Grand Theft Auto 5 Review - People Suck

[IamLEAM1983]

Welp, call me old-fashioned, but I like to have some sort of favorable bent towards the protagonist I'll spend several hours playing as. Being told that my three avatars are utter scumbags doesn't do it for me.

Oh well. Back to my dildo bats and Inflato-Rays.

 

[cocoadog]

Well that's respectable. Im glad that you guys gave it the score you think it deserves instead of just 5/5ing the shit out of it. However I disagree, I have always hated the protagonists of GTA games. Loathing is just another emotion and if this GTA pisses you off so much I will undoubtedly love ever minute of it. Also you are keeping the metascore down. JERKS!

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

you know, this doesn't really surprise me. the biggest problem I've had with gta is even if the main character is somewhat likeable the guys you work for out the gate are always stupid fat racist scumbags who screw up at even the simplest tasks. it's like being asked to look after a giant baby with no potty training. I get it these guys are "capable" I suppose but in saints even when it was really thug heavy it was fun. johnny gat was always a vicious psychopath but they managed to make him likeable even in the first game and in the second he was sympathetic even. so the open world is fun, the activities are fun, and the driving which absolutely sucked in 4 is a selling point in 5? no thanks. i'm happy to skip this one.

 

[Anthadlas Babyeater]

This garners hate because of the ludonarrative dissonance it creates.

The word you are now looking for is Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

 

[MrBaskerville]

Anyway, very weak review, you can't blame GTA for having "scumbag criminals" as main characters anymore than you can blame Superman for being almost unstoppable. It's one thing to rage about the "scumbags" being "scumbags" due to POOR writing, it's another thing to complain, well that they look like cruel egotistical criminals...

Lowering the score because you don't like the subject matter is entirely valid.

No it's not, it's subjective, subjectivism has no place in reviews. Imagine when you were back in college, your teacher couldn't give you a zero because "Well, you did give the right answer. But I hate the color BLUE, and sadly you wrote with a blue pen, so here, you get half the score." That's why I say he CAN judge by "the characters are too cruel and that does not fit the reality around them because of this and that", he CAN'T go with a hollow "I don't like bad guys so I'll punish the game".

If you don't like the subject matter and you don't have the balance to keep yourself "cold to the game", as in, forget everything and focus on objective terms, you can't review. If you hate this sort of violence in games don't review a game that has this sort of thing as part of its focus, the same goes to someone who's an extreme Halo addict making a review of Halo, the guy might ignore major problems just to give it a great review. When Baldur's Gate got that make-over for iPad, I remember here on The Escapist a reviewer who was truly honest: the guy stated he would NOT review the game, because he was such a fan of the original that his emotions might make him over critical in a negative or positive way.

I didn't get the sense that GTA V's reviewer despised the violence of the game, nor am I complaining about the game not getting 5/5. For all I know, the "missing stars" might be for an objective reason. Be that as it may, it is stupid to criticize a game founded on violence because it is "too violent"...

okay, so if a reviewer hated the story and thought the characters were annoying he would still have to praise that part because the general consensus says it's cool? Why do we need several review sites if they all have to be objective, they are supposed to say the same afterall .

You are basically suggesting that a person should stop talking about a game if he doesn't like it or he should start lying to echo public opinion. It seems like a lot of work to do reviews this way, how do you make sure that your opinion matches the correct opinion?
Personally i read reviews because i want to hear what other people think, i want to hear opinions of people who have experience writing about videogames. I want to hear their true opinion and if it's different than my own. then that's just interesting.

No, I believe he should say WHY the character or story or both is bad. Why didn't they like it? And they shouldn't jump at something they KNEW they wouldn't like it (do you buy games you know you don't like the subject?). He can review it and say "the game is overly violent, something I personally hate, however this falls in place with the game's context..." see, here there is a bridge to connect things there's fundamentation to either take away the subjectivism or lessen it to a bearable level, otherwise the review degrades to a friendly bar talk (or unfriendly discussion?) that leads to a simplistic point of view. And for that, well, for that I just sit around with my friends and discuss with one another. Given, even the technical and objective points carry, in their base, subjectivism, however, it's a subjectivism born of a mutual (or almost mutual) consensus, it's one of primal levels, where the given community has applied values that in general are held as the "standard" which is then taken as the objective value. In that, it's general consensus that it's "a good control scheme to always have the trigger (guns) button on the RT and magic/powers on LT" (just giving an example), then we had Too Human, with that sword swinging thing in the analytical button and everyone hated it, it was considered "wrong", wrong because it's not within the range of the subjective general consensus, that is, the objectivist perception of where attack buttons should be Saying that there will alway be subjectivism is a fact, but it's only the base, the foundation of objectivism and, if need be, matter to enrich the review with, but not to pass judgment upon (which seems to be the case).

Thanks to be polite in the discussion, I downright lost my temper with other people lol

Okay that i can agree with, atleast to some extent. I do think it's hard to tell if you would like something until you've played it extensively. With this review he seems to like previous GTA games so i think it seemed fair enough to let him review this one. When it comes to liking the violence i think it's a bit more complicated than that, i don't get the impression that Tito dislikes violence i just get the impression that they took it to far i this one, made it too mean spirited or something like that which i think is a valid critiscism, even for a game that is supposed to be violent. GTA was always violent but it was never downright vile or disturbing. Maybe the same reason some movie reviewers detested Pain and Gain? Some loved it while others found it repulsive and called it the worst thing ever.

 

[AgentLampshade]

Doesn't the gameplay trailer explicitly say "remember. These are hardened criminals, and not to be taken lightly?"

 

[Pat Hulse]

A reviewer's personal preferences SHOULD affect the score of the game. That's what a review is. Someone's opinion on the game.

re·view
Noun
A formal assessment or examination of something.

...does not preclude opinion.

o·pin·ion
Noun
A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

...is not mutually exclusive with a review.

If reviews are not supposed to include writer's thoughts and emotions, then I'm done reading reviews. Thankfully, they are.

Assessing or examining something means looking at it for faults or potential flaws. Thinking that the characters are too violent is not a flaw with the game if they are designed to be that way. It is only a flaw when based on the reviewers personal morals and not applicible to anybody else playing the game.

Except, you know, when they happen to possibly share said morals.

Also, "it's designed to be that way" never protects something from criticism. Ever.

Video game reviews are not the same as academic or scientific reviews.

One of the many reasons people will never take a review like this seriously if they are unable to be objective and provide us with facts for it being a good or bad game, rather than just stating their opinion like a newspaper column

Except that for some people, knowing that these characters are morally reprehensible and lack the complexity of some other Rockstar characters is enough to know they won't like it. That's why subjective reviews are sometimes valuable. I don't care if a game is executed perfectly from a technical perspective. If the narrative doesn't interest me, then I won't want to play.

But not everyone feels that way. Some people don't care about the narrative and just want to have fun in a massive sandbox and don't care about the characters as people. That's just fine.

And that's why reviews like this are the most useful. Someone like me reads this review and can tell that this is almost certainly a game I won't enjoy playing, while someone like you can read this review and know that those aspects won't bother you and so you will probably enjoy the game since the reviewer said that the rest of the game is technically masterful.

I'd say that's pretty much exactly what a review ought to be.

But untill you play the game you will not know whether or not you consider the characters to be too violent or if the review is over reacting and just touchy to violence in general, It isn't representative of the game and is just his own opinion.
Granted if you know alot about the reviewer his opinion might be worth something but to most people visiting this site, they have no idea who the reviewer is, don't know him personally and couldn't care less about his opinion, they just want to know about the game.

Well considering the reviewer used other Rockstar games to offer comparison, specifically referencing the differences between Niko and the protagonists of this game and the instances of the game that he cited as particularly disturbing, I'd say he did a perfectly acceptable job of elaborating on his points. Furthermore, practically every other reviewer I've seen for this game has praised just about everything except the characters and story. When it comes to Rockstar games, reviewers are always more interested in discussing the impressive gameplay and technical achievement while glossing over the narrative as "extra". "Red Dead Redemption" was praised all over the place and I actually hated it by the time I had gotten to the end. Not because it was too violent or anything like that but because the narrative just stopped working for me once the plot took a detour to Mexico and the ending was just plain bad. Of course, no one who reviewed it told me that because it was just so damn technically impressive, so I wasted a week playing a game that felt like a chore because I was convinced that at a certain point it HAD to become "awesome", but in the end, I just hated it.

However, I really liked "L.A. Noire" because it appeared to be focused more about telling interesting stories with complex characters and the interrogation mechanic seemed interesting to me.

For me, it's not about whether or not GTA V is "too violent". It's about whether or not the characters have interesting arcs. If their motivations are more complex than just "make money and kill things". If there isn't more to them than that, I don't care how good GTA V is at immersing you in the experience of playing a trio of lowlife assholes without redeemable qualities. I just don't want to play a 100-hour game as three lowlife assholes.

But if you can point me to one of the many Perfect Score reviews that actually talks about how deep and interesting the characters are, maybe I'll take this reviewer with a grain of salt. So far though, every review I've read or watched has tap-danced around this aspect, instead deciding to talk about everything else. So this reviewer is really the only basis I have to judge the worth of the characters and the narrative. That and the trailers and gameplay footage I've seen that pretty much just reinforces what this reviewer says.

 

[WarpZone]

Remember when GTA was actually fun? Tooling around the city in a 2D car, watching convicts sprinkle out of a jail you just crashed into like chips from a slot machine? Or actually engaging storylines like Tha Ballad of Gay Tony? Now it's like the developers said, "Whelp, Retro City Rampage stole our fun, Just Cause stole our comedy, Saints Row stole damn near everything. What do we have left for an identity?" And someone shrugged and said "I guess Fox News associates us with violent crime?" And then they spent 5 years and 20 billion dollars making the most ZOMG REELZ VIOLENT CRIME GAMZORZ EVAR!!!oneone.

Seriously, though, there's no point in even looking surprised at this point. It's a new pointless console generation. These people equate polygons with "EMOTION!!!". That means every single title coming down the pipe is going to get brownification like you've never seen before. Everything has to be DARK and GRITTY because GRITTY = REAL! Just ask the most serious and legitimate decade evar, THE 90'S! Wait...

 

[saxman234]

Hmm maybe one problem is that every game "review" article is called a "review" and not a "critique". I wonder what would happen if every review was called a critique instead. 'This is the GTA V critique' instead of of 'review'. Just thinking about the differences between a critique and a review.

Anyways, I appreciate different opinions in these articles. They give me something extra to think about while I play, and even if I decide that I do not agree with the article it makes reading multiple reviews worthwhile (why read 3 reviews that all state how great/terrible something is?). Many times I feel like reviews do not give me enough differing opinions or details into questionable game design decisions. (I would not of been so disappointed with Skyward Sword if reviews warned me about pacing problems, fricken tadpole collecting, instead of just give it a 10 everywhere, which many people would now argue is crazy).

 

[Psychobabble]

So a game full of violent morally bankrupt protagonists, from a morally bankrupt company that aggrandizes violence, written for a morally bankrupt generation that thrives on glorifying violence. There's a shocker.

 

[Anthadlas Babyeater]

A reviewer's personal preferences SHOULD affect the score of the game. That's what a review is. Someone's opinion on the game.

re·view
Noun
A formal assessment or examination of something.

...does not preclude opinion.

o·pin·ion
Noun
A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

...is not mutually exclusive with a review.

If reviews are not supposed to include writer's thoughts and emotions, then I'm done reading reviews. Thankfully, they are.

Assessing or examining something means looking at it for faults or potential flaws. Thinking that the characters are too violent is not a flaw with the game if they are designed to be that way. It is only a flaw when based on the reviewers personal morals and not applicible to anybody else playing the game.

Except, you know, when they happen to possibly share said morals.

Also, "it's designed to be that way" never protects something from criticism. Ever.

Video game reviews are not the same as academic or scientific reviews.

One of the many reasons people will never take a review like this seriously if they are unable to be objective and provide us with facts for it being a good or bad game, rather than just stating their opinion like a newspaper column

Except that for some people, knowing that these characters are morally reprehensible and lack the complexity of some other Rockstar characters is enough to know they won't like it. That's why subjective reviews are sometimes valuable. I don't care if a game is executed perfectly from a technical perspective. If the narrative doesn't interest me, then I won't want to play.

But not everyone feels that way. Some people don't care about the narrative and just want to have fun in a massive sandbox and don't care about the characters as people. That's just fine.

And that's why reviews like this are the most useful. Someone like me reads this review and can tell that this is almost certainly a game I won't enjoy playing, while someone like you can read this review and know that those aspects won't bother you and so you will probably enjoy the game since the reviewer said that the rest of the game is technically masterful.

I'd say that's pretty much exactly what a review ought to be.

But untill you play the game you will not know whether or not you consider the characters to be too violent or if the review is over reacting and just touchy to violence in general, It isn't representative of the game and is just his own opinion.
Granted if you know alot about the reviewer his opinion might be worth something but to most people visiting this site, they have no idea who the reviewer is, don't know him personally and couldn't care less about his opinion, they just want to know about the game.

Well considering the reviewer used other Rockstar games to offer comparison, specifically referencing the differences between Niko and the protagonists of this game and the instances of the game that he cited as particularly disturbing, I'd say he did a perfectly acceptable job of elaborating on his points. Furthermore, practically every other reviewer I've seen for this game has praised just about everything except the characters and story. When it comes to Rockstar games, reviewers are always more interested in discussing the impressive gameplay and technical achievement while glossing over the narrative as "extra". "Red Dead Redemption" was praised all over the place and I actually hated it by the time I had gotten to the end. Not because it was too violent or anything like that but because the narrative just stopped working for me once the plot took a detour to Mexico and the ending was just plain bad. Of course, no one who reviewed it told me that because it was just so damn technically impressive, so I wasted a week playing a game that felt like a chore because I was convinced that at a certain point it HAD to become "awesome", but in the end, I just hated it.

However, I really liked "L.A. Noire" because it appeared to be focused more about telling interesting stories with complex characters and the interrogation mechanic seemed interesting to me.

For me, it's not about whether or not GTA V is "too violent". It's about whether or not the characters have interesting arcs. If their motivations are more complex than just "make money and kill things". If there isn't more to them than that, I don't care how good GTA V is at immersing you in the experience of playing a trio of lowlife assholes without redeemable qualities. I just don't want to play a 100-hour game as three lowlife assholes.

But if you can point me to one of the many Perfect Score reviews that actually talks about how deep and interesting the characters are, maybe I'll take this reviewer with a grain of salt. So far though, every review I've read or watched has tap-danced around this aspect, instead deciding to talk about everything else. So this reviewer is really the only basis I have to judge the worth of the characters and the narrative. That and the trailers and gameplay footage I've seen that pretty much just reinforces what this reviewer says.

Jim Sterling's review

http://www.destructoid.com/review-grand-theft-auto-v-261879.phtml

"GTA V's story is about irredeemable people doing unjustifiable things, but balances this against genuinely intriguing characters who, despite their stereotypical foundations, remain at least affable, even if they never stop being terrible. Each character has his own narrative arc, weaving in and out of a joint story that develops their relationship to each other, from uneasy allies to even less easy friends, and it's often hard not to sympathize with characters who, through all their murder and mayhem, ultimately wind up as rather sad and pathetic creatures."

GTA5's characters are violent as it is an integral part to conveying the story well

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

To quote 'the dude' This review is just like his, opinion, man. I couldn't give a shit if he liked it or not. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love it.

 

[Seef]

I don't want to get into any kind of discussion about some opinions being more or less valid than others, except for one. You don't hate on The Godfather Part 2.

 

[MammothBlade]

Remember when GTA was actually fun? Tooling around the city in a 2D car, watching convicts sprinkle out of a jail you just crashed into like chips from a slot machine? Or actually engaging storylines like Tha Ballad of Gay Tony? Now it's like the developers said, "Whelp, Retro City Rampage stole our fun, Just Cause stole our comedy, Saints Row stole damn near everything. What do we have left for an identity?" And someone shrugged and said "I guess Fox News associates us with violent crime?" And then they spent 5 years and 20 billion dollars making the most ZOMG REELZ VIOLENT CRIME GAMZORZ EVAR!!!oneone.

Seriously, though, there's no point in even looking surprised at this point. It's a new pointless console generation. These people equate polygons with "EMOTION!!!". That means every single title coming down the pipe is going to get brownification like you've never seen before. Everything has to be DARK and GRITTY because GRITTY = REAL! Just ask the most serious and legitimate decade evar, THE 90'S! Wait...

Looks like we have a winner!

1st place Gammel Dansk award for bitterness goes to WarpZone.

 

[Pat Hulse]

A reviewer's personal preferences SHOULD affect the score of the game. That's what a review is. Someone's opinion on the game.

re·view
Noun
A formal assessment or examination of something.

...does not preclude opinion.

o·pin·ion
Noun
A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

...is not mutually exclusive with a review.

If reviews are not supposed to include writer's thoughts and emotions, then I'm done reading reviews. Thankfully, they are.

Assessing or examining something means looking at it for faults or potential flaws. Thinking that the characters are too violent is not a flaw with the game if they are designed to be that way. It is only a flaw when based on the reviewers personal morals and not applicible to anybody else playing the game.

Except, you know, when they happen to possibly share said morals.

Also, "it's designed to be that way" never protects something from criticism. Ever.

Video game reviews are not the same as academic or scientific reviews.

One of the many reasons people will never take a review like this seriously if they are unable to be objective and provide us with facts for it being a good or bad game, rather than just stating their opinion like a newspaper column

Except that for some people, knowing that these characters are morally reprehensible and lack the complexity of some other Rockstar characters is enough to know they won't like it. That's why subjective reviews are sometimes valuable. I don't care if a game is executed perfectly from a technical perspective. If the narrative doesn't interest me, then I won't want to play.

But not everyone feels that way. Some people don't care about the narrative and just want to have fun in a massive sandbox and don't care about the characters as people. That's just fine.

And that's why reviews like this are the most useful. Someone like me reads this review and can tell that this is almost certainly a game I won't enjoy playing, while someone like you can read this review and know that those aspects won't bother you and so you will probably enjoy the game since the reviewer said that the rest of the game is technically masterful.

I'd say that's pretty much exactly what a review ought to be.

But untill you play the game you will not know whether or not you consider the characters to be too violent or if the review is over reacting and just touchy to violence in general, It isn't representative of the game and is just his own opinion.
Granted if you know alot about the reviewer his opinion might be worth something but to most people visiting this site, they have no idea who the reviewer is, don't know him personally and couldn't care less about his opinion, they just want to know about the game.

Well considering the reviewer used other Rockstar games to offer comparison, specifically referencing the differences between Niko and the protagonists of this game and the instances of the game that he cited as particularly disturbing, I'd say he did a perfectly acceptable job of elaborating on his points. Furthermore, practically every other reviewer I've seen for this game has praised just about everything except the characters and story. When it comes to Rockstar games, reviewers are always more interested in discussing the impressive gameplay and technical achievement while glossing over the narrative as "extra". "Red Dead Redemption" was praised all over the place and I actually hated it by the time I had gotten to the end. Not because it was too violent or anything like that but because the narrative just stopped working for me once the plot took a detour to Mexico and the ending was just plain bad. Of course, no one who reviewed it told me that because it was just so damn technically impressive, so I wasted a week playing a game that felt like a chore because I was convinced that at a certain point it HAD to become "awesome", but in the end, I just hated it.

However, I really liked "L.A. Noire" because it appeared to be focused more about telling interesting stories with complex characters and the interrogation mechanic seemed interesting to me.

For me, it's not about whether or not GTA V is "too violent". It's about whether or not the characters have interesting arcs. If their motivations are more complex than just "make money and kill things". If there isn't more to them than that, I don't care how good GTA V is at immersing you in the experience of playing a trio of lowlife assholes without redeemable qualities. I just don't want to play a 100-hour game as three lowlife assholes.

But if you can point me to one of the many Perfect Score reviews that actually talks about how deep and interesting the characters are, maybe I'll take this reviewer with a grain of salt. So far though, every review I've read or watched has tap-danced around this aspect, instead deciding to talk about everything else. So this reviewer is really the only basis I have to judge the worth of the characters and the narrative. That and the trailers and gameplay footage I've seen that pretty much just reinforces what this reviewer says.

Jim Sterling's review

http://www.destructoid.com/review-grand-theft-auto-v-261879.phtml

"GTA V's story is about irredeemable people doing unjustifiable things, but balances this against genuinely intriguing characters who, despite their stereotypical foundations, remain at least affable, even if they never stop being terrible. Each character has his own narrative arc, weaving in and out of a joint story that develops their relationship to each other, from uneasy allies to even less easy friends, and it's often hard not to sympathize with characters who, through all their murder and mayhem, ultimately wind up as rather sad and pathetic creatures."

GTA5's characters are violent as it is an integral part to conveying the story well

Again, it's not about the characters being violent. Booker DeWitt is a violent character. It's about me giving a crap about their motivations. And if all these characters have going for them is that they are nasty people, befriend nasty people, and then end up sad because they were nasty people... I'm sorry, but that REALLY doesn't sound like a game I would enjoy. It just doesn't.

And it's not that I can't find terrible people interesting. I absolutely love "Breaking Bad", but the benefit of that story is that you see the main character at the beginning, seemingly motivated by understandable human decisions that don't necessarily seem all that bad at first. But as of now, he's pretty much just as despicable as any of these characters seem to be. The difference is that, as far as I can tell, we never really see that human aspect of the GTA V characters, pretty much starting out with them already being ruthless criminals and ending with them being sad ruthless criminals.

I know the fun of a GTA game is in the roaming around and doing things and having fun and I totally get that and I'm fine with that and you can go have fun with that. But I'm not a sandbox gamer. I can only enjoy a sandbox if I find the characters that I'm playing with interesting and, even from Jim's positive descriptions, I can pretty much tell that these aren't characters that I would find interesting.

And I understand that this is pretty much exactly what Rockstar is going for. They WANT the game to be about straightforward criminals this time so that there's no pesky moral dissonance to get in the way of the player's gun-crazy fun times. And also because some people like stories about horrible people and find them interesting.

I'm not saying it's an objectively poorly-told story. It's just not the kind of story I want to play. And you might say that that shouldn't count against the game, but if a game fails to engage a player due to decisions made regarding the gameplay or narrative, it should affect the score if the reviewer felt it had a negative impact on their enjoyment and that it might have a similar effect on like-minded people. That's what makes this review good. And it's also what makes Jim's review good, because even though he ultimately gave it a positive review, his reasons made it clear that he's not looking for the same thing out of this experience that I am. Simple as that.

 

[Something Amyss]

Saints Row's The Boss- Kills Julius even though Julius was right in that The Boss had become a monster (and the saints were just Vice Kings that wore purple), murders for fun, cripples the feed dog guitarist just to "send a message" to his friend, tricks Maero into killing his own girlfriend, lets the Ronin Kid be buried alive by Johnny Gat. Could of selflessly sacrificed himself to save all his friends and restore the earth, but rejects the offer even though the Evil Alien is right and the world would be better with out him.

But it's okay, because the character is motivated by.... What? He's just after power, and more power.

Not to mention the feud with Maero only got started because of an an argument over who gets a cut. For that, he stole radioactive waste and mixed it into tattoo ink, scarring Maero.

The Boss was a dick from the beginning, and his motives in SR2 were even dickish-er.

And GOD, I have to get SR2 up and running on my PC. I miss that game so much. I only regret the lack of DLC (and the fact that it takes some work to get it working decently).

...Where were we? Oh yeah, the Saints Row 2 review. >.>

Seriously, I'd rather see an asshole than an asshole with a thin veneer of woobie or whatever.

 

[Frankster]

Can't say i agree with the reviewers opinion that playing unsympathetic and actual villainous characters is some sort of "step back" in gaming art *overdramatic hand gestures* I mean jeez, cut the drama, some of us wouldn't mind playing actual evil pricks for a change especially if its in keeping with a suitably prick world!
This doesnt sound like a feel good game in any way but it shouldn't be looked down for it anymore then it should be looked down for being a depressive reminder of the worst of our own world.

Otherwise from what i hear 3.5/5 seems a fair verdict.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Being a mature person i respect your opinion and your decision to give the game a score of 3.5.

Being an individual with my own personal standards i can without any anger say that i think i will enjoy the game anyway.