Life of Kika Collage

Friday, December 13, 2013

YES, I KNOW I'M LATE: MY REVIEW OF GTA V


(I know some of you readers are thinking, why did it take you so long to finish this game?
I am not a person who discusses all the aspects of my life on the internet, and although I blog about my interests, and I try not to reveal anything that would exploit my privacy in any way. I flaunt my opinions and that's it. You may see what my face looks like from the header at the top of my blog, but that's all that I am going to reveal about myself).
 
Here's my review:
 
I bought Grand Theft Auto around the time it was released back in September and I finally managed to finish the entire game yesterday. It took me 3 entire months of exhausting gameplay to close another important gaming chapter in my life. And once again, I felt choked up at all of the endings. And I feel happy that I am a part of such an incredible generation to play all of these groundbreaking and culturally influential platforms. Grand Theft Auto V is not to be ignored by any indie gamers who feel like society is being mentally chewed up by ignorance involving negativity in social media, the conditions of the broken government, and the downfall of humanity. The irony of GTA V is that all of society is down the shithole and we are laughing at it because its all satire. And these sort of games really reflect how horrible we have become as human beings both from the 1%  and the 99%. Maybe people don't pay attention to the conspiracies flaunted very openly in the game, but at least the gameplay is sharp, the character acting is Oscar-worthy and the overall story is just another fantastic edition to the infamous series.
 
So the introduction of a multi character gameplay had to be done for the latest installment, because popular game editors have the reputation of using the same features over and over and in every series (*Cough cough*, Assassin's Creed). In GTA V, everything was over the top. The setting had to be more vast and lively, the missions had to be more intense and the characters had to be more vulgar and complex. The development of  Michael, Trevor and Franklin really surprised me because at first I thought to myself, what was their chemistry going to be like in the game and how do their backgrounds end up helping one another out. In this series, character development was crucial to the story in the gamer. The interchangeable feature of switching from character to character really gave me a sense of freedom and less of structural gameplay. I decided to do whatever I felt like doing at the moment with a certain character. Because we all knew (not to be bias) that Trevor is the best character ever written for a video game. But the fact that I could customize my characters with tattoos, and clothes really made me invest my time into all of the characters. And I was amazed that the editors took note into the fact that I could train my character into bettering their skills when it came to stamina, shooting, driving, and stealth kills. I felt like the characters were more important to pay attention to because you had an impact of controlling them in every way possible.

As much fun as the characters were so free to control, I feel like they lacked some emotional value from time to time. Yes, their side comments when running over people or getting blow jobs in cars by strippers are by far hilarious: Its just that I had the impression that it was all for the entertainment value. Some of the side missions, where Franklin helped a paparazzi made him seem like he had no respect for people's privacy and I thought Franklin to be somewhat of a person who had his limits to helping strangers out. Or like when Michael helped a widow go underwater to find some missing pieces made everything seem out of place. And the one thing I noticed about the game is that the secondary characters were obviously less developed and you couldn't really interact with that many people. I mean, you couldn't even have a girlfriend for crying out loud. Just the social interaction between other characters seemed juts a little dead.

The setting of Los Santos was by far the most interactive gaming playground yet. You could do a good amount of activities in an entire day from hunting to yoga to water racing with jet skis and sky diving. At one point I mistaken myself for playing Red Dead Redemption every time I killed animals up in the mountains. And you can do the obvious Generation Y shit like go shopping and customize your cars. I wish the game gave more opportunities in purchasing real estate that you can interact with just like in the old GTA games. And I was kinda surprised that there was only one strip club. At least in GTA 4, there were restaurants you could explore and car dealerships you could mess around with. Its weird to see such an open space with some areas being so limited. That's where I saw the imbalance in the game for sure.

Now, Im not going on some hate rant with this game, but there is always improvement suggested for the next installment.

The duration of the game seemed just a little short, but luckily with all the optional side missions, you can really put in a lot of time into the entire gameplay. I just hope that all the easter eggs will be worth finding in the end.

What else...Oh yeah lets talk about the heists. THERE WERENT ENOUGH OF THEM! Seriously! For such a radical game, you'd expect to explode a building every five seconds. I wanted the adrenaline filled action and I decided to choose all the outlandish choices for doing all of the heists. Some of the heists weren't all well thought out, but I have to blame the editors for running out of ideas or stealing yet another obvious plot from any 80s cop movie. The heists should have been the pinnacle of the game, but they failed to impress me at times.

This game was a great investment in my collection and the replay level on this game is at its absolute highest. Characters are well developed, gameplay is easily adaptable, driving is superb. Its a GREAT GAME. The missions could be more exciting and thought out, the areas should be just a little more interactive, but overall this game is a commercial success for a reason. Maybe in the next installments, we will see major improvements.
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment