I've played the first couple of hours now and I'm actually liking it quite a bit besides the graphics (yeah they're impressive in scale, lighting, attention to detail, but the IQ is ass and the empty but incredibly photo-realistic beautiful RDR world is way more impressive to me to explore. RDR still blows my mind and is probably the best looking sandbox game out there. Plus horses > cars).
One thing I really like about this is that Franklin is actually a very likeable normal guy. It's nice playing as a only-slighty-a-thug guy who just has dumbass friends and gets mixed up into things but always has a normal person's viewpoint on them. Plus it's light hearted and funny which is so much better than the serious GTAIV tone since Rockstar are not very good writers.
I like that they took the Stranger missions from RDR. Good stuff. The gun combat is GREAT for a GTA, jesus gun controls are normally so shit in GTA games, now they're pretty good! All the shooting needs is better sound effects so that it doesn't feel like you're shooting couch pillows with silenced guns. Love that there's environment destruction and the little details like being able to shoot an oil trail. Great stuff!
Car driving is still way worse than Saints Row. The controls and physics are fine, it's just that the GPS mapping still sucks and it's still way too easy to hit something and get completely stopped when you're chasing someone. Luckily so far the game is easy at the start and the people wait for you when you do that, but still, I almost NEVER run into shit in Saints Row while on a chase but in every GTA I fail mission after mission in by some car dashing out at me and sending me spinning or hitting a pole and coming to a complete stop. Wish they made your car more indestructible like an arcade racer so you almost never get knocked away, just slowed a bit when you hit something but keep going straight.
Like the quick saving, good stuff. Haven't been able to try to the social club stuff because it's always been down everytime I play. Like the switching between people. Mission variety is pretty good.
One thing that makes me sad about GTA and a lot of sandbox games is when they build these huge ultra-detailed cities but there's not much that you can interact with. I think that's one thing where Just Cause and Assassin's Creed do really good jobs (SR too). In Just Cause you can blow so much stuff up! Like yeah, the world is ultra-cut & paste but it's still fun blowing up the 30th gas station and running from the cops. In AC I love how like every block has a historical database entry about the location, or a hidden collectible, or a side mission or two. It does a good job at giving you a reason to explore every crack of the world. Even Crackdown 1's orb collecting did that. and Saints Row has a side-activity at like every 4-5 blocks. I'm still early, so I don't know all the side stuff available, but just looking at the map for icons of things to do, it's pretty sparse. And I don't count strip clubs or movie theaters where you just go and hang out much of a thing. I mean they're cool, but I want gameplay things to do all across the world they create.
Anyhow with the addition of checkpoints and gun/mission improvements and what seems like interesting characters, this may be the first GTA I actually play to competition. I've played all the GTAs since the first (except Chinatown wars), but never got more than 30% story completition in any of them before I got frustrated by shitty mission designs or just bored. Vice City was the one I played the longest but never finished that. Would be nice to find a GTA enjoyable enough to actual finish. Every other sandbox game, whether RDR, Just Cause 1, Infamous, even the shitty AC1 or Crackdown 2, got me to finish them. I think the difference is that GTA games are freaking long and other sandbox games are pretty short so they keep my interest for the 15-25 hours. Hope I finish V!
Oh and I'm super impressed by how many radio stations there are and songs and random conversations there are. Big budgets can be impressive!
