If there was one criticism of Grand Theft Auto 4 that evidently stung Rockstar, it was the complaint that it lacked an endgame. Liberty City was an incredible place, cramming as much character into one city block as most open worlds manage in a thousand, but once Niko settled his last score, there wasn't much to do but cruise around waiting for the DLC.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is a welcome overreaction. Rockstar has rammed Los Santos and the surrounding desert and mountain areas with more things to do than I could describe in half a dozen reviews. I'm not sure it feels like the biggest open world in the series' history, but I think that's just because it's so easy to travel across quickly, and it's certainly the most densely packed with hedonistic thrills, stuff to buy and steal, random events and weirdoes who want something. Then there's the promise of GTA Online, the evolving, persistent multiplayer component due to land for free at the start of October.
Packing in all those activities - from trash-diving to skydiving - hasn't impeded Rockstar's world-building either. Los Santos takes the basic geography of Los Angeles and files it down into something tight and entertaining to navigate, where every street has its own story etched in phony colonnades or chain-link fences and landmarks are lifted from real life (Grauman's Chinese, Chateau Marmont) or the silver screen (the house on stilts in Lethal Weapon 2 springs to mind), then woven together with practised ease.
Layered on top of that is Rockstar's trademark cynicism. GTA 4 took a few swings at fear-mongering 24-hour news, right-wing neo-cons and reality TV, but GTA 5 is spoiled for choice and the gag writers go for the jugular, skewering TV talent contests, self-help gurus, social media, internet trolls, political hypocrites and our obsession with sex, sex, sex. You can't go half a block without walking into a punch line and every radio ad is telling you to buy a new smartphone because you might as well get that last bit of liquidity out of the house while you still can, or else just keep jacking off in the garage after the kids have gone to sleep.
Perhaps these are obvious targets and perhaps GTA has little to add to the discussion, but the way the writers and designers crystallise what's absurd about them is still rare and welcome in a mainstream video game, and it feeds into what I love most about GTA: cruising around, glorying in the details and watching and listening as the game holds mirrors up to things we see every day - and then breaks them over someone's head. There's an intoxicating richness to that experience when you first arrive in Los Santos that I've missed in the five long years since GTA 4, and the game bites just as sharply after 30 hours.
The main thoroughfare through the game, though, is Rockstar's latest narrative hike up the criminal mountain, except this time it's delivered with a twist: GTA 5 has not one but three main characters, each with his own history and goals. Michael's a retired bank robber, bored out of his mind in a Vinewood mansion where his wife flirts with the tennis coach and the kids play video games and hang out with sleazebags. Franklin's more sympathetic - a young black man with a gangster-wannabe best friend and an appetite to learn. Trevor, who we meet later, is a certifiable bad guy who kills people for no reason and is tougher to like.
Things start off interesting as Rockstar plays it fairly straight, dragging Michael out of retirement with wit and a few good set-pieces as Franklin falls into step alongside him, before they plan a heist together and Trevor comes onto the scene. Apart from a few story-specific periods, you can switch between the three of them at any time by picking someone else on the character wheel. The camera zooms out into the sky, pans to their location and zooms in to find them - you might catch Michael cycling through the hills or Trevor waking up half-naked under a rock - in a process that only takes a few seconds. If they're in the same location then the transition is instant.
The best thing about their adventures together, which span 69 story missions, is that it breathes new life into Rockstar's mission templates. You still spend a lot of the game driving around having conversations, crouching behind walls, hunting down red blips on your mini-map and watching people swear at each other creatively in cut-scenes, but in the heat of battle you have more tactical options, and Rockstar has more directorial ones.
A high-speed chase on a freeway can see Michael firing out his window while Franklin climbs aboard a stolen yacht on a trailer, for instance, or Michael can shoot out a plane's engine with a high-powered rifle so Trevor can chase it on a dirt bike until it crashes spectacularly in the desert. Even simple gunfights are elevated by the ability to switch from Trevor in cover here to Michael on overwatch there to Franklin sneaking around on the flank. There are different approaches and outcomes throughout, and far fewer standard shooting galleries. Each character has a special ability, too - Franklin can briefly slow down time while driving, for instance.
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) / AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs) @ 2.5GHz
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 10 64 Bit, Windows 8.1 64 Bit, Windows 8 64 Bit, Windows 7 64 Bit Service Pack 1, Windows Vista 64 Bit Service Pack 2*
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA 9800 GT 1GB / AMD HD 4870 1GB (DX 10, 10.1, 11)
- PIXEL SHADER: 4.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 4.0
- SOUND CARD: 100% DirectX 10 compatible
- FREE DISK SPACE: 72 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB
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