grand theft auto game reviews

Test: Grand Theft Auto V, the hit of Rockstar arrives on PC

Grand Theft Auto V was released on PC. If the sentence may seem innocuous, the potential arrival of the blockbuster of Rockstar on this platform has unleashed passions and rumors about its release date since the end of 2013. PC players have only waited too long, so it is time to deliver our verdict on this version acting as "Definitive Edition".

The PC version
The adventure offered by our three thieves robbers does not change in any way that on console: same story, same additions of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions and Online mode with 30 players inflated with all the updates. But in the last row of a class already well supplied invites a new kid whose profile is closer to the handsome popular kid than the ignorant and ignored dunce: the Rockstar Editor. With a simple press of a button on the character change screen, you can capture a game sequence that will be stored in your personal data and can then be used as raw material for your creative madness. Link two extracts with a black fade? Add different music, text or filter? Change camera angles and movement speed? All these options are possible by going to the Rockstar editor, which also offers a director mode pushing the concept even further by allowing you to choose the actors of your montage among the characters unlocked in solo. If we add to this good idea the future mods that should arrive in the coming months, the title should be enough to occupy long hours during PC players.

From a technical point of view, we will especially remember that the arrival on PC allows the track to considerably reduce its loading times and aliasing, without forgetting to boost its fluidity to shoot at 60 images per second on most well-equipped bikes. . Unless you have a racing beast capable of supporting the title with all the options pushed to the maximum, the differences are already less obvious on the rest, except for licker shadows and leaves with very convincing rendering. Unlike the chaotic launch of GTA IV on the same platform, GTA V was able to take advantage of its successive reports to arrive in an optimized and stable version on most of the recommended configurations, enough to reassure the many fans of the license who will be able to discover a sublimated version of the land full of promise, satyr and robbery of Los Santos.

Back to San Andreas! Nine years after telling us the story of C.J. in the seedy neighborhoods of Los Santos, Rockstar wakes up his virtual Los Angeles, as he did with Liberty City in GTA IV. Reinvented, redesigned, the city of angels has become immense. Symbol of the ambition of the studio, the map covers a frightening surface, without common measure with the previous open worlds signed by the Scottish team. All of Hollywood (Vinewood in the game) is there, and if the urban area inhabits only about 20% of the map, the remaining 80% have nothing of an abandoned flora. Each pixel is capable of hosting an activity, whether human or animal, of the Grand Senora desert, a real third world populated by coyotes in Blaine County, popular with climbing enthusiasts and other tourists subscribed to the cable car. And the heart of Los Santos is not to be outdone, rich in many entertainments and reproducing with its sauce well-known places such as Venice Beach or Downtown. Finish the story and GTA V will continue to live, to the rhythm of its thousands of NPCs, swarming like bees in a monumental swarm that is gradually discovered, in fog of war.

AT THREE, IT'S BETTER

For the first time in the history of the series, the player controls three characters. A novelty which brings a lot of others and which logically influences a lot on the progression and the scenario. At the helm of Michael, we discover the life of a quarantine, bank robber repentant, who owes his peaceful retirement only to an agreement with the equivalent of the FBI. Father of a poor family, Michael is in perpetual conflict with humanity. Unable to assume his actions, the owner of a small villa north of Los Santos is able to chain headshots in the manner of John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. Franklin is already more withdrawn. Child of the ghetto, he earns his living by selling cars then ... by stealing them for his boss. Experienced pilot, his skill allows him to slow down the time to zigzag in traffic at full speed. Finally, Trevor is by far the most colorful character. Psychopath of his condition, bloodthirsty killer, he lives in a trailer and shoots himself with petrol. Uncontrollable, self-destructive and a threat to the whole Earth, he was a pilot in the army before being downgraded. Logically, his permanent hatred allows him to enter a trance which doubles the damage it causes and mitigates those it takes. A real machine to make room on the blue planet.

In addition to these special abilities, which I also consider largely under-exploited during the adventure, each hero sees his characteristics evolve with practice. Run and you will become more enduring, dive and your apnea will develop, pilot to master air transport ... In fact, the architecture of the game is more complex than that of previous GTA. Although they are brought to cross again and again and to work together, each character has his own life, his own habits, his own hideout. And for the sake of consistency, Rockstar has ensured that each one retains its look, despite extensive customization possibilities. If Michael subscribes to suit-ties, Franklin looks more like a gangsta and Trevor that of a guy who has neither a washing machine nor a taste for fashion. Enter a clothes store and you can fix it all. Same thing for hair salons, back, and who adapt their offers to the type you embody. Changing your avatar is therefore possible, but farting the coherence of the universe is not. And it's very good like that. But in fact, how do we go from one to the other? A simple press on the directional cross displays a switch and then selects the bandit to embody. Outside the mission, the operation is possible at any time but takes 20 seconds, while a zoom in and zoom out takes place on the map. Classier than that, you die. Attention to detail is such that you always find the character in motion. For example, I happened to switch to Trevor when he was about to swing a guy from a bridge over the freeway or to tank in his underpants on an island lost in the middle of nowhere.

In mission, the switch is sometimes automatic because scripted, sometimes strongly suggested by the staging, or downright manual. And if the guys are close to each other, the transition is immediate, with no unnecessary effect. Thus, and even if the branches are not that numerous, a mission can be experienced more or less differently depending on the choice of switch. In fact, this feature offers above all the possibility of covering more ground or of moderating the comings and goings during gunfights which left to last. Anyway, the missions that call on the three heroes simultaneously are quite rare and the position of the guys so defined that the switches are not so much the will of the player as that of the developers. And for proof, the switch is sometimes impossible. Quite interventionist, the function remains devilishly effective and frankly enjoyable. Especially since Rockstar has everything planned and if one of the characters that you do not play is in difficulty, color code and sound indication notify you, the time for you to own it and solve its problem (a cover failing, too massive a wave of enemies, etc.).

PAYDAY

If the game has 70 main missions of a rare quality, the most striking are those concerning Michael, Trevor and Franklin at the same time. And the richest and neat are obviously the robberies, which require preparation, tactical choices and recruitment of reinforcements. I would have liked there to be more, but a robbery can require three or four missions upstream before being feasible. At this rate, it is not surprising that there is not a slew of them. So, before you are ready to rob a jewelry store or attack an armored van, you will potentially have to provide yourself with ammunition, vehicles (from the most classic to the most improbable, such as a submarine), masks or combinations, or even take photos from surveillance cameras or the location of the alarm. Every detail counts and until you have planned everything, the mission cannot begin. Once the gear is assembled, Lester, the brain of the band, presents you with a table riddled with photos, data, various and varied plans. At the end of his explanation, it's up to you to choose one of the two proposed approaches, nag or stealth for example. A difficult choice that is not frustrating since all the missions of the game can be replayed, both to score and to succeed by adopting a different method.

It is also your responsibility to recruit additional items. And if it is not possible to define the number or the function, it is on the reliability of the accomplice that you will have to decide. Thus, an inexperienced pilot, and therefore potentially mediocre, will only ask for a small share of the loot. Conversely, betting on a competent driver will cost you a lot of money. In reality, however, I never felt that a robbery was easier with expensive types or more complicated with noobs. So I preferred to save money and everything went well. That said, the principle is really nice and allows you to break the linearity of the progression. It is also through this robbery that you will garnish your bank account and, unlike other GTAs, it will fill up very early in the game, so that you walk around with a real arsenal of ammunition and a vest bulletproof at $ 2,000 from the first hours of play. A money that will allow you to invest in local properties or businesses (taxi company, cinema, etc.), to store your vehicles or continue to reap tunes.

GTA IV ++

The gameplay of GTA V remains fairly close to GTA IV. It is actually an evolution of the latter, correcting a lot of faults, improving the animation, making movements and confrontations more fluid. Thus, the characters are obviously lighter, although moving in a cramped space always gives rise to funny situations, ridiculous falls or hugs of walls very involuntary. The developers have however made sure that indoors, the comings and goings are always more assisted. But this flexibility, they benefit especially during the gunfights, because more able to adapt to the surrounding configuration. And it is a necessity insofar as certain walls have become destructible and therefore only temporary covers. Well helped by a semi-automatic aim, the player however has no trouble getting rid of an AI certainly higher in number, but not very fine. He must simply endeavor to multiply headshots to prevent an injured person from continuing to shoot him once on the ground. The weapons at our disposal, which can be further customized (silencer, suppressors, torches, etc.), are amply sufficient for the task anyway: Beretta, Uzi, AK-47, hunting or precision rifle but also rocket launchers, grenades paralyzing or sticky bombs are on the program. And mastering the complementarity of all these toys can make gunfights frankly easy, although still very intense.

Four-wheel driving has suffered the same fate, namely that it takes the basics of GTA IV and gains flexibility. Some will find it too arcade, but the templates are rather well respected. We simply lost these surreal suspensions and the latency of the direction, in favor of a more nervous and more precise steering, and a tenfold motor skills, which allows to climb certain difficulties more easily, to the detriment of realism however. But having a ride in a car has almost become has-been in GTA V as air transport is put forward. Size of the map requires, you will often be tempted to fly or order a helicopter to get from point A to point B, if you want to avoid taxis, much more practical but necessarily less fendarts. The models are more numerous than ever but above all, it is possible to drive airliners by doing well, a real fantasy for any GTA fan who has already tried to hijack a Boeing on the runway of Francis International Airport in the fourth episode! And when you have unlocked the skill, following a few strong adrenaline missions, you can parachute at any time from your mount and admire Los Santos for an endless fall. Ballad of Gay Tony's base jump can get dressed.

FULL CONNECTED AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

As in GTA IV, our heroes each have a smartphone, which allows them to receive emails and SMS from their contacts, to call a taxi, to take photos or even to surf the Net. A virtual web more real than life, which gives access to a whole bunch of services. Spy on your friends on a Facebook simulator, order cars and air transport over the Internet, have it delivered to your home, speculate on the stock market to earn money (necessary to buy certain properties completely overpriced), etc. Obviously, Rockstar used this improbable canvas to make its platform and parody in its sauce the many sites and services that pollute the Web today. Facebook and Apple are particularly toothy and they are not the only ones. The tool remains completely delusional but also functional.

I challenge anyone to get bored between two main missions. In addition to side quests, some random events happen before your eyes (Red Dead Redemption-style) and sometimes require interaction on your part. Some are even downright scripted and can open new missions for our three thugs. If you come across two scoundrels robbing a tourist, help her, even if it means keeping the money for you. A packet of illuminated people, located here and there, will have requests to submit to you, like this real estate salesman who asks you to tear off 15 sales panels from his competitor all over Los Santos. But that's not all, since the entertainment is more numerous than ever: Riding school, clothes shop, tattoo parlor, tuning garage, cable car, flight school, cinema, strip club, darts, hairdresser, nautical races or off-road, parachute jumps, tennis, triathlon, golf ... In short, the map is full of possibilities and in the end GTA looks more like an MMO than an action game. What should not displease fans of the series ...

FROM TPS TO FPS AT A GLANCE!

GTA V is two games in one. A classic GTA-like in sight in the third person or ... a real FPS in good and due form. This is the great novelty of this portage. And Rockstar hasn't shipped the feature since it's available at any time by simply using the button to switch views. So you can live the whole adventure in FPS view, with what it includes immersion, new animations, epic shoot sequences, etc. To get it right, the developers then modeled the interior of all vehicles, whatever they were. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, bikes, quads, buggies, planes, boats ... All have their own dashboard / handlebars / cockpit. Driving is then much more exhilarating and dynamic but logically more delicate, unless your skill allows you to play with the second analog stick to scan around you and avoid silly collisions. On foot, each movement has its own personal animation: jumps, obstacle crossing, cover, hand-to-hand combat, etc. Even falls on bikes or motorcycles are particularly successful, to the point where we hurt for our hero. As for the shooting sequences, they are a thousand times more immersive than in TPS. Note also that you benefit from 4 degrees of aiming assistance. You can opt for a 100% manual aim, as in a real FPS. From GTA V, we go to a Payday in a few seconds, for an equivalent result in terms of immersion. However, the experience is not quite at the level of the best FPS PC or consoles since the movements of the camera lack a little naturalness and are often brutal, to the point that it takes a good hour of adaptation to avoid conjunctivitis or the dismissal of breakfast. Quickly, you will learn to switch between the classic view and the FPS view, depending on your preferences and missions, but the result is very convincing.

ONLINE ON NEW-GEN: WHAT DOES IT GIVE?

On the Online level, GTA 5 offers players access to a real persistent experience directly from the character wheel in the solo or from the game menus. Rockstar immediately sets the tone for MMO by starting with character creation atypical based on a generation of avatars focused on heredity, in a brand new graphic framework worthy of the sequence of Usual Suspects. The "What is your typical day" section has been replaced by a manual definition of your statistics. Once the character is on the ground, it is through a short tutorial (that we can dodge) that we are immersed in the adventure. The opportunity for the player to start crossing known heads such as Lamar, who offers you your first pistol and your first car. Do not worry, you will be alone on this session since the title offers different strata of Online, with several degrees of "privacy": Online Solo (without players), Online with friends or "crew" in private session, or Online with strangers.

SIMPLE OPERATION FOR IMMEDIATE PLEASURE

A rhythmic adventure is then offered to you, this time limited to 30 players in the open world but much more dynamic than the Online of GTA 4. By the way, the matchmaking of activities or instantiated missions brings together all the players waiting and not only your free mode session. It is also possible to put yourself on the list of players awaiting activity and to continue the adventure until a mission is launched. Suddenly, we switch quite easily from a free mode to a mission without feeling the limits linked to restrictions on server traffic. We progress like an MMO, by carrying out missions and activities in order to collect precious RP (your experience points) which increase your level and will allow you, in addition to accessing unlockable improvements, be contacted by other key characters in the solo (Lester, Simeon, Ron ...). These will bring you significant advantages such as the possibility to put bonuses on players of the session or to spot on the map certain models of vehicles. We gradually enter a real gangster life with the purchase of garages to store vehicles, the purchase of properties to relax with friends or even plan a series of robberies of groceries, pending the next implementation (it was time) real robberies in multiplayer. It is also a real pleasure to progress, slowly but surely, in this universe which, unlike that of the multiplayer of GTA 4, does not systematically turn to deathmatch on a tiny part of the map offered for the occasion, thanks in particular to subterfuges of the type "bonus placed by the players" or via the level of mental health which progresses according to your murders of civilians and your actions.

VARIETY AND EFFICIENCY

Rockstar has made its Online lively enough to offer players a playground that is neither desert nor too redundant. You will therefore have the possibility of leaving your world open to 30 players (which we hardly see on the first week of launching the title) to participate in various activities and instantiated missions, the implementation of which can sometimes seem long, hence the interest of the "pending" mode. On the menu of these famous sessions: races, deathmatchs, survival in the face of waves of enemies, parachute jumping, or more or less scripted missions. Do not expect a staging worthy of the solo all the same. The proposed panel is quite varied and allows you to completely change the atmosphere in a few minutes, going for example from a car-jacking competition, each for its own skin, to a game where two teams play cat and mouse: cats in overfitted fighter planes facing mice in Voltic having to reach a point in the city. Between each mission and after the summary of scores and the distribution of dollars earned, RP and JP, there is a screen that offers to count the votes for the following activities, thus creating a dynamic exempting you from matchmaking and the search for groups for a specific activity. Speaking of the latter, know that it is now a bit faster, as are the loads.

THE SAME THING, BUT BETTER!

We also appreciate in passing the appearance in free mode of a new in-game menu in which we can manage its inventory of consumables, the interactions that we define with other players (possibility of being attacked or not at foot, possibility given to other players to board your vehicle) in order to avoid one player being repeatedly harassed by another. Always on the customization side, the aesthetics of your character (hairstyle, makeup, tattoos, clothing, masks) will offer you a very wide choice of appearance, which will also be unlocked as you progress in the adventure. On this side, we also note the presence of beacons and insurance in Los Santos Customs which give the possibility of finding and tracing a personal vehicle. On this subject, the Online imposes a certain attachment vis-à-vis the vehicles owned in order to favor the immersion of the player and to enhance the purchases of cars, motorcycles, and other means of transport acquired after long hours of work. . To push the vice a little further, know that it will be impossible for you to modify or repair a borrowed “sports” car since it is considered stolen and is equipped with a beacon. Likewise, the slightest police car passing near your stolen vehicle will systematically chase you. You will quickly brake your car thief ambitions after two or three hellish pursuits. In terms of cars and content in the broadest sense, this PS4 and One edition offers us all of the additions released since the launch of Online (i.e. 11 updates with, in particular, around thirty vehicles, a dozen weapons and quite a few content concerning the customization of the character and vehicles), but also all of the missions generated by the community (which, according to the editor, reaches a trifle of 9.8 million jobs).

Despite new server and connection concerns during its first weeks of activity, GTA Online really offers to continue the solo experience, in multi with friends or between competitors, through a long-term progression, tasty and addictive. Add to that the crew system, supposed to offer real clan wars, voice or written communication between players via in-game mobile phone, a host of good ideas, the FPS view which allows here an increased immersion and introduces views imposed so that everyone plays in the same conditions and you get the GTA MMO that the creators of GTA San Andreas MultiPlayer had dreamed of. A very good vintage, which tolerates cross and cross-platform backups (possibility to import a 360 character to a PS4 version and vice versa). An excellent new version for the Online now essential with the implementation of robberies.

The notes
+ Positive points
3 different endings ...
The possibility of switching between the 3 heroes at any time ...
Characters treated like never in the history of the series
A perfectly controlled satire
An exceptional staging
Addictive and addictive multiplayer
Imperceptible kinematic / in-game transitions
One of the most varied games ever imagined
The multi-choice steering system
Very little waste in the 70 main missions
Rare intensity gunfights
Finally an intelligent chase system with the police
25 hours of play for the main adventure, double to reach 100%
Being able to replay all missions, change your method and improve your scoring
Scenario side quests
The prettiest open world on this generation of machines
Just an incredible diversity map
Sublime original compositions
Dubbing close to perfection
The FPS view, immersive and playable at any time
All online items available solo
The video editor, ideal for fertile minds
A well optimized PC version

Negative points
… But not frankly striking
… or almost
Too linear a scenario
Special capacities underused
Some heaviness in travel

More than a game, GTA V is a universe that mixes genres with a perpetual concern for balance between playfulness and realism. A potpourri of good ideas, the title of Rockstar reinvents the open world and narrates with diabolical precision the destiny of three vile villains in a huge virtual Los Angeles. More than ever free of his movements and master of his progression, the player devours an incredibly varied range of missions, from bank robberies to executions of the local underworld through parachute jumps or the search of the seabed. Despite its somewhat predictable scenario and its endings a chouia shipped, GTA V is masterfully staged and enjoys a narrative with little onions, well helped by the permanent switch between Michael, Trevor and Franklin. The feeling of freedom pushed to its climax. As for multiplayer, GTA Online offers a real extension of the solo experience and creates a new genre subject to evolution. The result is satisfactory, offers real comfort for team or solo play, and a mess of content. With an included video editor, an optimization up to expectations and a fertile land ready to be plowed by a tractor named mod, the PC version of GTA V is the culmination of an already cult episode of the saga .