I'd like to start with my first attempt at reviewing Grand Theft Auto 5.

Word of caution, I am not a reviewer, as such, I reserve the right to change my mind as I play more and time passes.  I just think to much and have to talk about it.  So here we go.

There is nothing quite as frustrating as the process of reviews.  If someone wants to hate something for personal reasons, it's annoying to get a lower score because of it.  And if someone gives a less than favorable review, people flip out and attack that person.  It is taken to a heightened level sometimes, like when someone gave the third batman film a poor review on Rotten Tomatoes that people got upset with, or the Metal Gear Solid 4 game getting less than a perfect score.

Seriously.  Chill out.  Getting upset just makes it a bigger deal than you want it to be.  Criticism can be harsh and even undeserved, yet it is our reaction to it that decides if it will change its perception.  Shrug it off, learn from it, or gripe and whine about it.

When the GTA game series first came out, I gave it a passing glance.  Looked a bit boring as overhead driving games reminded me of Spyhunter, but with no cool spy gear and a world to explore rather than a fun speed run, I passed on it.  My first foray into the world wasn't the third game, but Vice City which I purchased used for around 10 dollars.

Vice City made me laugh, the character was entertaining and the jokes were amusing.  After the original story for why he was there had been forgotten, I just drove around listening to the radio and enjoying the sights of the city.  It was entertaining to just steal cars, run around and do silly missions.  It was enjoyable, had a sense of humor to it, and heck, the eighties were hilarious already.

Then came San Andreas.  It was frikkin huge.  I rented it at first, and just got lost playing around.  The humor however never came up like the last one.  The rules to do things never stopped, there was always something else to do and eventually I hacked it, flew around in a jetpack and just explored, but within an hour I just got bored of it.


I played a short bit of GTA4 before just becoming bored of the series in general.

It confuses people when I say I get bored, but it's true.  The story was pretty deep and interesting, but I didn't care.  The world was just not all that exciting and I don't even remember what I was doing when I stopped playing.  Nothing stood out for me.  I think I got to watching television while playing the game and just gave up.  Too much realism can be a bad thing.

So now on to GTA5.  The game that people have been freaking out about like Skyrim.  My initial reaction was a resounding 'meh', yet when I played it there was a lot that was pretty nice about it.  The sheer level of detail is psychotic, being able to go into houses and see all the detail then drive anywhere and explore is on the level of creepy guys in their basement writing about their day in thousands of journals.

The controls of the game are pretty straight forward, once again trying to drive is frustrating, at best, as just a simple touch will slide my car making me swerve like an indecisive twit.  When I got the the second character (I forget the characters names. . . Franklin?) I LOVED the power to slow things down and still have perfect control while driving.  I thought for sure it would help when I tried out the race.  I was wrong.  During the race, trying to take turns was nearly impossible.  I'd end up spun around or just smash into the wall.  It claimed that the more I did and the more I upgraded the car the better I would get.  Is it really that much to ask for the ability to just drive correctly?  To be fair, I've always been terrible at even the simplest driving games that are not Mario Kart.  I often wish the controls handled like Mario Kart for other games.  I had so many many issues trying to escape from the police the first time in the stolen car.  After the sixth time I was ready to just give up.  I couldn't find an alley or hidden place anywhere in the city.  Eventually I just drove up a bridge into oncoming traffic using his ability to outrun the police.

So the movements and the setup was pretty impressive.  They fixed a lot of issues with the previous games control-wise and updated the graphics, tweaking the individual things that happen in the city transforming it into a living breathing world.

I played it longer than I thought I would, and I am interested in getting a bit farther and seeing what happens. So the fact that I am going to play more of it is a good indicator since that is more than an be said for the GTA4 game.

Here comes the resounding meh. . .

The characters feel exactly the same as the previous games.  I could care less about it being offensive or cursing for every single word for the sake of realism.  It doesn't really push the boundaries like everyone claims the series does, and that's my issue.  I keep hearing people who want things to be more offensive and more bloody in gaming like it is a divining rod of the best of the best.  Show people dying or being blown up, have them get choked with their own intestines!  Yeah!  That's not offensive, just boring.  It's awesome when you are a kid in Junior High.  That one kid who could curse and watch gorey movies was so awesome to us, which is the basic level of intelligence and imagination the game provides.  It's a game for children.

Dude!  Jimmy's got the newest Splatterhouse!  He's so awesome!

If gore and cursing and sexual innuendo things are in a well polished game, well then that draws me into the narrative as I'm playing, Spec Ops the Line, and Bioshock Infinite taking time to get serious and really make you think while doing all of that, then that's fun to me.  Or just going silly and crazy like Saints Row and Deadpool, then I laugh and get by enjoying myself along with fun gameplay. It sticks with me and makes me want to play it again.

I think Rockstar is afraid to do it now.  There are DOZENS of ideas they could easily incorporate into the GTA series that would really bring about a deeper sense of realism or enhance the game.  However it would alienate the target market, and they can't do that.  One relies on the other, so GTA will never be able to break the mold until they are willing to piss off it's market.  With as much money as they have, they could too, but why would they want to any more than making a mario game where you deepen the storyline and work with interesting character rather than the same jumping games.  Oh wait, Mario RPG series.  Right, they did.

Here are a few I would greatly love to see the ROCKSTAR guys do.  They could care less about a little guy like me and my opinion FYI, but hey, worth a shot to send out some thoughts.

Story wise, I would love to see the same story, but with a protagonist who has never committed any sort of crime.  Sure they have written a type of criminal before who is trying to play it straight.  I 'm saying someone who was never one to begin with, not even family or friends in it.  That would be some great story telling as we would get to watch them evolve and change over the course of the game.  They learn as we learn.  It's why we loved 'Breaking Bad'.  Good guy going down a bad path.  The game, 'Mafia' did it, so why not give it a shot?  The character gets into it by accident, then slowly due to corruption and hatred loses, little by little, until they are trapped with no way out.  You still care about them as they have morals and regret decisions they made but they do what they have to do.  Bonus points for changing the race or gender.

Heck I would enjoy playing as a female in the series.  Is it that big of a leap?  Guys want their girlfriends to like the game, so when you had three different protagonists, would it have been difficult to include one girl? Probably.  In all this world building, it would be crazy difficult to have made a change in the setup for girls and male hookers would have felt less realistic.  Which is just another reason why this game isn't really ground breaking.  It's just doing more of the same. Again I say, 'meh'.

At first glance I thought this was a whale in outer space with the earth behind them. I would have thought more highly of the game if that was indeed true.

The game is exactly what fans want.  That's fine and all, but I get sick of reviewers praising it as being this amazing series and perfect in every way.  It's a good game, but it doesn't change anything anymore than Skyrim did to Oblivion.  If this was my first time playing the series, I would be happy, but as such, it's just par for the course.  The world is big and vibrant, but feels wasted on the characters.  At least if they didn't talk I could give them some sort of interesting personality.

Hey, it's one guy's opinion vs millions of satisfied customers.  Again, saying I'm bored with it is like complaining about too many Pokemon games.  If the company is making money, who cares what I say right?

Just thoughts.

Later Gamers.