Review: Grand Theft Auto V PC

The first game in the series to offer more than one protagonist, things play a bit differently than before. As each character is introduced, you’ll play only as them for a few hours to get acquainted with their backstory and style of play. After all three characters are firmly established (about ten hours in), however, the rest of the narrative shifts between them. There’s missions unique to each character, some of which focus solely on their story (like Michael keeping his awful family at bay) and others that combine all three characters together. One mission, for instance, has Trevor flying a helicopter, Michael repelling from it and scaling a building and Franklin providing cover via a sniper rifle from a neighboring building. While some parts of the mission must be done as a certain character (like Michael repelling), others let you play as you want to. For instance, after fleeing, you can choose to either pilot the helicopter, shoot from inside or provide cover from a building with a sniper rifle. This swap happens on the fly via holding down on the d-pad, which allows any one of the three of the characters to be chosen. You can complete these mission parts as just one of the characters, but it’s generally best to cycle between all three to be most efficient. In-between missions, characters can almost always be swapped to at will by the same d-pad method. This is effective for both doing individual missions and covering different parts of the city. As the character’s safehouses are generally spread apart, it’s a nice feature as the character closest to the desired destination can instantly be swapped to, saving commuting time.


I can understand using a Facebook campaign for, say, unlocking a code that, in turn, unlocks a specific car in the game. (After all, Electronic Arts has an exclusive on the Porsche license .) Or, maybe, a code that unlocks some sort of in-game bonus -- currency, perhaps. But advertising? For that matter, not just advertising, but advertising that was always going to run on television regardless of what happened with the Facebook campaign. I honestly can't understand why anyone would bot


Do you find the overwhelmingly positive reviews surprising, or did you expect to see any re-release of such a critically-acclaimed game go over this well? Will you be picking up a copy to see Los Santos in a brand new way, or did you get your fill on previous conso


While the time-intensive task does result in some pretty spectacular vehicular carnage, Fysho's exploits are merely the tip of the iceberg where cheats-empowered destruction is concerned. Imagine the same video with moon-bounce gravity, or as part of a crude Rube Goldberg machine (where one element serves only to operate the next). How about a flaming Ken Masters-style punch to kick off the fiery cy

After Michael went into "retirement," Trevor relocated to Sandy Shores and decided to do what he does best — be a redneck. He lives in a trailer, has terrible hygiene, is promiscuous with all the wrong people and associates with…let’s just say the "the wrong crowd." Even though he has delusions of grandeur thanks to his shell company "Trevor Phillips Industries," he’s a broke loser with little to show in life. After finding out that former accomplice Michael is alive and well under a different name, he decides to drive down to Los Santos to pay him a visit. Soon all three characters are thrust into the plans of a crooked FiB agent (guess what initialism that’s a play on) and some notorious gangsters in the city and have to work together to survive and bring in a handsome payday while they’re at it.

Adapted for PC, there are certain expectations players have become accustomed to. Rockstar Games improvements’s initial attempt to bring Grand Theft Auto IV to the platform was met with negative reaction, to the point many declared it the most unoptimized PC port to ever grace the platform. Thankfully, that doesn’t follow suit with its successor. GTAV is without a doubt a much better port, not only giving the player a ton of graphical options, but being playable on lesser machines. Of course, those with higher end computers will be able to take advantage of the immense power GTAV holds, but it’s not difficult to achieve 1080p and 60fps while looking as good, if not better, than its console counterparts. It should be noted that playing this at 60fps is an absolute must as driving around Los Santos and seeing the cast of characters interact with one another so smoothly is almost a new experience on its own. That doesn’t mean it comes without its own hitches as there are numerous crashes and long hang times, not to mention AMD cards having trouble processing MSAA while in DX11 mode (at least with Post FX set at very high). Regardless, for an open world game of this size, these are minuscule issues for its launch.

As amazing as the soundtrack was before, Rockstar shockingly decided to add even more songs to it in this re-release. A whopping 150 additional new tracks have been spread across the radio stations. Highlights include Holy Ghost! — Hold On, Hot Chip – Flutes, Neon Indian — Polish Girl, Lorde – Tennis Court, !!! – One Girl/One Boy and many, many more. If that’s not enough, more DJ commentary has been recorded from some of the top DJs including DJ George (Twin Shadow), Nathan and Stephen (Wavves), Kenny Logins and more. On the talk radio side of things, Duane Earl (Danny McBride) has recorded new show segments. GTA has always been a series epitomized by its radio stations and by putting in the effort to expand GTAV’s selections, not only have they made an already complete soundtrack more robust, but they’ve made driving around a fresh experience.