The Informer: When it comes to reviews, I’m full of it!
This week’s edition: Grand Theft Auto V (Part 2)
By Luke Leonetti
Game: Grand Theft Auto V
Series: GTA
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Release Date: 2013 (last gen versions), 2014 (Next gen versions), 2015 (PC)
Rating: M (17+)
This is part 2 of my GTA V review. If you haven’t read part 1, do it now before you read this by clicking here. Good? OK, let’s begin…
Now, I love GTA V. I really do. I mentioned everything I loved about it in my past review, so you can see my interest in the game. Hey, I even gave it a perfect rating! But, not everything perfect is safe from criticism. So, let’s dive in to see what isn’t very good about this game
THE CONS
- The map is kind of limited. Now, in my past review, I mentioned how large and cool the map was in this game, and it is. But, if you look closely, you’ll see that isn’t actually much in the map itself. It is extremely large, but Rockstar cheated when it was time to make it as large as they could, because 70% of the map is mountainous terrain and ocean. You can travel around the terrain, and it is available to find collectables, random events, and hidden weapons, but it’s hard to appreciate it because there isn’t much to do outside of Los Santos.
- There is a serious issue with padding. In case you don’t know what “padding” is, “padding” essentially is useless exposition in a story or dragging a story out in order to increase its length. Lost and The Walking Dead have a huge problem with that. This game uses “padding” in the form of missions. There are exactly 69 story missions, but some of them are VERY useless, and seem to exist solely to make the game longer. Here are the missions in question:
- The heist setups for Blitz Play. The heist setups in this game are actually really cool and interesting, and they show just how much planning it takes to accomplish these missions. But for Blitz Play, your setups are to… buy boiler suits and masks for your crew. These take less than 20 seconds to do, and they really shouldn’t have been in the game.
- “Did Somebody Say Yoga?” In this mission, Michael and his wife Amanda are having yet another spat with each other, and Amanda suggests Michael to do yoga in order to calm down. You have to push down the analogue sticks in random positions so you can watch Michael do yoga while Amanda sarcastically praises him. And it doesn’t even work, because Michael doesn’t calm down and yoga angers him more. Then there’s this very absurd part where Michael tries to hang with his son, Jimmy, but fed up with his dad being a jerk, drugs him before stealing his car and the rest of the family leaving him. Yeah, this was a weird moment.
- “Scouting the Port”. This mission, being the set-up for the Merryweather Heist, has Trevor bully Floyd, the cousin of Trevor’s friend Wade (who also is frequently bullied by Trevor), into letting him sneak into Floyd’s dead end job as a longshoreman to spy on Merryweather. It is frustratingly long, taking up to over half an hour to complete, and you have to perform menial tasks to blend in on the job such as: moving shipping containers via a crane and delivering said containers to a port. It really hits the nail on the head about how boring Floyd’s job is and you really feel bad for him.
- The Epsilon Program missions. They are optional and don’t count towards the 100% completion, so you can play the entire game without finding out that they exist (it can only be accessed by visiting their official in-game website, which you probably won’t). But if you choose to do them, then you will be stuck playing some of the most tedious and frustrating missions in the game. The Epsilon Program is a cult meant to parody the Church of Scientology, and it really feels like Rockstar hates Scientologists, because they go all out on trying to stick it to Scientology. In these missions the leader of the church, Chris Fromage, gets Michael to: spend insane amounts of money “donating” to the church (he’s really embezzling money so he can take a trip to the Cayman Islands), buy ugly robes to sleep in for 10 days straight, steal luxury cars for him, and run 5 miles through the desert in said robes while chanting “Kifflom” (the god worshipped by the Epsilon members). These missions are the absolute worst to play. Stealing the cars can take forever if you don’t have a guide. You have to wear the robes for 10 consecutive days, so you can’t switch characters in fear of Michael changing out of his clothes. Running through the desert is awful, and making Michael run can hurt your hands because of you tapping the controller for a long period of time, and the counter for how far you’ve ran will restart if you go out of the game zone. I had to tape down the run button and rubber-band the analog sticks so I wouldn’t get carpal-tunnel. And your reward for completing all of this? A rusty tractor that can’t even make it up the hill to Michael’s house. Fortunately, to get the gold medal, you can turn on the Epsilon program, and, if done successfully, can nab you over 2 million dollars! So, I recommend turning on Epsilon, or just avoiding them entirely.
- “By The Book”. This is a mission in where, under orders of the FIB, Trevor has to interrogate a man in order to gain information about a potential terrorist suspect via actual torture methods (like waterboarding and electrocution). I don’t really want to get into it but it’s very unsettling to see and actually play out a mission like this. I’d say look it up but that would mean watching a full-blown torture sequence. This is a fine example on how this game pushes it’s “M for Mature” rating and how this game is NOT for children at all.
- The station East Los FM. This station plays latino pop and rap and man is it annoying. You have a DJ with the worst voice imaginable, a short and repetitive song list, and the most annoying song in the world (El Sonidito by Hechizeros Band. The best thing is that you can actually find it by googling “Beep Beep Mexican Song”. I am not kidding). Get used to hearing Fresca by Milkman and Beep Beep Mexican Song over and over and over again.
- The station Channel X. This plays hardcore punk. I was interested in this station for a little bit, but, like East Los FM, has a very short set list. I had to stop listening to the station after hearing My War by Black Flag for the billionth time.
- In the past games you’d make money on virtually every mission. This time though, you rarely earn cash for missions and the side quests usually require you to do the work of some weirdo who stiffs you of your pay. How do you make money, then? The stock market! Invest money into stocks, and watch it plunge or skyrocket randomly. It’s a total gamble and rarely do you make a profit with it–just like in real life.
- This game has a tendency to not tell you how to do things, forcing you to look them up. The collectable items are scattered around the map, but of course you aren’t given a hint as to where they actually are. The stock market is a big mystery as well. One thing Trevor can do is take unsuspecting hitch-hikers to the Altruists, a cult up in the mountains, and receive a small fee. Of course, the game never actually states what happens if you safely deliver the hitch hikers to their destination, so if you do take some people up to the mountains, you’ll miss out on a huge reward, such as a crew member for your heists, or $60,000. Finally, Franklin has a pet dog named Chop that the player can train via a downloadable iOS app. The only time the game mentions something like that is where you get a vague mention of “the iFruit app”, and it’s blink-or-you’ll-miss-it. Did you know that Chop can be a great attack dog, and he’ll help you find collectables scattered around the map? That only happens if you train him, and you can only do that via iFruit. And the app is only available on the App Store, so if you have a Samsung or an Android phone, you’re out of luck.
- Buying properties are extremely annoying. They cost an insanely high amount of money, and only make a set-amount every week, so it takes forever to make a profit. The Sandy Shores Airfield that Trevor purchases early on actually can make a relatively good amount of money since the missions for it are very easy, but other than that, they aren’t very good. The worst offenders are a bar called The Hen House, which costs $80,000 and doesn’t even make a $1,000 a week; the movie theaters, which cost millions to buy and don’t make much money at all; and the golf course, which costs like $150,000,000 and doesn’t give you any return other than free golf. These aren’t very important and I recommend just not buying any businesses.
- The characters each have their own special ability that they can access for a brief period of time (about 15-30 seconds). Franklin has “concentration” (he can slow down time while driving), Michael has “bullet time” (he can slow down time while shooting) and Trevor has “rage” (he can deal twice as much damage in combat while enemy attacks take half as much damage). They seem cool at first, but it’s very arcade-like and soon they become just flashy and unnecessary, especially when you level up your abilities. I really only used these abilities once they were introduced and occasionally during shoot-outs–and that’s only where you need them.