Bye Bye GTA V

 

 

It was like a holiday romance, fun but short lived and ultimately full of regret.

It is with a heavy heart that I will admit that I’m getting rid of GTA V, I’ve made it pretty clear I had little to no fun with the campaign, I guess I’m getting old now but I find it joyless playing thugs and retired gangsters and spending hours driving about, but I admit I had high hopes for GTA V online but sadly it just didn’t live up to what many hoped it would be.

First off I’d like to say thanks to Rockstar for making the effort, they created a huge open world environment which is absolutely beautiful and full to bursting with missions and life and was a creative joy, for a week.

I’m not going to linger on the problems it had at the start, it was a massive ask for even one of the biggest companies in gaming to get it right from the off but after a few days of horror it worked well but for all the massive environment how much was their really to do?

If you’re a lone gamer (and I know many who) are GTA V would have been a nightmare, although many missions allow you to try your luck on your own you’ve no chance so you’re relying on random people and I’m sad to admit it but console gamers have not embraced the idea of an MMO, we’re still too selfish to such a level that even basic missions can have you pulling your hair out thanks to the random co-op player driving off the wrong way or shooting you etc. Can any of you who play MMOs on PC imagine the reaction you’d get pulling that sort of idiocy on World of Warcraft? You’d be a pariah and rightly so but on console it’s so common that you just put up with it, in fact if you’ve got say a spare two hours to game you pretty much have to plan in that at least thirty minutes of that of so precious time (can you tell I’ve got children?) will be buggering about not getting anyone to help me because either the mission has been played over so many times no one wants to do it again, or they do but they’ve got plans of their own mainly involving wasting time you’ll never get back.

There is DLC coming out shortly but it’s just going to be more missions and parachute jumps, randoms even try to spoil that by crashing into you, but unless Rockstar are going to somehow force people to play it properly.

If you do get on with friends the game can be a blast but there are problems there too. Many missions keep on cropping up or even if they’re different they’re the same, stealing one truck from somewhere and driving it somewhere else is the same as stealing a car or helicopter and driving or flying it somewhere else, shooting a group of guys and taking their drugs and delivering the drugs to someone else is the same as shooting a group of people and taking their money and delivering to someone, and here’s another moan, if the game was truly sandbox why couldn’t I just keep the drugs or money? I take a mate on a “job”, murder half a dozen men and the scrape my lovely car taking fifty grand worth of cocaine to then receive a reward of five grand, why can’t I take the drugs and keep them? Let me, if we’re going to act out the role of the gangster, take the drugs or cars or whatever and sell them myself, let me take the drugs back to the boss guy and kill him too and then let me be the king pin and let me employ mugs, because if you’re taking all the risk for a five percent cut then you’re the mug, to do some killing for me? Go on Rockstar, let’s really spice things up, oh and let me kill Trevor, I would have loved it if Michael had driven out to Trevor’s caravan and shot him in his sleep, which I’m guessing he would have done if it had been real life and it would have been even better had I been allowed to do it in the online mode, but you never, you just let me do the bidding of others and that dear reader is why it’s going back to Tesco, where I buy all my games because Every little helps (that’s just in case anyone employed my Tesco wants to send me free stuff, even crisps or milk would be fine).

Anyway, GTA V did its best and I think it would work better on PC where the community understands better than console gamers about the idea of an MMO. I think Next Gen consoles might try the idea of an MMO again, and yes I know GTA V isn’t the first MMO for consoles, but I fear the worst for them because if Rockstar can’t get it right when everything they do turns to gold, what chance have the rest of them got?