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Grand Theft Auto V

Overview of the Game

Grand Theft auto V or GTA V is a third person action-adventure game released in 2013 and developed by Rockstar. It is part of the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto series and the follow up to Grand Theft Auto IV released in 2009. The game is set in a fictional city called Los Santos based on the real life city of Los Angles, the game follows three main characters. Michael a middle aged retired bank robber, Trevor an eccentric criminal who lives off the grid in the desert behind Los Santos, called Blaine County, and Franklin a young criminal, who wants to move into bigger things.

In the game you follow the story of each of the characters and their lives and pasts intertwine to bring them together. The games main focus is heists from banks, jewellery stores and a variety of other robberies. Below is a trailer for Grand Theft Auto V on the new generation of consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhkHFSytVU

From left to right Michael, Franklin and Trevor (Image Link)

Gameplay

The game was released for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, it was met with huge praise because of the amount of detail and content in the game. The graphics are very well done and realistic, the game has a weather system and cycles through day and night. It has since been announced that the game will be re-released for Xbox one and Playstation4 in late 2014 because of these consoles superior specifications. The game has had some extra content added as well as an improved weather system and updated traffic density to take advantage of the amount of processing power the new consoles have.

Overall the game controls very smooth, this is a staple of the Grand Theft Auto games as a whole, which have always been known for their driving and gun fighting mechanics. While playing the game you encounter many people, some friendly, some enemies, and because of this you have to do a lot of fire fights in the game. The enemies are very intelligent and take cover behind near by walls and cars making it a challenge to take them down. Because of the games nature of being focused on criminal activities most of the enemies you encounter during the game are police, this is done in a way traditional of the series when you first commit a crime a normal police car and police officers will arrive, if they can’t contain the situation they will call in different levels of backup such as S.W.A.T teams, the FBI and even sometimes the military each of these branches of resistance have their own weapons and vehicles, making it a challenge to get away.

In Grand Theft Auto V, you can improve each characters attributes in things such as stamina for running, shooting skill to get better aim or driving so that you can keep control of the car at high speeds easier.

Apart from the games mechanics and content, one of the biggest talking points on release was the size of the in game world, which is much bigger than any of the previous games in the series. The huge world offers a diverse array of things to do such as flight school, street races or even sky diving, because of all the content in the game it keeps it fresh and adds a lot of replay ability to it.

Below is a video of people performing stunts in Grand Theft Auto's online mode, this showcases some of things you can do in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmRcF07ip bw

Pictured in the top left, the map for Grand Theft Auto V (Image link)

The Story

As mentioned in the first paragraph the story follows three characters, the main one being Michael De Santa, a retired bank robber once known as Michael Townley an infamous stick-up man. Now though Michael lives in Los Santos with his wife and two kids, all of which have a strained relationship with each other. Michael is in an informal form of witness protection mainly to hide himself from another character Trevor who was once his partner in crime but is now hunting him down after a heist went wrong.

Moving onto Trevor Phillips, Michaels former partner, who is now living in the desert behind Los Santos called Blaine Country. Trevor is very eccentric and a little bit insane, he makes his money through drugs and various other criminal activities. Although he has been hunting Michael for years he doesn’t know the he lives just a few hours away in Los Santos, this is revealed to Trevor during the story

The third and final character is Franklin “Frank” Clinton a young criminal who is getting involved in gangs and works repossessing cars in a less than legal way, during one of his repossession jobs he meets Michael who takes him under his wing as a criminal protégé.

As their story’s progress the truth of what happened between Michael and Trevor is revealed as their story’s start to cross paths.

Multiplayer

As mentioned in the over view of the game, aside from a story Grand Theft Auto V also has a multiplayer mode, this was a huge selling point for a lot of people due to the hugely successful multiplayer of GTA V’s predecessor Grand Theft Auto IV, in V’s multiplayer the developer stated that it would be more in depth and deeper than any multiplayer they had made before.

The multiplayer was almost as content packed as the story mode game, with vehicles made just for the multiplayer, character customization ranging from hairstyles to full body tattoos. Apart from this players have the ability to buy property of different levels, some apartments costing $5000 and some closer to 1 million.

The online part of the game wasn’t without its flaws and fair share of criticism, upon its first few days of release the online multiplayer was

close to unplayable, due to the games servers not being able to handle the amount of people who were trying to get online.

Reviews

Metacritic – Meta Score 97/100 (Website)

Gamespot – “It’s exhilarating, swapping between these roles and these perspectives, and it’s part of what makes GTA V the current pinnacle of open-world mission design.” – Carolyn Petit, Gamespot (Website)

IGN – “Grand In Every Sense, 10/10” Keza Macdonald, IGN (Website)

Overall

I personally enjoy the Grand Theft Auto series and I thought that this release was the best in the series’ history with the amount of detail, content and endless side activities to do it offers something for everyone. The main story it’s self has 69 individual missions, this isn’t including all the side activities and mini games on offer.

The game can be replayed multiple times, as I have done, and each time you find something new that you didn’t encounter on the previous play through.

The smooth driving, aiming mechanics and overall fluidity of the controls and the blockbuster movie level story telling make Grand Theft Auto V a must play game