Zero Punctuation: Grand Theft Auto 5

[BoredRolePlayer]

I do agree the story was a bit of a mess, having to ask a co-worker why I was helping the FIB stop the AIC (and he was not as far in the game as me). And I was confused about why the trever who was ex airforce couldn't fly the plane for the heist (again story being a mess). But this was a fun game, first GTA game I've beaten (and I've played them all pretty much) if that means anything. Also the first page being "haha take this flame shield" is not funny guys.

 

[Kingjackl]

I was kind of hoping for more elaboration on why he thought the characters were badly written. Considering those three were the main focus of this game, and considering that Yahtzee has gone on record as saying Nico Bellic is one of his favourite game protagonists, there probably should have been more of a comparison beyond 'Michael is a hypocrite' (agreed) and 'Franklin is whiny' (and Nico wasn't?). I guess he was so proud of his observations about the fucking advertising that he felt he could afford to sacrifice a quarter of his review talking about it, as opposed to actual critical commentary.

 

[synobal]

Lets face it Rockstar are doing the COD thing and are basically coasting on the reputation of the series now.

 

[Mikejames]

Laughed pretty hard at the closer.

Having more than 2-3 people writing a single character's dialogue is a terrible idea. Even then, it's really one writing and two editing.

So comics are a horrible idea?
You know how many people have written dialog for spiderman? Still manages to be a consistent character.

I'm not sure if any long-running comic book character can claim to be consistent.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Well my mate said the waters the best looking he's ever seen in a game sooooooo... I'll wait till Christmas, or my Birthday... or till they've fixed all the fun nerphing bugs.

But GTA4 didn't cream my crumpets so I'll expect more of the same.

 

[DataSnake]

I can tell you firsthand that Saints Row 4 is absolute garbage and not even accidentally good. It's not even a matter of opinion. It's glitchy, boring, has absolutely no sense of pacing, most of the content is literally copy-pasted from Saints Row 3, the missions are insultingly easy, and the superpowers simply break the game.

I'm not sure you and I have the same definition of "opinion". Here's a list of things in that last sentence that are, in fact, your opinion:
1. boring
2. no sense of pacing
3. insultingly easy
4. superpowers break the game

 

[Worgen]

Despite not saying it's a bad game I'm sure this review will piss off plenty of GTA fanboys.

Fuck 'em.

Oddly enough I was hoping he would do Shadow Warrior this week. Maybe he will use it to cleanse his palate of the 'meh' that is his opinion of gtaV.

Spoiler: MEH

Actually, so was I. Being one of the miniscule number of people who didn't give a FUCK about GTAV, I'd actually forgotten he was likely to be doing it, so I was hoping he'd be doing Shadow Warrior too. I just hope it isn't a massive disappointment to him like Duke Nukem Forever was- it already starts with an automatic strike against it by being a reboot of a classic property with the exact same name as the original.

Its not, I got the game at launch and its a remake done right, the melee feels really good and its got interesting weapons. Its linear but there are plenty of secrets and places to explore, its also got a health regen component that for my money is regening health done right. You press d twice then right mouse button to regen your health but you cant fully regen it, and if you get hit, it knocks you out of doing it, plus the hit does much more damage.

 

[4Aces]

FanFan - Fanatic Fan
FanHater - Fanatic Hater
RegPeople - The last of us (there are only a few left)

Best line - "I just remembered I'm a murderer! Let's just murder whomever has a narc on and then take a bath in his wife."
Best joke - Flip a coin and it comes up "Fuck You" (gonna make me some of those!)

Gameplay fails as listed in the review (for the short attention span(dicates) and FanFans claiming Yahtzee was just randomly spouting.
- Constantly swapping between three random protagonists, none of which are likeable due to their poor writing and inconsistency

- Random pedestrians flag you down to hand out hit missions (like Hobos have that kind of cash)

- Heist Mission = Instruction Following Simulator (a la AssCred3 and SlurpingDoggies), where you get the massive choice of mission type A or B, and then which person to take. They have their own stats which could improve if they were not only available for two heists each (in the *whole* game), they are meaningless.

- You have stats, which are about as useless as the ones for the heist members. The difference between starting point and maxed out is very little, so why bother?

- The game *forced* a plane flying tutorial *after* the plane flying mission. Bass Ackwards.

- GTA5 is a lot of unrelated, over-tutorialized, clunky features that were rammed together without a proper game design.

- There are story threads, but no strong over-arching one (unlike Skyrim or FarCry 3)

- There is some fun (and color!), even with the buy-able properties (unlike AssCred3, or Skyrim), and the physics engine does not suck as much as it used to (but does that actually make it good?).

- There are no gob-smacking moments where new features are worth any kind of exclamation though, either good or bad, so it is mostly just a meh-rehash of GTA4. There is nothing to really drive you in the game. If you want a random fantasy world simulator where you can murder random people for little to no reason, then this is for you. But then again, there are better games (Far Cry 3), where you can do the same thing but with a reason (and moral authority). If you really want to steal cars, kill people in an urban setting, and be a total dick, this game is for you (but so is Vanilla flavored Thorazine).

Just remember, it is always better to use drugs than guns (at the mall, cinema, or any other public place).

GOTY is going to be Wasteland 2. Bio:Infinite was more hype than delivery, so it should not win. Then again, this has been one hyped-up mess of a year. Hell, let's give it to Colonial Marines and make everyone's head explode!

 

[FallenMessiah88]

Just like all the previous GTA games, the biggest strength of GTA V lies in the freedom it gives you to just fuck around. At least that's my imppression from so far.

 

[IrisNetwork]

So, its also a mess but not the fun mess that was SR4. Lets see some "whine out of 10" once this gets on YouTube.
What did Yahtzee say in the ending? I didn't quite catch it but damn it was frikin funny.

 

[sXeth]

Hmm okay, he didn't like it that much I guess.

One thing I don't understand though, why is Saints Row considered 'fun' and the later GTA aren't? Because you can run around with a dildo and other wacky stuff? That's wacky. Not necessarily fun. I didn't play GTAV of course (having only a PC and stuff), but I definitely had tons more fun with GTA IV then SR2+3 combined and if GTA had the same stupid wacky humor everywhere, I'd like it less.

Saints Row doesn't try and do broody serious story business in the middle of your aforementioned hooker piling, driving jeeps out of planes, sandbox. The tone is more consistent overall and less clashy.

GTA also seems to have a real issue with terrible minigames too. To take GTA V vs SR3 in side activites, we have

GTA V:
Golf, Tennis, Yoga (which is just quicktime event spam, that isn't even timed), Skydiving, Hiking, Strip Clubs (which is again a press A madly to win thing)

Saints Row 3:
Stealing cars (oddly, I can't think of any GTA where this has been a mainstay activity in the sense of it giving you cash, despite the name of the game. V does have four missions of it, and screws you over for pay, granted), drug trafficing, driving hookers around, going on rampages with various vehicles/weapons, the deathmatchy Genki mazes, territory defenses.

GTA's sandbox efforts don't really jive in well with its mechanics, and a lot of them can be just plain boring once the initial prettyness wears off. Even with the much lauded heist mechanics, you never get to do one outside of the four or five story missions, which are heavily scripted (some don't even give the two path option). You can only rob a handful of liquor stores/convenience shops, and the regular shops if you use a half-glitch. Choosing a vehicle, a heist time, driving out a route to plan an escape, and executing doesn't seem like it should be miles outside the doable range, but they apparently went with making fake internet and mediocre QTE games instead.

 

[webby]

I also dislike the lack of fast travel of taxis that GTA 4 had.

You... you realise you have a taxi company in your contact list from the start of the game right? You also realise that taxis seem to work in exactly the same way as before? I have skipped more journeys in this game than a skipper skipping stones whilst skipping.

The talk of SR4 being "intentionally" glitchy made me do a double take. So my game was meant to crash every time I tried to superjump forcing me to restart my system, load everything up again, intentionally die and then hope beyond hope that it stayed fixed for a while and didn't shit the bed again? Good to know, I just thought it was a poorly programmed mess because it was an expansion pack that got bumped up to a full release.

There's some serious bullshit being thrown around in here and it is glorious to watch.

 

[DataSnake]

The talk of SR4 being "intentionally" glitchy made me do a double take. So my game was meant to crash every time I tried to superjump forcing me to restart my system, load everything up again, intentionally die and then hope beyond hope that it stayed fixed for a while and didn't shit the bed again? Good to know, I just thought it was a poorly programmed mess because it was an expansion pack that got bumped up to a full release.

No, the intentional glitches are all purely visual, things like textures scrolling on walls, NPCs walking upside down, objects randomly pixelating for a couple seconds at a time, and so on. Your issue sounds more like the kind of thing where you should contact Volition's customer support team.

 

[4Aces]

There are apparently many collision detection errors as well. I guess they forgot how to make collision cages/meshes. Those things can crash out your game, or have cars stuck in trees, etc. So it is not just graphical. Gotta love Alpha level errors making it past Platinum.

 

[webby]

The talk of SR4 being "intentionally" glitchy made me do a double take. So my game was meant to crash every time I tried to superjump forcing me to restart my system, load everything up again, intentionally die and then hope beyond hope that it stayed fixed for a while and didn't shit the bed again? Good to know, I just thought it was a poorly programmed mess because it was an expansion pack that got bumped up to a full release.

No, the intentional glitches are all purely visual, things like textures scrolling on walls, NPCs walking upside down, objects randomly pixelating for a couple seconds at a time, and so on. Your issue sounds more like the kind of thing where you should contact Volition's customer support team.

Yeah, I'm aware it's not an intentional glitch, I was being needlessly sarcastic because the game is legitimately an unintentional glitchy mess as well as the intentional stuff. The jump crash is just one of many pretty serious glitches I've had, others include people vanishing off the map making finishing missions impossible, getting stuck in a falling animation whilst on the ground so I slide into the ocean and plummet into the void of eternity, random crashes that corrupted a save (always have backups) and a few others that were more irritants and caused a few side mission failures.

My point is that it's dumb as hell to say that "the glitches are intentional" when the game is pretty well known to have other, unintentional, glitches.

Since the term "kinda meh" has been thrown around a lot I feel it sums up my opinion of this episode pretty well though. I've finished GTA5 so was hoping to hear some stuff that I hadn't noticed myself before. I didn't get that, I got bitching about advertising half a world away for about a minute instead.

 

[Juste Goose]

The scream at the end is creepypasta material...

ZERO PUNCTUATION LOST EPISODE.

I WENT TO AN ALL NIGHT GARAGE SALE DURING A FULL MOON THAT WAS HELD OUT OF A MENTAL HOSPITAL. THERE WAS THIS OLD MAN WITH FANGS SELLING VHS TAPES. I BOUGHT ONE THAT JUST SAID "ZP LE" ON IT. I TOOK HOME AND PLAY IT. IT WAS HIM SCREAMING AND THE EYES WERE LIKE TOTALLY REALISTIC AND THEY BLED NOW I'M DEAD THE END.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'm not offended and these are some good points, but...

...something tells me I should have used "gritty" as an adjective, rather than "realistic". What I think the use of so-called realism implies is that the industry has a weird sort of set of aspirations concerning how action is meant to be presented. Ever since Call of Duty the first in name, we've been trying to integrate disparate elements from the "reality" of open conflicts and, well, life in general if you go by other genres. Stuff like grainy camera filters when a camcorder is being used (e.g. Outlast) or fairly grody patching-up animations that aren't exactly realistic, but probably inspired by last-ditch medical treatments (e.g. FarCry 2 and 3) or, you know, effects that replicate dizziness and disorientation when you're stuck in a flashbang's radius.

The end result isn't exactly realistic, but there's definitive aspirations toward realism. The need for the game to be an actual piece of entertainment, along with the limitations of the tech we currently have on hand, are putting pretty effective barriers in front of actual realism.

ZERO PUNCTUATION LOST EPISODE.

I WENT TO AN ALL NIGHT GARAGE SALE DURING A FULL MOON THAT WAS HELD OUT OF A MENTAL HOSPITAL. THERE WAS THIS OLD MAN WITH FANGS SELLING VHS TAPES. I BOUGHT ONE THAT JUST SAID "ZP LE" ON IT. I TOOK HOME AND PLAY IT. IT WAS HIM SCREAMING AND THE EYES WERE LIKE TOTALLY REALISTIC AND THEY BLED NOW I'M DEAD THE END.

And now, to copy and paste this on a berjillion YouTube videos in the Comments section, with the requisite addendum about the ALT+F4 key combination being the only thing that will save you from receiving that dreaded VHS in the mail in seven days' time, because Ring reference.