Retro|Spective 102R: Grand Theft Auto

[Cassius_Smoke]

You can't say anything other than, yeah it's brilliant. It pains me because of all the re-releases and everyone from a chav to a Eton college grad has played it, but it's damn good. A real technical achievement and fun to play. Like any GTA it's just a playground to cause chaos in.
Online, again is one of the most mental and fun things I've ever played.

[Neon Ignition]

I've started a playthrough of GTA5 again and it's still fun even if there are moments in its design where Rockstar could have mixed things up a little (like how it gets old how often you have to go to Michaels house).

The weaknesses of GTA4 set GTA5 up to impress like the old titles did and that's pretty much what the experience went like. But, bad as the decade long wait has been, the game still holds up which proves the success of its design more than anything. It still feels current. I literally just need GTAO to become a separate thing entirely so the singleplayer entries can release more frequently, GTAO is not worth the issues in delivery it's caused.

[QualityChimp]

Started GTAV on XBox 360 and was genuinely impressed with how good it looked on the creaking machine.
Flying over the city as the sun fades and the city's lights start twinkling is magic.

I mentioned elsewhere that I stopped playing when I heard that you could affect the stock markets on a mission where you kill a CEO and stopped to research it and never went back.

As per my Modus Operandi, I spent bloody ages doing no missions beyond the mandatory opening ones and spent weeks unfogging the map and looking for the gold bar stashes. Must've unlocked the 2nd character after about a month of playing!

The story didn't really grab me though as I never really liked any of the protagonists, although I liked the swap mechanism.
Ultimately I really don't like Trevor.

Doubt I'll ever finish GTAV because I'd have to start again as I'm now on PS4.

[QualityChimp]

I wanted to do a separate post for GTA Online, because as Neon says, it's a different game.

Opening with the caveat that we normally used a glitch to get a personal server with no chavs on it, me and 4 other mates had an absolute blast with this over lockdown.

We made Monday night our gaming night so we'd meet and keep up virtually, working our way through a series of co-op games like The Forest, Strange Brigade and Red Dead Online.

Finally we moved to this when it was in a sale and we played it for months.
Doing the heists were amazing and after all the prep-work to rob the casino, we had genuine butterfly nerves as we drove their in our disguised bug-spray van.

The other DLCs were great, too, with loads of amazing, bonkers scenarios, fulfilling loads of Bond and action film dreams as we drove around in submarine cars or stole planes etc.

The Cayo Perico DLC was a two-edged sword, in that it was great fun and yielded the most cash, but the downside was that it was the best way to make money by a country mile and made all other businesses obsolete, so repetition set in after robbing the island for the zillionth time.
Had some fun running it through with @kryss, @teddymeow and @randombs, though.
Organising a session with people in the UK, Canada and Japan was an amazing feat of planning!

By the time the car-racing DLC dropped, interest was waning and after a couple of car meet visits and races, there was little to make you return.

Eventually, we were most thrilled by the races, finding the best official and mod-made ones.
We've had tears of laughter and roars of rage playing through some of those races and it's been brilliant fun.

Playing in open sessions is a ballache, though, as there's always some child on an Opressor MKII, flying around and killing people minding their own business, which is a real shame.