But the heists are the standout - punctuating the campaign with spikes of intense action. Two hours in and you’ve already chased a yacht down a freeway, assassinated a high-profile media CEO and piloted an aeroplane across some stunning scenery. Missions feel as fresh and funny as they did a year ago, and revisiting them is rarely anything but a pleasure. Add ‘landscape photographer’ to the list of fantasies GTA lets you play out.Īll of which would mean absolutely nothing were it not for a story that’s at once mad, varied and at times breathlessly exciting. Throw in the fact each of GTA V’s three protagonists come with a photo snapping smartphone and it’s easy to lose hours simply gawping at the game through a filtered lens. Climb into Vinewood hills and look at it from above (especially at night) and you’ll see car headlamps winding through the streets, the city leaking pearly light into a deep night sky and pulsing like some sort of giant, glistening creature. What sounds initially like gushing PR spiel instead amplifies the illusion that Los Santos is a real place. What else is new? Well there’s more traffic for one thing. Snap to a wall in first person and your screen fills with grey plaster, which is maybe why Rockstar added customisation options that automatically revert the camera to the traditional viewpoint for more hectic bouts of combat. You could legitimately play the entire game using the new format, although I personally preferred a switch to third person for the cover-based combat. Most crucial of all, first person mode feels natural - as much a part of GTA as the oddball cast or ridiculous side missions.
This completely changes how you’ll play against the cops - luring them close enough to take a pot shot at the driver before speeding away to safety.
Better still you can shoot out car windows for brilliantly accurate drive-by shootings. There’s tactical bite to the gunplay now, and pulling out a shotgun for close range blasting feels satisfyingly brutal. It’s no Battlefield, but being able to ironsight for accurate shots to the head liberates combat from the twitchy, heavy, cover-based affair it was before. The combat engine has never been a GTA strong-point, but the addition of first-person turns shootouts into a thoroughly decent FPS. I drove more sensibly, called taxis rather than hijacked cars and resisted the urge to whip out the sticky bombs every five seconds to make mincemeat out of the cops.
It’s a genius way of reframing a series notorious for its slapstick attitude towards violence. Stamping on enemies while they’re down feels intimately gruesome (I still did it). Punch an innocent bystander in the chops for a laugh? Suddenly it’s not as funny as your first whips out in front of you and cracks them in the cheek, sending them reeling. Playing GTA 5 while looking through the eyes of your character connects you to the action in a way the traditional third person viewpoint never could. It’s a switch in perspective both literal and psychological. Instead what they’ve done is essentially built an entirely new game. Rockstar could have simply crammed an extra camera in, slapped a bullet point on the back of the box and had done with it.
Most impressive of all is the new first person mode.