if you count a brief stint as a dog!

If IV was a letdown for you after Vice City, I think V has a good chance of winning you over. At least that is the case for me so far, and I'm only at 6% complete.

[ZacharyB]

Grand Theft Auto III on the PS2 was the only one I liked enough to play through.

[Marc]

Loved them all, other than Vice City Stories and IV. This one is awesome, the sheer size and spectacle of the world often just sees me forgetting the missions and just cruising to see the sights. Driving is fun, shooting is the most solid it's ever been, and there's so much to see and do its unreal. Absolutely superb game in my opinion.

[charlie chong]

i just finished the missions last night.like marc says the combat and driving is better than ever before and the missions actually feel like your playing a real game rather than a frustrating fight with a rubbish combat/stealth engine.also the checkpoints etc are well placed this time which makes the missions so much less of a chore.seriously there's so much sick stuff in the singleplayer game that if they get the multiplayer right it could be one of the best sandbox games ever.also the metagaming stuff like the realtime working stock market is really cool (i made $180,000 on the market just since last night)

my xbox gamertag is game geanie and my rockstar social club id is blingladen if people want to make a crew for the multiplayer.

[Turrican]

I reloaded my PS2 file of San Andreas, the only one I played throughly, and stats say I've spent 100+ real hours, 400 ingame days in that fictional county; 89% or something like that of completeness for what it's worth.

I'm getting V this week, hopefully.

[BulletMagnet]

Semi-obligatory.

[Moniker]

The driving is pretty damn good in this iteration. Somewhere b/w NFS: Hot Pursuit and Forza Horizon. Combat is pretty much the same as GTA IV. You can go full unassisted, but it's usually pretty damn hard to see enemies that way. I've been using the middle assist option. Could be worse.

The one thing I miss from early incarnations of 3D GTAs is being able to memorize (or at least get familiar with) the street layouts. In GTA: SA, and IV, you were pretty much glued to your GPS to find anything. This one's a bit better in that arena. Areas have better contrast, and you get to know them.

The plot so far (~8 hours in) is good, but nothing mindblowing. Script is very solid, though. Soundtrack is pretty awesome, as expected - a couple of stations hearken back to Vice City's 80s synth pop, while others are straight classic rock or rap.

The minigames so far have been excellent. I spent a good 2 hours just playing tennis the other night. Also, no impossible/impossibly annoying missions thus far (GTA: SA's RC Plane mission, I'm looking at you).

[null1024]

The driving is pretty damn good in this iteration. Somewhere b/w NFS: Hot Pursuit and Forza Horizon. Combat is pretty much the same as GTA IV. You can go full unassisted, but it's usually pretty damn hard to see enemies that way. I've been using the middle assist option. Could be worse.

The one thing I miss from early incarnations of 3D GTAs is being able to memorize (or at least get familiar with) the street layouts. In GTA: SA, and IV, you were pretty much glued to your GPS to find anything. This one's a bit better in that arena. Areas have better contrast, and you get to know them.

The plot so far (~8 hours in) is good, but nothing mindblowing. Script is very solid, though. Soundtrack is pretty awesome, as expected - a couple of stations hearken back to Vice City's 80s synth pop, while others are straight classic rock or rap.

The minigames so far have been excellent. I spent a good 2 hours just playing tennis the other night. Also, no impossible/impossibly annoying missions thus far (GTA: SA's RC Plane mission, I'm looking at you).

Your description of the driving in particular makes me want this game really badly. Dunno when I'll buy it, but I probably will.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

They still don't use seatbelts and you still fly through the windshield.

I read something where if you wait a second without moving after getting on a bike you'll put a helmet on (which reduces head injury damage if you're knocked off) and apparently the same happens if you get in a car, if you stay put for a second or hold triangle or something, you'll put your seatbelt on, as opposed to GTA IV which doesn't, apparently, give you this option. Can you confirm this? If that's the case, it seems a much better compromise than NO SEATBELTS EVAR.

I'm not sure about the seatbelts in a car, but you do put a helmet on when riding a bike, although I don't think it reduces damage, because I was riding an ATV in a race and I had full health and my helmet on, and I crashed, and as soon as my head hit the ground, there was a giant blood splatter and my character died instantly.

Also, everyone try the following; it's pretty funny. Start sprinting, jump, and while in the air press the punch button, and your character will fall face first into the ground. It's hilarious if you do this while jumping from a building, and somehow I managed to kill some innocent guy sitting in a chair by face-diving into him.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

In a perfect world we would get Chinatown Wars II on the Vita instead of this shit.

Meh.

[Moniker]

Your description of the driving in particular makes me want this game really badly. Dunno when I'll buy it, but I probably will.

Well, that comparison was probably a bit generous. Not as good as a straight cross b/w NFS:HP & F:H, but still pretty damn good. Also quite digging the Trevor character (just got to his first few missions); about time GTA went full psycho.

[SuperSoaker360]

With the release of GTA Online for V, I decided to give it a spin this morning. Servers are overloaded to the point where making a character and even the tutorial is bugged and will leave you hanging in infinite loading screens. Apparently some people have also been having their online data corrupted forcing them to make a new character again because of the constant problems re-establishing connection with the cloud.

While it's a game that was bound to get high traffic on the servers, I'm left here wondering what Rockstar was thinking with the whole two week prep since that pretty much meant that they would be bottlenecking all the players. It's only going to get worse later on in the day during the peak hours.

Hopefully the servers will improve today. I'm really curious as to how the game will play out online.

[system11]

I completed this and all the side missions except for the stupid treasure hunts.

It's not the 10/10 the media says it is. It's a very good game and I enjoyed most of it, the story and characters carry what would otherwise be pretty bland. Graphics are not the mostly 30fps the media says they are, they're variable and seem to lurch around 20-25 most of the time with brief journeys into 30 in some of the desert areas, which look nicer than the cities too. The rich open world is a facade, I explored a lot of the map that you never ever have to go near, and there's nothing there. I mean, there are buildings, but there's nothing to do, never any people there, no items there, you can't go inside any of them. The driving is nearly good but spoiled by a junk handbrake - seems a shame that they lifted so much of the Midnight Club handling and then broke one of the important parts. Driving at high speed reminds me of playing Turbo from 1981, it turns into a car dodging twitchfest because everything except yourself and police travel at 2.3mph.

Trevor was entertaining, and worryingly reminds me of someone I know. Without Michael though the story would have been a dud, he's by far the most interesting person in the game. Very annoyed with the shit they put into the phone app only.