Review

Grand Theft Auto V (Remastered)

Welcome back to Los Santos!  After a year of seeing images and videos teasing us about the already expansive world that is Grand theft Auto V go next/current gen, many of us have been drooling for this release. Now that we have our long awaited remake, was it worth the wait? To be honest, I wish I was as excited to play it as I was with the original release.

Now I won’t go to deep into the game itself because many of the things we loved from the review I wrote for the last generation version still stands. What has happened now is that we have a game that looks and feels even more real than it did before. I thought it would be impossible to make this game look any better after playing the last version, but Rockstar has surely proven me wrong. They have even taken it a step further to prove it to us by adding a first-person mode to the title which, we all know, requires a heavy level of depth to play a game in that point of view.

Speaking of the view, I didn’t think it would make that huge of a difference.  With a game as involved as GTA V and having put so many hours into completing the campaign, it was going to take a lot to get me to do it all over again (you know, besides this review). But playing in first person really makes this game feel brand new; to my surprise, the moment I went into first person, I was sold. The outstanding level of depth in the characters you encounter, the realistic driving making every car feel even more unique, and the shooting becoming even more natural was accomplished with a change in perspective. Well…and the improvements to the animations and gameplay made possible by the current gen system’s horse power!

Now even with all the simple changes to the game’s story, we all know that the microscope was going to easily be on GTA Online. So many of us had conquered the story over a year ago and have been patiently waiting for the additions to online play. Right off the bat, they have increased the amount of players in an online game from 16 to 30. Now, if you’ve played the original GTA online, you already know how hectic it can be. Things get ugly real quick, forcing you to build a crew to take online; with 29 other players all gunning for anyone they come across, it’s more fun to add some friends to the mix. The servers are significantly easier to get into now that they’ve allowed more people into games at a time, which allows for a less frustrating gaming experience. What was most important to the GTA online gamers though, has nothing to do with graphics or numbers of players in a game. The gamers wanted their previous online character and the long rumored heists.

Sadly, only one happened out of the box. It was great loading up my character, adding new outfits that weren’t available before and seeing my apartment in beautiful next gen graphics. Once I walked outside and realized that after over a year I am again being promised a mode that still wasn’t available, I was kind of already done with GTA online. Don’t get me wrong, the online portion is just as fun as it was before. However, after waited for a game mode that was hyped up from the original trailers of the first version, I was disappointed to see that I still couldn’t access the heists.  At that point, I started to become bored – I had already done all of the direct missions to death at the time of release. Making things worse was the fact that the people I usually played the previous version with hadn’t bought this game because they were waiting for heists. Needless to say, I have been doing nothing more than direct missions online because free roam turned into me getting jumped because I don’t have any backup.

I don’t want to mislead you; this is still a great game. If you are a Grand Theft Auto fan, then this is easily a must buy for you. Heck, I’d recommend it even if you’ve never played a GTA before. For everyone who’s played the last gen version, it’s certainly worth getting. The better graphics and physics, first-person view, extra content and better online play (server wise) make it one of the best remastered titles ever. Now if Rockstar could stop teasing us and actually add the heists, things would be perfect. Come on, let us start robbing some places!