Grand Theft Auto V

[j-rodd123]

Originally Posted by Fission

is there any recordings of the radio station commentaries somewhere? those are hilarious

not sure if there are but they are indeed hilarious

[Oni-Paranoia]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Does this game pick up much? I'm still at the beginning but honestly I'm getting bored. You start out as Franklin (I think his name is -- the black dude) and pretty much do nothing but errands (drive here, talk to this person, okay go pick up this bike, now go pick up this car using a tow-crane truck).

Where's all the cool shit? I worry I've gone retarded and am missing the obvious or something.

Listen to the story. Unlock all characters. Do the ? missions. Learn how to effectively rob a security truck. Invest in stocks when Lester gives you missions (as he hints which stocks to invest in most of the time). Look for some hidden items without going online for the easter eggs or look for the easter eggs online and then find them in-game. Listen to conversations when walking around and see how far they go (you'll be surprised sometimes.)

Honestly, all the side missions have interested me because they lead you outside areas you wouldn't have noticed. When I bought the dock in North Chumash I was granted two missions of deep sea exploration. The detail is really good, the items you find inside the sunken ships and airplanes are interesting along with some other sunken goodies. The back stories have a little life in them which is something GTA has tried to do and has succeeded doing along side the carnage you can cause with the freedom you're given.

There's a ghost you can view for only minute that has a message written in blood at Mount Gordo. A frozen alien is visible in the tutorial. A strange drawing appears in Mount Chiliad in the lift exit. Bigfoot is visible during a mission for a brief moment using your thermal scope on your sniper. A UFO is crash landed underwater near Paleto Bay.

The game may feel a bit bigger when you compare it to the past GTA's. I've played all of them through for years on end since I was a child so this game feels absolutely amazing to me.

tl;dr

Play the game because it has a lot of shit to offer after you do your first heist and have more characters to play with.

[sticklydude]

I screwed up and did all the Lester missions before the end. So I only got about 2m per character.

I don't understand how stocks work goddamnit. I swear the last week graphs are lying to me.

[Oni-Paranoia]

Originally Posted by sticklydude

I screwed up and did all the Lester missions before the end. So I only got about 2m per character.

I don't understand how stocks work goddamnit. I swear the last week graphs are lying to me.

The last missions gives you enough cash to buy everything that's not 8 digits.

Stocks are simple. Avoid using the high and low numbers for stocks that were effected by in-game missions (LFI has a high of about $31.00 but hasn't gone that high since the beginning of the game before you damage them. Actual high is about $5.00 by observation.) To keep it simple, just put a few million into a stock that is worth a few hundred when it is near or at its low and sell it the moment it goes up. Then rinse and repeat. You make a few hundred thousand profit every time you do this. Besides, you wouldn't sell unless you were making a profit anyways.

[Ohaider]

I'm only at like 15% ish but the characters are pretty amusing

[Fission]

i'm kinda salty that there wasn't a pc release for this

[rCaliberGX]

Originally Posted by Fission

i'm kinda salty that there wasn't a pc release for this

[Fission]

i was thinking about posting that but got kinda lazy haha

[Oni-Paranoia]

Online market isn't hard to play with.

[sticklydude]

Not bad at all. Is it easily manipulated by a single person?

i forgot to say the rampage mission where

you kill the hipsters

is probably the most hilarious thing I've done in any video game ever.

[Oni-Paranoia]

Originally Posted by sticklydude

Not bad at all. Is it easily manipulated by a single person?

i forgot to say the rampage mission where

you kill the hipsters

is probably the most hilarious thing I've done in any video game ever.

Towards midnight the stocks seem to freeze at some point. So I invested $16,000,000 into something that was going up about 20 minutes before midnight. Sold the moment the stock didn't move after 60 seconds.

It's not easy to manipulate alone, but the trends are easy to follow after you play with them for a few hours. Bawsaq is slightly easier than the LCN, but the LCN returns feel safer because they don't fluctuate as much.

[Choofers]

so how about that petition to not port one of the best selling games ever to PC

[sticklydude]

Anybody done the bailbond strangers and freaks side missions? The bitch is like "go to the quarry" and i'm like ok. where the fuck is that? No markers on the map.

[Poison-]

I really did not like the ending of the game. I was expecting so much more.

I'm really excited for GTA Online. Rumors of micro-transactions are circulating though...

[dballin4]

Originally Posted by sticklydude

Anybody done the bailbond strangers and freaks side missions? The bitch is like "go to the quarry" and i'm like ok. where the fuck is that? No markers on the map.

Almost directly east of the airfield you get with Trevor. The second one I put off forever and lost the text with the description of where he is so that's fun. Don't do that.

[Oni-Paranoia]

Originally Posted by sticklydude

Anybody done the bailbond strangers and freaks side missions? The bitch is like "go to the quarry" and i'm like ok. where the fuck is that? No markers on the map.

Google. A few missions give you little to absolutely no help in finding out where to go and what to do.

Originally Posted by Poison-

I really did not like the ending of the game. I was expecting so much more.

I'm really excited for GTA Online. Rumors of micro-transactions are circulating though...

It would explain why the game's properties are the way they are assuming the transactions point to single player, not just online. Only a few properties are above the million dollar mark and you can easily buy every one except for the country club ($150,000,000 is fucking ridiculous.) I would also assume that they would add-on more properties with DLC's.

On another note, 25 achievements done, 80+ hours of game play logged, and almost at 100% (94.X last I checked.)

[sticklydude]

Originally Posted by Oni-Paranoia

On another note, 25 achievements done, 80+ hours of game play logged, and almost at 100% (94.X last I checked.)

what all do you have left?

I'm at 55 hours and 90%.

[Oni-Paranoia]

Originally Posted by sticklydude

what all do you have left?

I'm at 55 hours and 90%.

I had stunt jumps, knife flights and under the bridges left. I'm at 100% now.

I also want to clarify something about the end game secrets.

You can land on 2/3 of the UFOs over the Fort and over Sandy Shores. Using a helicopter you can land anywhere that's not the center of the saucer contrary to many video/text reports stating otherwise. You can also walk around as long as you avoid the middle of the saucer (you will be flung off if you walk near the center).

I have not tried this with the Mount Chiliad one as it disappears when you get near it.

[gold stinger]

Beat the game twice.

working on 2nd 100%

Originally Posted by Oni-Paranoia

($150,000,000 is fucking ridiculous.)

I bought it on my first 100% before I got 100%. stock markets l0l

also don't rely on BAWSAQ stocks.

my biggest take on a stock market was when I went from 137,650,000 or something to 151,153,936 and bought the golf club.

[noname219]

So, I was able to finish the main storyline in just about 1 week and I'm currently a bit over 75% (still need a ton of side things to do). I didn't plan a review or something, but there's a ton of things I have to say about this game :

[I'll try to keep it spoiler-free]

-Before playing it, I wasn't sure if returning to Los Santos was a good idea. GTA: San Andreas had the same exact setting and there are more places on the earth Rockstar never went. I was a bit disappointed by the size of the map. I was expecting something bigger than, for example, Just Cause 2, considering how similar Just Cause 2 is to GTA and how crazy Square Enix went with the size of it. Facts aside, it feels to me smaller, probably comparable to the biggest island in Just Cause 2. While smaller, it's a lot more denser and there's a ton of things you can do which I will explain more in details below.

-At the start, the controls don't feel strange at all. They are in the same vein than GTA 4, with some ameliorations. For example, navigating through radio stations or the gun selecting is so much more easier, by far. Thank god.

-Gun handling is pretty good. Only thing that really bothers me is when you want to chose your target, it's not as responsive as it was before. One thing that's misleading is having to change weapon when you're driving. Happened a lot of times that I got confused and I hit LB instead of X (playing on Xbox btw).

-Getting on ladders is automatic, no more need to have an extra button to mash, good thing.

-One of the most positive change the developpers had this time is the flow between cinematics. There's no cut which is frankly, an amazing thing to watch. You really feel like playing a movie. You don't feel any stops in the game so it's hard to find the right time to stop playing.

-The ability to replay missions are, again, a very good decision. Also, when dying during missions, you don't restart at the beginning. No more driving on the same road again.

-Additional objectives during missions are kinda cool too. There are some missions I would like to play again and try alt ending.

-Getting killed during missions is ineviable of course, and is a pain in the ass. 50% of the time, it was because I did something terribly wrong (like standing directly in front of someone shooting at you and doing nothing...). The other 50%, it was by sheer bad luck. I got so many dumb kills it's inimaginable.

-The storyline and main missions are nearly flawless. For me, this was the best storyline of all Grand Theft Auto. The action never stopped until the very end. Unlike Poison, I really did like the end of the game, but I think they urge things too quickly. The difficulty of the missions was ok. It's not hard for everyone to finish the game, but it does get harder at the later stages. The most I had to try a mission again was 3 times I believe. I was expecting a way to increase/decrease the difficulty but there is none.

-The choice of having three protagonists instead of only one is a genius idea. Might have been a tough decision for them, but I think it really payed off. If you don't like someone, you can change to the other two. In the previews they presented a few months ago, the only one I really liked was Trevor obviously, found Franklin okay, and Michael very bland and depressing. Turned out it was Michael my favourite, he's the most complex of the three and he has the most interesting background/entourage. Trevor comes second for me, he's very charismatic and has a lot of good lines but sometimes, I found him too excessive to be a credible character. When he shows himself a new side of him, he soon change to the dumbass-psycopath killer so you often see a one-sided personnality. Franklin is my least favourite but not by far. I just find he's way too passive about everything. He's like a soft gangster. I do find he's the one that you can associate the most with, starting with him in the early stages, meeting people and growing your skills along the way. He's the extension of every gamer pretty much.

-Chop is a pretty fun character. Being able to control him during one of the missions was a definite highlight of the story. I was hoping you could do the same afterwards.

-There's barely no link at all with the other games of the series, especially San Andreas which is a big negative point. I was hopping to hear more from past characters and maybe a cameo from CJ or something (I did see his name in one of the objectives (spoiler) on the mission you have to steal a train with a dirtbike). It did featured Johnny Klebitz, Terry and Clay from The Lost and Damned tho.

-The police "wait" time is wayyyyyyyyy too long, especially when you have played the previous games. This time, it's excruciating to wait for your 5-star wanted level to go down. You really have to find a good spot to hide yourself, or be constantly moving. My hint is to find a good way underground (shoot for the metro). If you're in Blaine County, go for the mountains. Sometimes you can just be totally unlucky; it happened that a police cruiser spawned only a block away from me so you can get detected pretty easily. :s

-Would have loved the ability to fart during yoga sessions, for extra laughs.

-When doing the pilot school, why are the helicopters missions so fucking hard compared to the plane missions ??? Talking about helicopters, they are so hard to control... They're all wobbly and shit, I still can't control them properly. Airplanes are ok for me.

-Speaking of vehicles, the driving received some ameliorations. Many people complained about that in GTA 4, but I didn't found it really THAT bad. I did note that slower cars are definitely more fun to control than they were in the past. Crashing doesn't always result in Niko going through the windshield screaming "AAAAAHHHHH" anymore. Your character does take damage when crashing at extreme speeds but I wasn't killed by this so far (lucky I guess).

-I find driving motorcycles a bit risky. I tend to avoid over-speeding (GTA 4 syndrome probably) and it's not as fun as in San Andreas. The camera tilts a bit, which can be uncomfortable in the very beginning, or when switching from car to a motorcycle. Other than that, it's good.

-Boats are ok. The only thing I really find annoying is when hitting waves at higher speeds and going through the air, I have the impression that I'm losing speed everytime. The Marquis is a complete snail, so really avoid it. And, I have still yet to found a Jetmax somewhere. I've tried the submarine and it's hard to control at first but it get's easier during the side missions. Speaking of that, it was extremely boring having to make a complete loop around the island... Not really talking about biking or train because I haven't tried those a lot.

-I find parachuting to be really hard too. They ask you sometimes to land on a moving vehicle which is frankly, almost impossible to make it on your first try. Getting a good landing is difficult because hitting LB+RB at the same time does make you slow down, almost to a complete stop. So it must be hit at the last time.

-Modding vehicles was something I really missed in GTA 4 and it was one of the feature I was the most excited about. I do love that you can anything free after you buy a concession. Oh, and you can't save any cars safely at any garage atm because of some glitch. Hopefully Rockstar will patch it soon.

-Animals are included now, was really happy to see that. It's sad you can kill them, I try not to, but it can happen. No kids in the game obviously.

-Pool was removed and that's weird since it was a classic in GTA. But, honestly, I won't complain because it was such a pain to play, so damn painful to watch the balls having to make it to a complete stop.

-Golf and tennis are much fun than I thought. Especially golf.

-Graphics? They're very similar to GTA 4. At this point, we are pretty close to photorealism that it will be harder to see any improvements from now on. Sun flares, reflections are better. Water effects are not really that great... watching Michael pourring himself a whisky is lulzy.

-The music in the game is good. The official soundtrack is well done and I was really surprise to know that Tangerine Dream and DJ Shadow took part of it. And, Soulwax and Flying Lotus getting their own radio station. I was hoping a good rock station like GTA: San Andreas had (Radio X), but I can't find it.

-There's almost no bugs I found in the game. Only thing I should note, is when you go too fast, some objects (posts for example) don't have time to appear.

-Have yet to try the cinema. Shows were mediocre to good in GTA 4 so I don't know how this one will go.

-I don't understand that Binco has the same layout, same items than some discount shop you can find (4 locations). Error from devs ? Oh and your wardrobe at your safehouse looks like a mess, the options are not ordered very well.

-Found one "big" easter-egg completely by mistake, that was a special moment for me.

-I'm at the point where I need to build 150 million to get the golf club I still have to play with the markets. I tried to save before and see if I can get back to that save (after checking which company got the best profits) but when returning, numbers changed so it's random apparently.

-The torture scene was imo, not necessary. I was not shocked by it or anything, but it didn't bring anything to the story nor the character development.

-Getting drunk or stone are pretty cool but the effects don't last as long as it did in GTA 4...

-Oh and there's not enough interiors for my tastes.

So yeah, overall, I was very pleased with the game. They took a really good decision waiting to release the game testing it and
finishing up some details. There are some few things I was disappointed by (notably things that worked better in past games, some bugs that they really have to figure up : car saving glitch, clotches, etc.). Other than that, the missions were a breath of fresh air and being able to do just about everything you could possibly do before was just about amazing. A strong contender for best game I've played this year. (along with Borderlands 2)
Oh and there's still the multiplayer to talk about...