Like anyone cares about reviews of this game, you all know it's good. So instead, here's an hourly report of my first day with GTAV
Hour 1 - Starting Out and N!ggas
God damn this game took an age to install, by the time the people who went to the midnight launch got it going the shops would have been open anyway. Makes sense though, the map to this game is almost too big to go on my wall.
I'm expecting the usual Rockstar gambit of the majority of this game being a tutorial, but feeling the game so far they've generally polished everything. The San Andreas RPG elements are back (thanks Crackdown), now half your health bar regenerates and you can one hit nut people in the street (thanks Saints Row) and the driving and shooting in general feel a lot less heavy (thanks this entire generation). Cars do seem to spin out a lot though, that probably happens less as you level up.
I've forgotten their names already because I'm dumb but I think I'm going to love these black characters, their banter is hilarious especially the Arab car dealer. I should probably point out the use of "n!ggas" because that is seriously about 60% of these guys dialogue...the light tone of the PS2 games is definitely back and thank god.
Hour 2 - Getting Priorities Right
Alright I was a good boy and did story stuff for like a little over an hour, now to find the true source of hype, the strip clubs.
I hit up the local place, I went straight for the private lounge because I'm a player son. The security didn't like though, three fist fights later I found myself in the girls dressing room...but they had already ran for it WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME. The cops showed up and weren't interested in my freestyle pole dance and gunned me down.
Alright, I get straight out of the hospital and head back to the strip club, let's check these girls out. It seems pretty similar to GTAIV to be honest...wait BOOBS. ACTUAL BOOBS. And there's a feel up the stripper minigame! Touch Nikki to increase her "like" meter, YES, I knew these mechanics would find their way out of the Japanese DS market someday.
She likes me! We're going back to her place, Nikki shows how much of a rounded character she is by announcing "mmmmm I bet you can make me cum" on the way back to her place. If there's quicktime events involved, I got it covered. Wait, how long have I been doing this?! It's time for a new section.
Hour 3 - Stuff Actually Happens
I'm only a couple of hours in and it's already noticeable that the missions flow a lot better than the ones in GTAIV. Rather than commuting from cutscenes you seem to drive to a place and stuff immediately happens and you have to react. A chase sequences with a stolen boat right out of 70s cop show occurred and I had to catch protagonist 1 Michaels' son (who is basically me) as protagonist 2 Franklin threw bad guys into in the road.
The obvious change of tone is really making this game noticeably more fun, already this game is making me do that thing that only Rockstar games make me do, where I turn the subtitles on for no reason other than I don't want to miss a word of dialogue. Michael and Franklin are both straight guys but they play the straight guy to a wacky world and their seriousness is constantly being played for laughs. Also neither of them murdered 20 kids in a war or something which also helps, plus the sun is out. Life is great.
I'm not sure how I feel about this character switching mechanic yet in terms of gameplay. I do see the plot benefits of it as you have different characters doing different stuff at the same time so it goes a little way to help the sandbox storytelling issue of completely murdering the pacing. Hey...I want to go back to the strip club...
"Yo man, does employee in the month mean nothing to you!?!"
Also stumbled across my first helicopter OH MY GOD they control so much better, you can actually screw around in them and not end up in a skyscraper within five seconds. Now doing a mission where you have to tow some abandoned vehicles in something that looks like the hick truck from Cars, the whole point of this seems to be Rockstar saying LOOK HOW COOL OUR PHYSICS ENGINE IS.
Hour 4 - Finding Your Mom
Of all the things I thought would be in this game, Dog "Sniff-O-Vision" was not one of them. Franklins dumb gangster pal Lamar (whose name I forgot earlier) has a dog called Chop who lives up to his name. He also humps other (male) dogs and you have to pull him off to get him back on track...this is a mechanic that exists in this game...
Onto my first race mission, and I've now found something about this game I don't like. I liked how they made the driving less heavy and feel smoother to GTAIV, but is there any impact in this game that doesn't instantly spin your car out and leave you crashing to a halt? It was really getting on my tits trying to win a race. Not just that, all the AI racers seem to be programmed to drive in a big flat conga line, but occasionally crash into each other and spin out, but if YOU try to spin them out they suddenly get tank physics and you just bounce off them and probably spin out GOOD WORK. There's also no clear indicator of what cars are even in the race, it's very easy to lose them in traffic sometimes...especially when they/you are spinning out. I hope the other races in the game are better because this is garbage.
But now it's time for the main event of GTA, FINDING PROSTITUTES, which was way easier than it was in GTAIV. I took my babe around the back of an alleyway by a church for bonus sinner points. They've limited the camera angles on the motions this time round to stop the "smash the door off the car for a better view" trick from last time, but the voice acting, the controller vibration and length is...excessive. Do you want people to jerk off to this or not Rockstar? You got to make up your mind. She tells me that she thinks she can really talk to me and that I should see her again, I hit her with my car for a quick refund. Tell it to Beelzebub, slut.
Hour 5 - UNDER THE SEA
I've noticed something icky about this game now, it has a nasty habit of disabling certain features in certain areas, it is now literally impossible to take out a gun in the strip club. You also can't run or jump around like a twat in there...but you can weirdly still beat up dudes. Why Rockstar? This is a sandbox, you shouldn't be trying to limit your player in any way.
There's also random events now that you can choose to intervene in. Some guy stole another guys wallet so I hit him with my car, you then get the choice of keeping the wallet or giving it back to the guy for a reward. I gave the guy his wallet back, got a stat boost, then capped him in the head three times as he was walking away and took the money anyway. COMMUNITY.
The adventures of Michael and Franklin continue, I still haven't seen enough of the benefits/disadvantages of the character hopping mechanic to comment on its addition to gameplay, but Rockstar were onto something here story wise. These guys broing it up on missions and having crazy adventures really give this game a spark of personality. Michaels wife has been bonking her tennis coach, so the boys go round to his house....and pull it down and leave it hanging off the side of a cliff. Again, it's nice that these characters are mean tough guys, but not absolutely psychotic and use murder as the solution to everything, at least I'm comfortable in the fact that my assholes are the smaller assholes in these conflicts.
Turns out it wasn't even the guys house and now we got trouble. The hopping mechanic comes into play here as you can either shoot the guys with Franklin or outrun them with Michael, so the game kindly gives you the option to go for your favourite tactic which probably won't be Michaels because spin outs. You better make sure you're confident in your choice though, the games AI certainly isn't going to make the other option work out for you.
I'M IN THE WATER, IT'S PRETTY!
Hour 6 - SMOKE WEED EVVVERRYYDAYY
Now having fun at a fairground, and I'm starting to appreciate the tweaks to the wanted level system now. If I say, wanna blow off some steam by smacking some old ladies in the face in line for the Ferris Wheel, instead of BS ring of authority that God beamed down upon us in GTAIV instead you get isolated units on patrol for you, and at long as you lay low your wanted level will still go away and you don't have to commute out of the area and commute back for more experiments. IT'S GOOD.
There's a minigame in a mission where you have to close internet pop ups and run anti virus software. Seriously...and a PROGRAMMER asks you to do this for him.
GTAV also seems to have an issue with not letting you dick around inside buildings or not, like one of most fun things to do in GTAIV was run inside the hospital and cause as much mayhem as possible. I hope there are buildings in the city somewhere that let you do this that I just haven't found yet.
I found a nice guy with a weed stand and now I'm tripping balls, so there's a bit where you shoot aliens with a minigun that goes on slightly too long to be funny. Yup, Rockstar have definitely noticed Saints Row.
Hour 7 - Fangasms
GTAV lets you rotate your car way easier than previous titles when it gets flipped over, which is a god send with...y'know...all the spinning out that's happening. After I optional mission where I helped my wife her walk cycle screwed up walking back into the house and then I hit her with my car....whoops.
"There was an Eastern European guy making moves in Liberty City but he went quiet" OOOOHHHHHHHHHHH, there's your GTAIV reference for you. Expect millions of Tumblr posts about how idiots fangasmed or something. We're heading to a jewellery store for our first heist, the main focus of this game allegedly, but first time for some Spy Kids stuff and get some shots of the place first with our Norman Jayden glasses.
The heist stuff is really interesting, you get a choice of different methods, and then there's a risk/reward mechanic where you hire drivers, gunmen and hackers to make your life easier. The better guys get higher cuts of your loot, but are much less likely to balls it up. We'll see how this plays out in motion soon enough.
Hour 8 - Money Money, Yeah Yeah
I'm really starting to appreciate how huge this game is now, as the story starts spreading me out across the city I'm constantly thinking "oohhh I wanna play there" or "can't wait til the online launches to crash blimps into people there!" The scale of this game is incredible.
On my way to the bank robbery, Michael has specific dialogue about the exact team I picked, it might seem like a little thing...and it is really but so few games bother with polish like that.
The bank heists are pretty cool based on the first (tutorial) one, the game demonstrates what happens if you cheap out on crappy guys and one of them is left in the dust, the game doesn't punish you though and still lets you have his loot. Strategy and employees do seem to have an affect on how things turn out. I also like how the game lets you actually loot the place yourself as opposed to the usual method of "collect the pile of green goo at the end of the corridor and run" as it actually creates tension as the alarms hit and you gotta make a run for it before the po-po start coming.
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