Game Details Developer: Rockstar North

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Platform: PS3 (reviewed), XBox 360

Release Date: September 17, 2013

Price: $59.99

Links: Official website : Rockstar North: Rockstar Games: PS3 (reviewed), XBox 360September 17, 2013: $59.99

My first encounter with a prostitute came roughly 13 hours into Grand Theft Auto V. I wouldn't say I was actively seeking one out, but knowing how much GTA's "hooker-killing" reputation precedes it in some corners, I was definitely on alert. I shrugged my shoulders before hitting up a few seedy streets and honking my car at some ladies to no sleazy effect.

Her eventual appearance came in relatively typical GTA fashion. I'd been hired to do some dirty work—in this case, to take out a fast-living tech magnate, one who normally hides behind a beefy security detail. He had a soft spot for a particular woman, so I staked out the warehouse district until she rolled up in a drop-top pseudo-Caddy and hopped in his ride.

My tires squealed, my machine gun popped, and before you knew it my mission was complete. The whole scene reinforced the series' central bloodlust, not to mention its core gameplay loop of fetching cargo, chasing crooks, and offing perps throughout an enormous, open city.

But this scene was notably different because the escort I picked up wasn't the target—not of violence, not of derogatory language, and not of an exploitative, button-mashing sexcapade. In fact, the way GTA V treats its female characters in general is a marked departure from other entries in gaming's most controversial blockbuster.

That's not to say that the game excels in, say, championing strong female characters (the virtual city of Los Santos is certainly a man's world). Rockstar also doesn't single-handedly revolutionize the way GTA V unfolds compared to its predecessors. But this game is ripe with small advancements and evolutions that add some newfound smarts to this gangster's paradise. That's good news for a franchise that often seems wedded to core mechanics that haven't remained static for over a decade now.

Three characters, one unforgettable

Welcome to Los Santos, a virtual facsimile of Los Angeles whose size and density is hard to overstate. The core city chunk doesn't feel quite as giant as GTA IV's Liberty City, but their sheer heft is comparable. It's the home of the game's first two protagonists: Michael, a retired gangster whose wife and kids are as unlikeable and bratty as they come; and Franklin, a streetwise crook who's currently bored with his gig as an automotive repo man.

Michael and Franklin occupy opposite ends of the main city zone of Los Santos, and the introductory chunk of the campaign sees their lives of crime intertwine even while a giant chunk of the game map remains blurred and inaccessible. Eventually, the duo pulls an impressive heist, and they catch the attention of a third protagonist, Trevor, smack in the middle of that fog of war.

A stuttering beauty Just as GTA IV rebuilt New York City in impressive fashion, GTA V paints LA in beautiful tones befitting California's sunny skies and expansive vistas. The game simply requires more horsepower than New York's clustered streets did, but the engine holds up well, even on aging current-generation console hardware. Just asrebuilt New York City in impressive fashion,paints LA in beautiful tones befitting California's sunny skies and expansive vistas. The game simply requires more horsepower than New York's clustered streets did, but the engine holds up well, even on aging current-generation console hardware. No current-gen open-world console game offers more beautiful views or more drastic lighting effects with such insane draw distances. GTA V is unparalleled in delivering such mouth-watering sunsets or midnight views of glimmering bridge lights on the rivers below. And the game does all this while juggling a larger variety of on-screen cars, with higher-polygon models, than GTA IV ever did. At least on the PlayStation 3 version I tried, though, the price for all this beauty is paid in framerate dips, messy anti-aliasing, ridiculous texture pop-in, and a reduction from the box's advertised "720p" resolution. A new version of the game on next-gen consoles or the PC would no doubt fix these issues and really set mouths drooling. As it is, Rockstar should be commended for duct-taping this mix of details and sacrifices while keeping the framerate tolerable and the glitch count to a minimum.



Trevor, without a doubt, is the series' most captivating anti-hero yet. The meth magnate lives in a trailer park in one of Los Santos' distant deserts, and he's best described as a torrid mess of regret, anger, and fearlessness wrapped around a chewy, surprisingly moral center, all with a sprinkling of angel dust on top.

Let me try to illustrate this odd mix of personality traits. During one mission, one of Trevor's meth-lab cohorts insults a woman, so Trevor starts screaming at the top of his lungs: "You called her a bitch?! Ain't you got a mother?" This provides a nice contrast with the previous scenes, where Trevor stomped a rival biker's skull into the ground and tossed a few foreign businessmen into a freezer to hide them while he murders drug-dealing rivals. Between details like the "CUT HERE" dotted-line tattoo on his throat or his history of dishonorable military discharge, Trevor would make any scriptwriter starry-eyed.

Sadly, the character's dark humor and unpredictability make the other protagonists look downright boring by comparison. Michael's retired-gangster insecurities are a bit ho-hum in a post-Sopranos world, while Franklin's status as a novice pushover doesn't evolve very much. If anything, he mostly serves as a foil for other white characters' veiled racism. (Get ready for a lot of awkward uses of the word "homie.")

Still, the other two player-characters play nicely off Trevor's insanity, each one goading the other in surprising ways. At one point, Michael points to Trevor's fashion sense, filthiness, and general abstinence from popular culture as evidence that the meth-lord is actually a hipster. At another, Franklin has to play the vice principal role and shut the other two up as they fight about their convoluted history.

In general, GTA V's plot suffers from a few navel-gazey stretches and some particularly dated ruminations on topics like Facebook, American Idol, Blackwater, and border security. Perhaps that stuff seemed fresher when the game started its development years ago. Otherwise, the criss-cross of characters and archetypes veers away from gangster-movie clichés whenever possible. The script does a better job of respecting and satirizing its targets in turn than previous games in the series, and the voice acting for all characters is top-notch. Trevor alone makes this story worth riding GTA V's full wave.

Tighter controls, hit-and-miss missions

Sadly Trevor takes a little too long to arrive—almost four hours into the campaign—but he comes along with a giant expanse of open desert access on the map, as well as access to airborne vehicles like planes and helicopters. (You'll need these to traverse Los Santos' mountainous expanses.) And after a glut of city-block missions, tearing through these mountains and deserts, especially in off-road vehicles, feels like being freed from confinement. These woodsy, hill-coated zones are sure to draw gleeful comparisons to another Rockstar open-world adventure: Red Dead Redemption.

Operating vehicles and machinery of all sorts, by and large, feels much smoother this go-round. While GTA IV saw the series experiment with a full-on physics system for its cars, this sequel feels so much smoother and more elegant to drive around in. Sports cars, sedans, motorcycles, dune buggies, and helicopters all share a nice balance of speed, weight, and mobility. They've all been tweaked to emphasize control over realism, too, so that players can spend less time fretting about spinouts and other twitchy annoyances during missions and more time focusing on peeling out.

Gunplay doesn't feel quite as improved, but it's easier than ever to stick to cover and auto-target bad guys. If anything, this oversimplification will rile up old fans used to more free-form shooting. Don't worry; the few missions that require annoyingly precise aiming and sniping, especially on fast-moving targets like planes, should silence those traditionalists.