My lack of posts over the past week or so can be attributed to lethargy, visitors, heat and the price of fish; but the main culprit has consumed forty three hours of my life so far and is likely to consume several more before I am done. During those forty three hours I have:
Driven more than 1,000 kilometres. Played golf and tennis. Raced jet skis, cars and bikes. Flown helicopter and fixed wing aircraft. Purchased a range of business establishments. Accumulated a personal fortune in excess of 250 million dollars.
Perhaps less positively I have: Shot more than 25,000 rounds of assorted ammunition. Killed more than 60 policemen out of a total body count of more than a thousand. Deprived many citizens of their transport which, more often than not, has ended up trashed. Accumulated my fortune through a series of heists and by playing the stock market based on targeted assassinations.
Of course it could only be My Little Pony’s Summer Adventures Grand Theft Auto 5.
I have played all the GTA games, with GTA4 being particularly enjoyable because The Son was involved in the production and had his name emblazoned for eternity in the credits. He was involved with GTA5 too; but they didn’t recognise his contribution in the credits so of course I should have boycotted the game; but instead I spent around thirty hours playing it on the Xbox 360.
GTA5 is massive in scope, a large thriving city and surrounding countryside. The level of detail is astounding, but it all looked a little crap at Xbox 360 resolution. So when the PC version arrived last month, well I just had to indulge.
If you have the processing power, and I don’t, you can play at 4k resolution.
Even with my more modest equipment, it looks fantastic on a 27" monitor.
Some screen shots here show what is available; but these don’t do justice to the living city that is laid out before you. It’s an impressive creation, a product of tens of thousands of manhours, five years of development time, and close to $300 million in development costs. A large investment; but with close to fifty million copies sold and revenues at around 2 billion dollars and rising, developers Rockstar must be reasonably satisfied.
It’s not only larger in geographical scope than GTA4, it also has a more involving storyline, with three separate characters to let loose upon the unsuspecting citizens of Los Santos. There is Michael, the retired gangster with a dysfunctional family; Franklin the young hood, just waiting to be led astray; and Trevor the psychopath who loves his Mum but hates everyone else. Rockstar summaries their personalities as “Michael embodies greed, Franklin ambition and Trevor insanity.” Worryingly, it is Trevor who has the best lines and for me is the most fun to spend time with….
You can jump between characters at will, except when they come together to perform heists where each has a role to play and you are switched between them at different points in the mission. There are 69 missions in the main story, a number that is no doubt not coincidental, but this only represents around 60% of the game. There are dozens of other chance encounters and minor missions to perform, sufficient for probably eighty hours of gameplay if you want to do everything.
What makes GTA5, and the earlier versions, such a joy to play is the intelligence, humour and satire that is imbedded in the experience. This is exemplified by the news channel which plays on most of the nineteen in-car radio stations. It’s called Weasel News (tag line: “confirming your prejudices”) and not only integrates reports that reflect your recent transgressions; but provide spoof news reports and advertising that consistently take the piss out of modern Western life. The humour continues in the many hours of conversations between the protagonists and other characters which mainly take place on the drive to undertake missions. Or you can just stand on a street corner and listen to the conversations of pedestrians, many of whom have their faces buried in their smartphone.
I expect I have a couple more weeks to enjoy the single player game; before I plunge into the multi-player options which could easily take over my life for months. GTA5 is undoubtedly the current pinnacle of computer entertainment; and will probably remain so until GTA6.
So many games, so little time.
Comments 🔗
2015-05-06| subroto mukerji saysAh well, boys will be boys (indulgent chuckle).