GTA V

GTA V Review

I should have made this entry a little earlier, but I was tracking down a very frustrating BIOS bug on my new computer- apparently under some situations it is possible for the BIOS clock to just plain "freeze" and stop advancing unless Windows 7 pushes an update to be BIOS clock via time sync. Lots of strange behavior would ensue, because the frozen BIOS clock would push its sync back onto Windows intermittently, causing the time to reset back wards at approximately hour intervals. It was a relatively simple fix, but immensely annoying to track down because the obvious cause would be a defective CMOS battery, but the battery read a solid 3.3V, which is exactly where it should be.
Anyways, on to Grand Theft Auto V.

If I had to describe it with a single phrase it would be "Incredible entertainment punctuated by moments of abject, controller-throwing rage." Now, don't get me wrong here- the game is very, very good. Impressive graphics, cool missions, really well designed environments, and a lot to do. The AI is even really, really convincing in spots when it comes to creating a believable, "living" city. The problem is, sometimes that all falls to shit and you're left wondering where the fun went.

I can forgive some of the minor transgressions like weapons switching flaking out sometimes when entering or leaving vehicles, leaving you flailing like an imbecile trying to punch someone who's about to shotgun you in the face from across the road. This sort of crap happens in lots of games. While getting wasted sucks, it's not the end of the world, especially considering you can skip missions now if you run into a mission you just can't clear. Other details, such as police shooting you in the face for stepping over an imaginary line I can likewise forgive- sure, it is annoying and I do look forward to a day when a police AI sees a player wander into a restricted area and reacts based on how they got there. Crashing a car through a checkpoint while firing at the guards should provoke return fire, while wandering in on foot and unarmed should get you tackled and escorted off the premises. We're not there yet, but I hope we get there soon.

Where I really start to lose my enthusiasm for a game is when things get into the "clearly visible" realm of artificial difficulty and/or careless coding. Careless coding being a sort of buzzword for things that should have been thought of but weren't. For instance, one mission has you chasing a stalker down and "teaching him a lesson." At first I thought this would mean beat him up as opposed to outright kill him- silly me. Anyways, I crash his car and proceed to drag him out to administer said beatings. Suddenly, this mildly obese white dude tears off into the sunset like a cross country runner on crack. He didn't ever get tired. Ever. He literally had magical infinite sprint powers, so me thinking I still had to beat him up chased his dumb ass across creation trying to taze him to slow him down. I guess part of me foolishly thought that there might be a difference between "teach a lesson" and "shoot in the face" but regardless, should said mission critical NPC really never get tired, ever?

That's relatively minor but it stuck out in my mind because of how much time I wasted- it gets worse. Police chases are made artificially difficult because policemen will mysteriously appear from the ether to continue a car chase, and when on foot they also are equipped with uncanny x-ray vision to detect you from two buildings down when you're hiding in an alley that's utterly hidden from their view. Non-police hostile NPC chases for missions devolve to the point of silly, blatantly (and I really do mean BLATANTLY) obvious rubber-banding- in one instance I was being chased by the bodyguards of someone I had just assassinated. The opportunity provided itself to go off-road, so I started to ride across the beach in order to lose them. It was going quite well until I noticed that the blip for the bodyguard's car was warping towards me on a direct a-to-b straight line, at a rather acute diagonal and at regular intervals when I would start to "lose" them. We're talking 100% unabashed warping at 400 MPH across a beach here. I found it particularly amusing that when I clicked the "look behind" button the rubber-banding stopped abruptly and the bodyguards disappeared into the distance and I lost them.

It's not all terrible though, and I haven't made a big deal out of that stuff to say that the game as a whole is not worth your time. The heists are excellent, and like I said the game is, for the most part, great. The problem I have is that when you set the bar so high in the first place, you can't help but feel a bit disappointed and annoyed when it starts to play like some B-list game that you'd more expect to have its fair share of bugs and nonsense to wade through.