Recent reviews by FKA

I can count on one hand, maybe two hands all the games I would call "masterpiece". This game (and its sequel) is one of them. 14 years later and this game still eclipses every single other superhero game out there. This is comfortably the best superhero game ever made. It is one of the best action games ever made. Its influence is still widely seen today.

Every once in a while a game comes along that innovates, changes up how things work, changes up gaming in general (e.g. Dark Souls - Soulslike genre). Arkham Asylum did just that back in 2009. Shortly after its release, we saw the first copycats emerge in the form of Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max, nowadays by the Spiderman games. All these games are imitators of the original. Not so impressive.

On top of that innovation, it still holds up visually, because of the stellar art design. Then you have the great stealth combat, the metroidvania level design that encourages backtracking, the immersive atmosphere, the excellent narrative, the fantastic character design, it all culminated into a true masterpiece and one of the very few games in existence that genuinely deserves a 10/10 score.

mid

If there was an option to give games a mixed rating on Steam, that would be the rating I would give this game. Unfortunately this functionality does not exist. I'm still going to end up giving it a positive rating instead of a negative one, because I do believe that there is enough content here, and that it is good enough as well. The game also isn't overpriced, and is priced just right for what you get. I do however have higher expectations for a Rockstar game compared to most other developers, because of the classics they've released in the past. Their name holds a certain weight, and with that comes great expectations. If Ubisoft released this game, I would say that it is easily the best game they've made in the past 15 years, but this is unfortunately one of Rockstar's weakest releases ever. Having said all that, I'm convinced that by now every single person and even their mom have already played this game. I think this is more of me expressing my opinions on the game.

Singleplayer
This is, by far, the worst singleplayer in the GTA series. The direction the game went in is just not something I like and there are some aspects of the game that are flat out disappointing. I'm going to sum up the things I don't like:
- The plot and the story are pretty bad. One of the reasons is because the game has the 3 protagonist feature, this causes all 3 protagonists to be less fleshed out and focused. Michael, Trevor and Franklin are worse than CJ and Niko. Hell, I would say that even Claude has more personality than the Michael, Trevor and Franklin, even though he never speaks.
- The map is easily the worst GTA map. I get that advertising that your game is "10x bigger than previous game" is probably going to help with sales, but can the world please be interesting? GTA 4's map was much smaller, but it was much better because of it. GTA 5's map is 2/3 of nothing, the desert area is extremely disappointing, because it seems like Rockstar can make desert environments interesting in their previous game, Red Dead Redemption.
- On a technical level, GTA 5 somehow manages to be worse than GTA 4. I get that people complained about the driving physics, but does that mean you have to completely strip everything that made Euphoria so good in GTA 4?
- The gunplay is not good. The sound of the guns is pretty damn bad and the guns don't feel as unique from each other like in GTA 4.
- The game, for me, has no replay value compared to the other mainstream GTA games. There just isn't much interactivity with the world, that combined with the poor map design causes me to not go on rampages like I did in GTA SA and GTA 4.

The satire in this game is so damn annoying, obnoxious and pretentious. Michael has some unintentionally funny statements about capitalism in the US and the exploitation of it by himself and others. The game mentions it like a couple of times and then never again, it's very contrived. Like what was the point then? The satire has been taken to such an extreme to the point where Los Santos feels like a movie set, it doesn't feel like a real place. And I get it, that's what they were going for, but like I said, that's not what I like. Satire has always been present in GTA games, but I feel like the older GTA games didn't take it to such an extreme and was done in a much more subtle and intelligent way.

Multiplayer
"Every single GTA Online lobby has at least 1 cheater" - did that statement sound a bit sensationalist? Maybe a bit of an over exaggeration? Well, it's not, it's true. All of it is true. All the things you've heard about rampant cheating in the game from people online, it's all true. Cheaters are teleporting to the finish line in races, cheaters have aimbot, cheaters can kill you without blinking an eye, and maybe even the worst thing I've seen yet, is that cheaters can kill everybody in the lobby using ->your<- username. That's right, they can make everyone in the lobby believe that you're a cheater by killing everybody using your username. I've never seen something like this before, ever.

Another problem I have with online component of this game is the microtransactions and accumulating in-game wealth. When the game first came out, the best and most desired car was around 1 million dollars. The grind to a million dollars is not that bad, I think it felt just right. You did the grind for that million and in the end you got the reward. The problem now however is that new cars/war-oriented vehicles go for absolutely insane prices like 2-4 million dollars. Just a quick reminder: if you buy the most expensive shark card, which costs a mind boggling €75, you will get a measly 8 million in game dollars. That's enough for you to buy 2-3 new cars - €75 for 3 cars. Great deal right there. The items in-game have gotten way more expensive, but the shark card money you receive in game has stayed the same since the game first came out. So, because the items in the game got way more expensive, the grind needed to get those items without paying for the MTX has become much bigger. You want to compete in the online races? Cool, but you just gotta put down the 2-3 million dollars for every single best car in their respective category.

Rampant cheating issues and MTX issues aside, the multiplayer can be a lot of fun if you're just doing activities with your friends. Most of the hours I've accumulated in this game have come from activities that I've done over the years with my friends. Doing heists and races with friends is a lot of fun and I do have fond memories of that. Just messing about in the open world can be a lot of fun as well. If you're wondering where those 1200 hours of mine came from, it's from doing these activities with friends.

Conclusion
Although I do think this is the worst GTA singleplayer, I still that it's far better than the vast majority of other open world sandbox action games out there. I think the singleplayer is worth the asking price alone. If you're not interested in the singleplayer, you might want to hold off for a sale to play the multiplayer. The multiplayer is only worth if you've got friends to play with or you just want to mess about in the world for a couple of hours. Do keep in mind that the online component of the game is filled with cheaters and you're going to have to do an insane amount of grinding to accumulate in game wealth.

Great. 10/10.