‘Grand Theft Auto V’ will have your heart racing
By CHRIS CAMPBELL | Howard Scripps News Service
“Grand Theft Auto V”
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genre: Role-playing
Publisher: Rockstar Games
ESRB Rating: M, for Mature
Grade: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
The open world of “Grand Theft Auto V” contains so many amazing characters, missions and diversions that just choosing a starting point from which to critique the game feels exhausting.
I’ll just say this: “GTA V” excels so thoroughly in presenting the best open-world experience in gaming that I spent the better part of a day doing everything but play the story mode. I played golf. I traded shares on the stock market. I shot pool. I had lunch and a few drinks. Went shopping. Did some yoga.
No kidding, you can (and should) take advantage of all that the game offers as diversions. Show me someone who claims to be bored playing this game and I’ll show you a liar.
When you do decide to focus on the actual story of the game, you are rewarded with three fascinating characters who form an unlikely bond that keeps you glued to their conversations and gives you a stake in the outcome of every action.
Michael retired from the crime game, but finds himself bored by the quiet life of luxury. Franklin constantly works to make his “poor house to the penthouse” dream a reality, but can’t quite make the leap. And Trevor — well, Trevor just wants to watch the world burn, and doesn’t mind being the guy who strikes the match.
As individuals, they could come off as one-note archetypes, but the game allows you to toggle between the three with a button press. Experiencing one of their heists from all three vantage points gives enormous depth to them and provides context for their words and actions during cutscenes and proof of why the team would falter if one of the legs of this criminal tripod were to fall.
Switching at random among them when not on a mission provides even more depth, as you drop in on them living their lives as if they were real people, not just avatars sitting off in a game menu waiting to be activated.
One thing that cannot be overlooked, however, is the game’s distaste for women. I’ve always found the industry’s misogyny a huge problem, but when you have such a high-profile (and high-selling) game like this with such overt issues regarding females, it’s a problem. The game plays into horrible stereotypes of women’s roles for male characters (simply vehicles for sexual encounters and general annoyance), and it’s shocking that there are few moments, ever, where a guy gets his just due from a woman for being a total jackass. This treatment alone is the sole reason the game doesn’t achieve a perfect score from me.
And while I’m on my soapbox: Do not buy this game for a kid. A game with this much violence, language, brutality toward your fellow man and so on should be enjoyed and appreciated by adults only who “should” know the difference between fiction on the screen and reality once they put down the controller. So don’t be an idiot; you’re not helping anyone.
There. I said it.
Other games, like “Skyrim” and “Fable,” offer an open-world life to explore, but “GTA V” surpasses those limits by giving you a world that feels fully populated and lived in. And in having three characters to experience the highs and lows with, instead of the typical one, it rounds out the story and provides depth you simply can’t find in any other modern game.
Without question, Los Santos is a place you will find yourself exploring for weeks and months, and may not be a place you want to leave anytime soon.
