Grand Theft Auto 5 Review - People Suck

[Abomination]

Everything he said appealed to me about this game. Even the negatives... I want to play a story as a vile individual because that's actually something the industry is lacking at present.

So if the only cons he has with the game is how ruthless, evil and despicable the protagonists are? Sounds like a 5/5 review to me.

Will get when on PC.

Edit: upon further reflection I think giving it a 3.5/5 is a bit strange since the only reason given is what could be considered a truly subjective one.

Using a recent release like Total War: Rome II as an example the game has issues that are simply not subjective: incredible load times, bugs bugs bugs, a lack of transparency in the political system, leveling paths hidden in the in-game manual, terrible battle AI, and baffling building pros/cons (like something that gives you 12 bonus to public order in one way also gives you -12 to public order in another way). All of those things can be universally agreed to be negative for the game.

On the flip side, disliking an evil protagonist is a subjective thing, other people might love the idea. To rate the game in a negative manner because of it, rather than mention it as a problem the reviewer had on a PERSONAL level, I feel isn't doing the already broken gaming metric score any favors.

Alas, we come to the question: are games a work of art, or just a bunch of code spliced together? Games are art, and characterization and plot dynamism can be subjectively reviewed:

[li]Are character's motives neatly described or relate-able?[/li]
[li]Was there any fulfillment in the 60 hour story-line? (that would be huge for me)[/li]
[li]Did one part of the story drag on and get boring?[/li]

It's difficult for this tech culture to focus on the artistic side as most of this community is buried in the pockets of the PC gamer dominated net. But somethings are more important than mechanics, frame rates and pixelation; and many games have been forgiven their shoddy design because so much effort placed in creating a meaningful experience.

Fallout 3 bugged horribly, but it was game of the year because of that experience -- it's dark tone contrasted by brighter elements shining throughout the wasteland.

Characters that are just bad, bad and more bad will choke the emotional context out of some people. Apparently, it happened to one reviewer.

Has a character or story within a game (or lack thereof) ever turned you off to the whole thing?

It's happened to me.

More than once, but if I was in a position where my review would be listed and used in what is an attempt at a metric for how I rate a video game I would leave my personal & subjective views out of the score.

Essentially I feel one should at first think what the score is supposed to represent and therefore make that the focus. If is an opinion piece or a reflection of what the game is about? The characters might have been nasty but was the story poorly told? It's entirely possible that an evil guy is just an evil guy. Some peoples' moral compasses just point in the opposite direction as to what you would expect and playing a protagonist who is a villain shouldn't be a reason to score a game poorly - especially when a game is all about being a member of the criminal underworld. Eventually you have to write a game for someone who WANTS to be there and not have nothing but anti-heroes.

 

[Icehearted]

I do agree that no game can be perfect, certainly not worthy of 100% or 10/10. There will always be problems.
Possibly the closest to perfection of late, i would imagine would be the mario galaxy games. They need no justification for themselves, yet somehow are highly polished and have a cunning simple/complicated mix of gameplay that anyone could pick up. Anyhow, no one needs to relate to poor gullible mario.

Tbh, i didnt dislike any of gta v main protagonists. But maybe i'm just a nasty bastard i guess, according to all these opinions. Actually, come to think of it, i seem to get disappointed when you cannot kill children in games they're included in. I always have to put up with the cretins in real life. AND they keep wanting to play my mario games!!! GARRHH!!

I completely disagree. I think the idea of what a perfect game is supposed to be is messed up, that people miss the concept how how these scores should work. No game is absolute perfection because it cannot be everything to everyone (though companies do try), but a perfect score should reflect how well the game does what it was meant to do.

For example Tetris is simple, well executed, challenging, it is a puzzle game that anyone can pick up and play pretty easily, it has been cloned more than just about anything else out there, but it laid the foundation for the genre. It is as I see it, a perfect game.

I would say the same about Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. It was a game that was highly customizable, tough to master, very replayable. For what it was meant to be it did so perfectly. Not for everyone, but a perfect game of this genre is meant for people that enjoy the genre, not for everyone.

Not every game needs to be everything for everyone, but a perfect game should be excellent at what it does. Even bugs are okay as long as they are minor. People have radicalized the scoring system, 3 out of 5 isn't bad. it's not great but not bad. Taken into context (not to mention the highly subjective nature of the reviewing process) one can see it's simply a matter of taste and not really reflective of the game's performance. I'm betting that Greg may not have been the target audience if he found unjustifiable violence and a coldly brutal satirizing of America off-putting as he did. Much like a person that doesn't typically play sports games might not enjoy the next NFL or NHL title.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

So basically he gave it a 7/10 rather than a 8 or 9 because he didn't like playing as evil people with no human motivation.

And if you DON'T mind that your OWN SCORE would be higher. It's his review, so it isn't.

Good job understanding how opinions work, people.

 

[Carpenter]

So basically he gave it a 7/10 rather than a 8 or 9 because he didn't like playing as evil people with no human motivation.

And if you DON'T mind that your OWN SCORE would be higher. It's his review, so it isn't.

Good job understanding how opinions work, people.

People are not whining about a "low score" the score is actually pretty normal, they are annoyed that he gives it a good score but spends the entire review complaining about one aspect, has to use spoiler warning (because he doesn't know what reviews are for) to give away parts of the story, and rarely mentions gameplay at all.

If he had given it a 1 out of five with that review, I could at least respect it, the way it is makes it pretty obvious that it was meant to attract readers and controversy, which it did.

 

[Carpenter]

These things are subjective, like you said. I doubt that Rockstar intended to make an awful story that people will want to skip, but some won't like it.
I haven't finished the game yet, so I won't say that the writing can carry the experience. For now it adds to it, but not too much.

So the writing adds to the gameplay, but not very much. But it's also funnier than Saint's Row. Using gallows humor. And you're not saying that Greg was incorrect when he described the protagonists as unlikable and unrelatable?

I'm going to need to see an example of this writing. I literally cannot imagine a sentence that does all of those things at the same time. Go ahead and format it with The Escpaist's spoiler tags, as documented here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/markup_help.php Then quote me your favorite line from the game.

The characters of SR2 were unlikable psychotic killers that casually sold drugs and enslaved helpless women into prostitution, yet people still had fun with the game.

It's not a contradiction, just a difference in opinion. You keep referencing "Gregg" as if his word is gold. The guy praises the old GTA games while complaining about things in 5 that were also done in past games, like senseless violence without it relating to the main story.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I do agree that no game can be perfect, certainly not worthy of 100% or 10/10. There will always be problems.
Possibly the closest to perfection of late, i would imagine would be the mario galaxy games. They need no justification for themselves, yet somehow are highly polished and have a cunning simple/complicated mix of gameplay that anyone could pick up. Anyhow, no one needs to relate to poor gullible mario.

Tbh, i didnt dislike any of gta v main protagonists. But maybe i'm just a nasty bastard i guess, according to all these opinions. Actually, come to think of it, i seem to get disappointed when you cannot kill children in games they're included in. I always have to put up with the cretins in real life. AND they keep wanting to play my mario games!!! GARRHH!!

I completely disagree. I think the idea of what a perfect game is supposed to be is messed up, that people miss the concept how how these scores should work. No game is absolute perfection because it cannot be everything to everyone (though companies do try), but a perfect score should reflect how well the game does what it was meant to do.

For example Tetris is simple, well executed, challenging, it is a puzzle game that anyone can pick up and play pretty easily, it has been cloned more than just about anything else out there, but it laid the foundation for the genre. It is as I see it, a perfect game.

I would say the same about Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. It was a game that was highly customizable, tough to master, very replayable. For what it was meant to be it did so perfectly. Not for everyone, but a perfect game of this genre is meant for people that enjoy the genre, not for everyone.

Not every game needs to be everything for everyone, but a perfect game should be excellent at what it does. Even bugs are okay as long as they are minor. People have radicalized the scoring system, 3 out of 5 isn't bad. it's not great but not bad. Taken into context (not to mention the highly subjective nature of the reviewing process) one can see it's simply a matter of taste and not really reflective of the game's performance. I'm betting that Greg may not have been the target audience if he found unjustifiable violence and a coldly brutal satirizing of America off-putting as he did. Much like a person that doesn't typically play sports games might not enjoy the next NFL or NHL title.

Although you disagree, i find myself agreeing with you. Perhaps what i meant was that if i were to be a professional critic, then no game could possibly be perfect...for the reason you have stated. I loved state of decay, no matter how buggy and sketchy it was. It had something fresh and addictive. However hate most sports games, regardless of their scores as they become just repetition fueled on by testosterone induced ego (imo)
The simpler you make a game, the less chance it has for mistakes...however, if it does make mistakes, they would be disastrous

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

So... No more pondering about sense of protagonists' actions and life between killing dozens of policemen and burying some poor bastard in a porta potty? Yay!

In GTA*, you play as a terrible person.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

So basically he gave it a 7/10 rather than a 8 or 9 because he didn't like playing as evil people with no human motivation.

And if you DON'T mind that your OWN SCORE would be higher. It's his review, so it isn't.

Good job understanding how opinions work, people.

People are not whining about a "low score" the score is actually pretty normal, they are annoyed that he gives it a good score but spends the entire review complaining about one aspect, has to use spoiler warning (because he doesn't know what reviews are for) to give away parts of the story, and rarely mentions gameplay at all.

If he had given it a 1 out of five with that review, I could at least respect it, the way it is makes it pretty obvious that it was meant to attract readers and controversy, which it did.

I don't know what you read but more than half of that WAS talking about the gameplay. The rest of it was talking about the story and characters and the reviewers distaste for both. I'm fairly sure talking about the story and characters for half of a video game review is not excessive.

And I don't know what comment section you were reading but a pretty good number of people were specifically whining about the "LOW" score. In fact you're the FIRST person to raise the complaints everyone else has apparently been having.

If he had given it a 1 out of five with that review, I could at least respect it, the way it is makes it pretty obvious that it was meant to attract readers and controversy, which it did.

Okay seriously what is your problem?

So it would be better if he were just seeking views and controversy? Is it really THIS disgustingly awful for him to give us his opinion in his review about a video game? Why are you this angry?

 

[MetroidNut]

Wow, GTA V sounds almost as bad as those other games where you commit discomforting acts of violence for ethically-dubious reasons. What were they called again...Spec Ops: The Line? Deus Ex? I forget.

Spec Ops took a side as the character was confronted and had to make choices about the side he would take -- good or evil, corrupt or not.

Dues Ex: Human Revolutions opened up several metaphysical dialogues between in-game characters on the sanctity of the human body; and every side of the fight had a silver lining.

Spec Ops: The Line forces you to bomb a bunch of people with white phosphorous. Your only choice in that scene is whether you want to commit a terrible act of violence as part of your mad quest, or turn off the game. You might get choices later, but you will be calling an airstrike on those people.

And I wasn't talking about Human Revolution, I was talking about the original Deus Ex, where the combat was deliberately a little clunky and uncomfortable to make killing people discomforting. The game doesn't force you to play as a butcher, but it often encourages it, then slaps you on the hand if you take the bait.

My point, in clearer and less sarcastic terms, is that encouraging or forcing players to commit heinous acts is a highly effective storytelling technique used to great effect by many excellent games. I don't see why it's such a problem in GTA V.

 

[medv4380]

Oh boy, this is gonna end well.

Guys, just remember. A 3.5 out of 5 translates to a 7 out of 10. A 7 out of 10 is still pretty good, you know.

No, a 7 is 70% or a C-. aka, Low end of average for everyone who had a standard 12 year education drilled into them. There is a reason why users, and critics put games at 7-7.5 for average even when they profess 5 is average.

Note, I'm not complaining about GTA V getting a 7. Just the perception that 7 means good. It means average because that's what people give out on average.

Edit.
For anyone who thinks this reviewer is biased as compared to Other reviews there is an easy statistical test. Take the last 10 reviews and create an average, and compare that to the average of metacritic scores for the exact same games. If he was out of line statistical Regression towards the mean wouldn't work. Unless I got one of the scores wrong or missed one 79 to 80 is close enough, and well within the statistical margin of error.

Game Score Adjusted Score Metacritic Score
GTA V 3.5 70 97
Europa Universal IV 4 80 85
Civ V 4.5 90 85
Company of Heroes 2 4 80 80
Fallen Enchantress 4 80 80
Crysis 3 3 60 76
Omerta 2.5 50 54
AC III 5 100 80
Mists of Pandaria 5 100 82
Sleeping Dogs 4 80 81
Average 3.95 79 80

 

[PapaJupe]

This reviewer is free to review this game however he sees fit. I will not begrudge him that. he can love it, hate it, or be inddiferent to it for what ever reasons he feels are honest. But the following statement is pure ignorance and highly offensive:

"It is the difference between The Godfather Part 1 and Part 2, between Inglorious Basterds and Triumph of the Will, and between Just Cause 2 and JFK Reloaded. In the former examples, the audience can get behind the anti-heroes depicted for whatever reason and condone their admittedly awful actions, but in the latter group, the subject matter or the protagonist's morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed."

I mean you are aware that Inglorious Basterds is a piece of Hollywood escapist history re-writing and Triumph of the Will is certified Nazi propaganda?
Like I said, pure ignorance.

 

[lacktheknack]

This reviewer is free to review this game however he sees fit. I will not begrudge him that. he can love it, hate it, or be inddiferent to it for what ever reasons he feels are honest. But the following statement is pure ignorance and highly offensive:

"It is the difference between The Godfather Part 1 and Part 2, between Inglorious Basterds and Triumph of the Will, and between Just Cause 2 and JFK Reloaded. In the former examples, the audience can get behind the anti-heroes depicted for whatever reason and condone their admittedly awful actions, but in the latter group, the subject matter or the protagonist's morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed."

I mean you are aware that Inglorious Basterds is a piece of Hollywood escapist history re-writing and Triumph of the Will is certified Nazi propaganda?
Like I said, pure ignorance.

Wat.

Inglorious Basterds and Triumph of the Will

In the former examples, the audience can get behind the anti-heroes depicted for whatever reason and condone their admittedly awful actions, but in the latter group, the subject matter or the protagonist's morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed.

That... lines up entirely correctly.

 

[Blazing Steel]

Fantastic review Greg. Sure, it's a 'GTA' game but that shouldn't be an excuses to give it full marks if the murderer doesn't really feel justified.

I'll probably pick the game up when it's around £20 to give it a try and experience the sandbox and shooter elements, but not for the main characters.

As for the thread, I get why people would disagree with your opinion as they probably have different morals or, at least in their eyes, the murderer is justified; however I'm amazed by how many people seems to be so hateful of what seems like a valid opinion.

 

[Frozengale]

Honestly the way Greg went about reviewing this is the same reason I like Yahtzee's reviews so much. He talks about the experiences that stick out to him the most and why he thinks they're good or bad. This review is kind of like that. He mentions the major things that stick out to him, and he briefly touches on things that are important but don't need to be harped on. He then gives it his honest opinion.

And thank you very much for the review Greg. I thought it was good. I personally think that honest opinions hold more weight then stars, percentages, or other scoring systems. Based on that knowledge I can determine if a game is what I would like or not. Yahtzee's review of Demon's Souls got me to buy that game and I loved it. Even though he didn't seem to enjoy it much he convinced me to buy it because he takes the time to describe the experience, not just the game. And your review of Dragon Age 2 got me back into Dragon Age. I finally trundled through Origins (which I considered pretty meh) and got to Dragon Age 2 which I loved. Would never had played it if it weren't for reviewers like you, Greg. It's stuff like this that keeps me coming to The Escapist.

 

[O maestre]

I wonder how Mr. Tito felt reviewing other GTA games, even if the story had matched up to sympathetic anti hero's how would it handle the disconnect of you minutes before arriving to your mission having killed 100 people on the way.

This is something that was definitely jarring in GTA 4 where they try to sell the Bellic as a sympathetic guy in the cut scenes.

If anything GTA 5 continues down the vein of realism buy showing how most criminals are genuine evil monsters, with little motivation beyond greed or thrill, all the nasty things in game still pale in comparison to real world events. If GTA still has any hope at being controversial it has to up the ante.

If anything Mr. Tito seems to be bringing a lot of recent social changes and attributing it to what is basically a sandbox game where you only your imagination sets bounds to the amount of anarchy you can accomplish, that is the core of the GTA games.

My fond memories of San Andreas do not include driving appropriately or pondering on C.J's personal crisis, rather they come from driving a motorcycle into a plane or unleashing hell and terror from an attack helicopter. If anything Rockstar managed to make the game characters more reflective of the players of the game.

Review scores should be indicative of both the quality of the material but mostly it should be an assertion of whether the consumer should buy the product. It's partly why review scores are somewhat difficult to translate into recommendations. As it stands the relatively "low" score suggests that the games gameplay quality is rated as average, when it's quality far surpasses many of it's triple A competitors. Unless you are holding GTA to another standard the score is inconsistent. Especially since the grounds of the score were note gameplay related at all but soly because the reviewer didn't like the characters in a Grand Theft Auto game, most players are not expecting or looking for sympathetic characters while playing a violent sandbox game.

Mr. Tito has recently reviewed rts and tbs games and the last game that is comparable to this was Zombie-U given 3.5 stars as well. It is very hard for me to see the consistency in any of it, unless Mr. Tito is holding GTA up to another standard than the usual escapist reviews.

 

[Therumancer]

There was a game in the 1990s called "The Killing Cloud" that had a torture mechanic that Amnesty International objected to so the developers dropped it
http://www.mobygames.com/game/killing-cloud

No chance of that now I suppose.

Interesting the game is rated R18+ in Australia for Drug Use and not "violence that is relished or cruel" although that applies to erotica, the Pirates! porno had to be released with a separate disc just for the fight scenes due to the Non-Violent Erotica standards for X-Rated content.

Movies such as "Dogs in Space" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092904/ were given R18+ ratings on release for "depicting a degenerate lifestyle" as did "Pure ****" that was banned for showing actual drug use http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075111/

What are they saying already $1billion dollars in sales predicted?

Well, a lot comes down to the guts of the devs and publishers. Typically it's easier to capitulate than to fight to keep a vision the way you want it, so you rarely see video games taking on political groups in defense of objectionable content anymore. That said the 1990s were when you actually did see some fighting back (over games like Night Trap).

As far as movies being banned, tons of them got banned during the 1980s in the UK, the operating term at the time was "video nasties" there is an article on Wikipedia showing what titles got banned during this time, the whole thing was eventually overturned though, which also did away with most similar "follow the leader" bans you saw happening all over the world at the time.

To be honest I didn't much care for what they did with GTA after "San Andreas" (I am not a GTA IV fan) so I wasn't particularly looking forward to "V". To me it seems like someone decided that the idea of having unlikable psycopaths with no redeeming features was a great idea, just like the guys who did "Kane And Lynch" and well... you see how well that went. At least the game itself is apparently a lot better than the K&L ones though. To be honest from what little I've heard I don't think the issue is so much the characters being irredeemably bad (as opposed to good guys doing bad things) so much as they aren't likable.

 

[gphjr14]

I've been having too much fun playing this game to really care about any reviews.

 

[Greg Tito]

Mr. Tito has recently reviewed rts and tbs games and the last game that is comparable to this was Zombie-U given 3.5 stars as well. It is very hard for me to see the consistency in any of it, unless Mr. Tito is holding GTA up to another standard than the usual escapist reviews.

Here are some open world "crime" games I've played and enjoyed:

Saint's Row 3 - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/9221-Saints-Row-The-Third-Review (ignore the video, it was a failed experiment)
Sleeping Dogs - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/9860-Sleeping-Dogs-Review
Just Cause 2 - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/7358-Review-Just-Cause-2 (gameplay failed me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless)
Assassin's Creed 3 - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10015-Assassins-Creed-III-Review (unlikeable main character, but in this case Connor's demeanor didn't outweigh the gameplay for me)
Infamous 2 - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8954-Infamous-2-Review
Red Dead Redemption - my vote for 2010 GOTY
Saint's Row 4 - my current vote for 2013 GOTY
All the previous GTAs from 3 on

Point is: I like this genre. I play the crap out of it. And GTA V's story failed because it forced the player to commit despicable acts for no reason. Every other game above has a choice mechanic or a thread of nobility to make the characters empathetic, even if they commit terrible acts. GTA V ignores people who may be uncomfortable with the subject matter.

In my opinion, that's bad writing, but you are more than welcome to form your own opinions on the game. That's what will make this medium great, the discourse between players, gamemakers and critics, and I certainly accept and even applaud opposing viewpoints on GTA V.

Greg

 

[Sleepy Anarchy]

Right. I made an account to post here, so I might as well start.

I got GTA V two days ago. I've played it a bit since then. And I can agree, it's sure as hell not a 10/10. 7/10 feels a little low, but I can very well see where the negative points have come from. He's right. The characters are despicable. I actively go out of my way to avoid playing as Trevor. This is from a guy who hasn't throughly played a GTA game since it was top-down. From the little bit of GTA IV I played, I got a feeling from Niko that, even though he was a mass-murdering psychopath, it didn't feel like you were playing a person you hated.

Also, I'm probably biased, having come directly from Saints Row IV, but this game freaking hurts. the driving, while good, still has a few flaws, as does some of the other stuff in the game.

The review given was good, but the score itself was probably a little too low, but I get the feeling that if most people were to give this game a score of their own, they wouldn't take into account the characters themselves, or most of the dialogue (Which I personally hated as well. There's only so many times you can use the N-Word before it becomes stupid), which it probably what accounts for most of the higher scores.

And it's nice to see something that isn't praising it like it shines out of God's ass. Kind of wish I'd seen this before I played it, because having seen nothing bad about it beforehand, I was kind of let down when I got it myself.