GTA V: First Impressions

I’ve now put over 30 hours into GTA V so I thought I’d post some early impressions of the game regarding content and technical performance.

If there was one aspect of this series I wanted to see improved upon from GTA IV it was the core missions in terms of quality, variety and player freedom. And I’m pleased to say that GTA V delivers. Whereas many of the missions in GTA IV felt restrictive, rigid and repetitive in structure and approach, the main and side missions in GTA V (so far, at least) offer a far more varied and interesting selection.

 

This is partly thanks to the character switch mechanic. Each of the three playable characters has their own personal story and contacts which really mixes up the experience. One minute you’ll be practising yoga with Michael, then you’ll hop to Trevor and be stealing a submarine.

 

It’s interesting how these three central personalities can tailor how you play. Open world games with established characters tend to lead to something of a disconnect between player action and character action. Another Rockstar title – Red Dead Redemption – was a good example of this. It never felt right going on a gun rampage with John Marston. But in GTA V, you have a character like Trevor who represents that crazed mayhem mentality – and he even has his own unique rampage missions.

GTA V also offers far more multiple stage missions – the Heists, in particular. They also take more advantage of the open world and allow more freedom in terms of player approach. It’s still a little limited, but what I’ve seen so far is a great step up from GTA IV.

Overall, I’m liking the single player story and character aspects a lot, as well as the variety and quality of the missions, but there’s a lot to the open world in terms of side activities I’m yet to explore. And MP? I’ve barely scratched the surface. What I will say though is that the MP ‘tutorial’ stuff is rather terrible. I’m figuring most of it out on my own. So let’s move onto the technical stuff.

Graphically, GTA V looks great and the performance is far better than I was expecting. The sheer amount of control, display, audio and graphics options is fantastic and even puts many PC exclusive titles to shame. For controls, you can switch between pad or keyboard at will – I prefer the pad for driving, but the mouse for accuracy when shooting. Being able to switch effortlessly between the two is great.

 

The only thing I would have preferred in terms of the graphics options is more explanation of what they all actually do. The majority are obvious, but stuff like ‘High Detail Streaming While Flying’ or ‘Long Shadows’ (in addition to Soft and High Resolution Shadow options)? I’m not sure. A little more explanation would have been nice.

I run nearly everything on maximum and can maintain a fairly fluid 60FPS. The only times I really see it drop is when driving at night or when I’m speeding through some of the more rural areas. GTA V runs almost flawlessly in the dense city environments, but I do get frame drops in the open plains. They tend to be only momentary, however, and I could probably eliminate them if I dropped a few settings, but they really aren’t a problem.

Overall though, from what I’ve played, the technical performance is excellent. I also haven’t hit any bugs and only experienced one crash. So far, I’m very impressed with GTA V.