GTA V

[Megrim]

Sooooo... the bad guys aren't romanticized enough per the typical American/Hollywood-ean treatment of "real life" and are instead depicted as they tend to be in reality; petty, vindictive, malicious and spiteful.

How is any of this bad again? I mean, if one is going to criticize GTA for being crass (hookers, etc) that's one thing, arguably true, but saying that the game is bad because it cuts a little too close to the bone is weak as.


" ... the protagonist's morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed."


Time to take a trip outside the ivory tower methinks.

Because they're not the bad guys, they're you. I can understand the desire to tell a story about bad people, but surely it is not surprising that there are people who don't have the desire to act it out themselves.

EDIT: Also the reviews we've been talking about here range from 3.5/5 to 9/10. None of them are calling the game bad in an overall sense.

Notwithstanding the point about scores, it then sounds like a complaint, purely, of narrative mode. Bad in first person is icky and yuck, bad in third person is ok and acceptable.

If this is the case, then we are simply underscoring what appears to be the exact point of the way the game is oriented; highlighting not only how shallow we are as consumers but in giving us an an unpasteurised taste of what it is we actually enjoy.

[Margalis]

Except people have been acting it out themselves the whole time, in GTA, SR, JC, etc. except because the protagonist had some single redeeming quality, they were able to empathize with a psychotic criminal. By removing that, you make people realize that what they're doing is incredibly evil; that might make some people uncomfortable but to me that sounds like a better game.

Well said.

Most players who play GTA play it as complete psychopaths with only the flimsiest narrative excuses for their actions. The game has always been about being a irredeemable psycho that casually murders.

The idea that 99% of the game play should be considered non-canonical to the narrative is extremely silly - much better to say that it is canonical and embrace what that says about the characters.

[Stormwaltz]

Lately I've been feeling ill and angry about all the bad shit I see happening in the world. There are days I can't read the news because I'm still depressed about what I read yesterday. When I play Saints Row, on the occasions people are doing things that make me ill and angry, I am opposing them. I'm always left in a place where I feel my character is a badass (female) Robin Hood, looking out for her own and sticking it to The Man.

In GTA5, the reviews have made it explicitly clear that I would be part of the problem - doing the things that make me ill and angry when I see others doing them in real life. And I don't get any catharsis from that. If you do, I'm glad you have that release. But I don't. It just makes me feel awful about the world and myself. I can't take it as entertainment anymore.

So that's me. No beret, just old and heartsick. And since I'm not going to play the game, I'll check out of the thread now.

[Merusk]

What Storm said, but X5 since I've never touched a single one of the games.  Enjoy.

[Ingmar]

Sooooo... the bad guys aren't romanticized enough per the typical American/Hollywood-ean treatment of "real life" and are instead depicted as they tend to be in reality; petty, vindictive, malicious and spiteful.

How is any of this bad again? I mean, if one is going to criticize GTA for being crass (hookers, etc) that's one thing, arguably true, but saying that the game is bad because it cuts a little too close to the bone is weak as.


" ... the protagonist's morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed."


Time to take a trip outside the ivory tower methinks.

Because they're not the bad guys, they're you. I can understand the desire to tell a story about bad people, but surely it is not surprising that there are people who don't have the desire to act it out themselves.

EDIT: Also the reviews we've been talking about here range from 3.5/5 to 9/10. None of them are calling the game bad in an overall sense.

Notwithstanding the point about scores, it then sounds like a complaint, purely, of narrative mode. Bad in first person is icky and yuck, bad in third person is ok and acceptable.

If this is the case, then we are simply underscoring what appears to be the exact point of the way the game is oriented; highlighting not only how shallow we are as consumers but in giving us an an unpasteurised taste of what it is we actually enjoy.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to play a minigame where I gouge out Gloucester's eyes in a video game version of King Lear, either. I think there's a pretty significant difference between watching a tragic narrative as a non-participant and controlling the guy who is actually doing the scooping.

[jakonovski]

A lot of video games are all about being able to do the eye scooping yourself while being told it's ok. Haven't played GTAV enough to know how it handles stuff, but good on them if they remove the fig leaf.

 

[Cyrrex]

I can totally get on board with people not wanting to play a game which is admittedly filled to the brim with things we in normal society do not consider acceptable.  And for the record, I consider none of those things to be acceptable in real life.  But picking on ONE of them and going on a crusade is just strange to me.  Yes, the game is full of misogyny.  Here is a list of other terrible things it is full of:

- Horrible language, at least to some people.  Most people.
- Graphic, horrific murder
- Torture
- Random, casual violence against totally innocent people
- Armed Robbery
- Unbelievable amounts of racism.  Even whitey isn't spared.
- uh, auto theft
- driving through literally all the red lights

Okay, some of these are clearly worse than the others, but the point is that these games have always been full to the brim of horrible, rotten stuff that almost all of us agree is not even remotely okay outside of a video game world.  To just take one of these things, and harp on it like people are doing...makes no sense.  It doesn't seem right to pick and choose.  If you are going to hate on it, hate on all of it.  

[UnSub]

"Because video games" is the argument why a lot of the violence and law breaking is considered acceptable. It's fun!

Racism, sexism and homophobia are much less comfortable as bedfellows.

[Samwise]

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to play a minigame where I gouge out Gloucester's eyes in a video game version of King Lear, either. I think there's a pretty significant difference between watching a tragic narrative as a non-participant and controlling the guy who is actually doing the scooping.

brb, kickstarting   

[Cyrrex]

Anyway I did pick this up on the way home yesterday.  After a long install, I managed to play for about and hour-and-a-half.  First impressions:

-The driving mechanics ARE better, and by no small amount.  Unquestionably better than IV, and in my opinion superior to the SR series (but on this latter point, I'll admit it is a matter of taste).  The game is automatically more enjoyable to actually play as a result.  Instead of flying around town where just the slightest mistake with the controller will send you smashing into a building or another vehicle, now you actually feel like you are driving around in complete control of the vehicle.  You can stay in the lines if you want to, and you can easily steer around other cars if you need to without smashing them out of your way.  I am really happy about this.

-The shooting mechanics are probably better, but I have only been in a couple firefights thus far.  It feels kind of a like the typical third person shooter with the snap-to targeting.  Think something like Uncharted.  Haven't made up my mind yet how much I like it.  One thing is clear, however:  The character you control now moves around better.  Niko Bellic was always running into door frames and running in loops/arcs like an idiot.  So at least this part is improved.

- Graphics are generally improved, but that's no surprise.  Wish they could have improved some of the aliasing on stuff in the background.

- The characters seem to behave more like you would expect ordinary people.  Where Niko and Roman and the gang were all over-the-top caricatures, the people I have met so far seem to talk and behave a bit more like real people.  You don't feel like you are listening to people putting on phony accents or talking in ways nobody really talks.  Lamar, for example, who is only a secondary character, is legitimately hilarious...but totally believable.  I have met or known people much like him in my life.  Contrast that with the Grove Street gang from SA - who were also funny, but probably more because they were acting out some kind of outrageous stereotypes.  I don't know where I am going with this, other than to say that I already like these people more than I liked Niko and Roman.

- The story itself...I am sure it will go to ridiculous places at some point, but it starts off nice and slow, and even quite plausible.  With Niko, I seem to recall getting off the boat, and then basically starting my life of crime more or less immediately, stealing whatever was in front of the apartment, racing around and smashing into everything.  In this case, I have not even stolen a car yet.  Not illegally, anyway.  Franklin and Lamar are repo-men, and they get into situations that seem like they could happen in the real world.

But what it always comes down to with GTA games - am I have any fun yet?  A little.  A laughed loudly on several occasions because of Lamar.  I enjoy driving around the town.  The story is kinda interesting.  The missions are well varied in the early going.  I haven't gotten into the deeper story yet (Franklin and Michael have barely even met), nor have I done any of the more involved missions, nor any of the side quests.  Okay, I did visit the strip club for no reason.  Well, not NO reason.  Anyway, I want to get back into that world again and see where it goes.  I guess that is a good start.

[Cyrrex]

"Because video games" is the argument why a lot of the violence and law breaking is considered acceptable. It's fun!

Racism, sexism and homophobia are much less comfortable as bedfellows.

I think you are close to the core of the matter here, in a way.  Nobody here is going to (at least not overtly) excuse racism, sexism and homophobia as remotely acceptable things, and some times we have particularly strong feelings about one or more of these for whatever reason.  For me, it's the racism I find particularly abhorrent.  That said, in a video game?  I can flip a switch and find the potential humor in all of it.  The rules I apply to the real world are completely suspended, and then it is all fair game.  Just like with the violence - I make no distinction.   

Some people cannot or will not flip that switch and I think that is the difference.  Maybe we all have a point we reach where it is too much, but it is surely in a different place for each of us.  I am reminded of "No Russian" or whatever it was called in one of the Call of Duty games.  It was a horrible, horrible mission.  It made me a bit ill.  But I still thought it was worthwhile, and that the game was better for it, because it provoked a few thoughts in an otherwise shallow game.

[Megrim]

Ingmar, I get what you are saying but think of it in a broader context: all of King Lear makes me feel bad. Repulsed, even. As does Macbeth. Though to be fair, I've been to productions of King Lear which involved actors in body-length penis costumes dancing to hard-core techno. I'm not sure what I was supposed to feel. The point though, and here I may be giving Rockstar too much credit, is that it's ok to feel bad and disgusted by something. It's part of the range of being human. Which is why it annoys me when a review sells this as a negative.

Per the other stuff about indulging sociopathy - it's all been said by others, and better than I would have.

[Margalis]

"Because video games" is the argument why a lot of the violence and law breaking is considered acceptable. It's fun!

Racism, sexism and homophobia are much less comfortable as bedfellows.

Shooting things can be mechanically interesting in a way racism typically can't be, so there is some truth in this.

I would also make the distinction between views of the characters and of the game. I don't see any problem with a video game character being written as racist or sexist, but that's different from the game as a whole coming off that way. I suppose you can claim satire but I don't think GTA qualifies as legitimate satire.

[K9]

I've been to productions of King Lear which involved actors in body-length penis costumes dancing to hard-core techno. I'm not sure what I was supposed to feel.

 

[Bunk]

I thought it was kind of interesting that less than an hour in to the game I was given a random event where a guy gets his wallet stolen. The game let me decide whether I was going to return the victim's wallet or not, which I did. I felt good about myself. Though I had just run over the pickpocket with my car. And my car kinda got stuck on him as I tried backing off of the curb.

The game looks much better than IV, just in the level of detail alone, but also in the atmosphere. Liberty City felt like you were almost constantly in a tunnel. Los Santos just looks more interesting. The detail on the little things like the textures on the road, the crazy ass lane dividers at big intersections, things like that are really well done. That being said though, the view in the distance does pixilate in to obscurity pretty quickly.

A few hours in, I've done a couple missions, some of which took multiple tries. I've also watched a movie in Italian that made no fucking sense, played a set of Tennis, had a lapdance, and went home with the stripper. I have yet to bother even looking for a gun store.

The first thing I plan to try tonight would be the golf course I passed on my last mission.

[MisterNoisy]

Mechanically (shooting, driving, movement), this is easily the best Rockstar game to date - you can see how the stuff from RDR has been tossed in and improved upon for this version, and the cars no longer feel like their suspensions are made from warm Jell-O while not being on-rails like the SR games.  Most of the random events I've run into have been negative - a large number of them are people feigning distress of some sort or another as a setup to rob you (Trevor spent an entire mission in nothing but his underwear as a result of one of these), though I've also scraped purse snatchers off the bumper and happened upon security companies transporting money, so there's that.

I have no idea what that Italian movie was all about, aside from an attempt to parody those obscure arthouse foreign flicks that that one girl you knew in college thought were 'soooooo deep', but looked like a fever dream to everyone else .

As for the characters, the only one I feel is a completely irredeemable psychopath is Trevor - the other two are definitely not 'good guys', but at least their motivations are seemingly more reasonable.  I find myself playing as Michael most often, just because his story so far seems the most interesting/amusing.

[Yegolev]

Good note, if the characters or the game itself hates women.  Unfortunately for me, or maybe not, I also tend to turn off the "real-life" switch when I'm watching a movie or playing a game.  Besides GTA, there have been plenty of games in which I was very uncomfortable being the bad guy.  Also sometimes simply watching.  Many of these are RPGs; I've probably blocked out many of them so I can't give a quick example, but I believe Bioware was involved.  Why is GTA being singled out?  Popularity?  Media?

I have the same thoughts as others here in regards to the gameplay.  Glad to know that I'm not imagining the Red Dead influence, but now I'm wary of fucking cougars.

My only uproarious complaint is that they moved the emergency brake button.  This is an enormous deal after so many years of muscle memory with B/O as the handbrake.

[Miasma]

Cougars in Redemption were bullshit, utter bullshit.

I can understand wanting to play on the good side, I always pick light/paragon what have you in bioware games and never bother to play through the other side.  There is usually some sort of glimmer of hope in GTA protagonists though, I would miss that.  Most missions in GTA are also against other evil people too, I don't mind evil on evil too much.

And if you want to call GTA misogynist then go for it but don't dare try and bring up Saint's Row as some sort of counter point.  I finally finished SR3 over the weekend and there was a mission where I was stealing kidnapped women sold into the flesh trade out of cargo containers and handing them over to the pimp on my payroll.  These women were intended to replace other prostitutes I had killed in the previous mission.  So shut the fuck up about Saint's Row being some sort of feminist approved franchise compared to GTA.

[Ironwood]

but now I'm wary of fucking cougars.

 

[MisterNoisy]

Besides GTA, there have been plenty of games in which I was very uncomfortable being the bad guy.  Also sometimes simply watching.  Many of these are RPGs; I've probably blocked out many of them so I can't give a quick example, but I believe Bioware was involved.  Why is GTA being singled out?  Popularity?  Media?

Probably a combination of popularity, history (Hot Coffee, anyone?) and that it's set in modern America.  Being the bad guy in fantasy mumbo-jumbo land isn't quite as relatable as being the bad guy in modern-day New York/California.

Story spoilers below:

[shiznitz]

Cougars in Redemption were bullshit, utter bullshit.

I can understand wanting to play on the good side, I always pick light/paragon what have you in bioware games and never bother to play through the other side.  There is usually some sort of glimmer of hope in GTA protagonists though, I would miss that.  Most missions in GTA are also against other evil people too, I don't mind evil on evil too much.

And if you want to call GTA misogynist then go for it but don't dare try and bring up Saint's Row as some sort of counter point.  I finally finished SR3 over the weekend and there was a mission where I was stealing kidnapped women sold into the flesh trade out of cargo containers and handing them over to the pimp on my payroll.  These women were intended to replace other prostitutes I had killed in the previous mission.  So shut the fuck up about Saint's Row being some sort of feminist approved franchise compared to GTA.

The point was SR went ALL IN with no shame, not that it was tame or politically correct.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's not the content per se, at least not in my opinion, it is just that titles like GTA or indeed an entire fraction of the gaming sector actually seem to regress. Grand Theft Equuus neé Read Dead Redemption was leaps and bounds ahead of any other GTA franchise game. You still played the outlaw and did despicable things but the story was more mature and it actually had a few female characters that were more than just plot devices to give the player agency or eye candy.

Marsden also was a pretty believable anti hero who wanted to lead a better life, who wanted to atone for his sins but couldn't manage to escape his own prior life and ultimately paid his price for the sins he had committed. It also helped that even the law and the good guys esentially were as morally bankrupt as Marsden had been prior to his epiphany.

It also managed to craft a real story that did what GTA always claims to do but in my opinion never accomplishes namely to serve as a parable about america, american values and about a part of american history that has been largely romanticized today.  It was quite an effective commentary about american exceptionalism, the american dream and 'how the west was won' and it managed to satirize and expose certain things in a fun but ultimately more adult way.

GTA never had a real attitude or position only the claim of being a satire of 'thug life' and popular culture's obsession with amorality. Ironic exaggeration and 'making fun of' everything is not an attitude except that everything deserves ridicule and contempt, a rather immature way of looking at the world. If RDR is the blogger who writes whole essays about a topic he has a real opinion about then GTA is the immature commentator that trolls comments, still writes Microsoft with a dollar sign instead of an 'S' and seems to just have discovered the word 'sucks'.

That's totally fine BTW a world that only knows Breaking Bad and Hermann Hesse would be just as boring and one-sided as one where the only entertainment came from two and a half men style comedic sleaze and yet GTA 5 feels anachronistic in a medium that managed to evolve in many ways most notably how it tells stories.

For me GTA no longer works in a world that has seen the Sopranos, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad or It's always sunny in Philadelphia to name a few recent examples from TV. You can show despicable people doing despicable things in a compelling way that doesn't feel like a power fantasy dreamed up by a 12 year old boy.

It's also mind boggling that an industry that approaches movie type budgets and needs to sell 5 million+ units to break even still thinks that it can not only ignore but actively marginalize a significant potential target demographic without the press batting an eye. I latched on the comment about misogyny because it's the same as saying 'wel the game is still rather racists and generally depicts non-whites in a bad way but it's so great that it doesn't really matter' and most people (including me) shrugging it off like something your weird uncle would say and you know he won't change.

GTA 5 is great game but as far as story is concerned it is a big step backwards from RDR. Even Hotline Miami, a game that redefines the term gratuitious in gratuitious violence manages to be more mature.

[Jeff Kelly]

Saints Row feels more like Pulp Fiction in it's over the top gratuity or indeed over the top everything. Other games like Mafia or RDR managed to convey a sense of drama or inevitability.

GTA 5 on the other hand feels more like Hostel 2 meets Movie 43

[Samwise]

but now I'm wary of fucking cougars.

 

Alas, I was too late....

GTA 5 on the other hand feels more like Hostel 2 meets Movie 43

I never saw Movie 43, but few movies have made me laugh as hard as Hostel 2 did.  What a fantastically bad movie that was.

[Ingmar]

Cougars in Redemption were bullshit, utter bullshit.

I can understand wanting to play on the good side, I always pick light/paragon what have you in bioware games and never bother to play through the other side.  There is usually some sort of glimmer of hope in GTA protagonists though, I would miss that.  Most missions in GTA are also against other evil people too, I don't mind evil on evil too much.

And if you want to call GTA misogynist then go for it but don't dare try and bring up Saint's Row as some sort of counter point.  I finally finished SR3 over the weekend and there was a mission where I was stealing kidnapped women sold into the flesh trade out of cargo containers and handing them over to the pimp on my payroll.  These women were intended to replace other prostitutes I had killed in the previous mission.  So shut the fuck up about Saint's Row being some sort of feminist approved franchise compared to GTA.

I don't think "even Saint's Row does a better job" is really an endorsement. Also I had an enormous problem with the mission you mention; I'm pretty sure I talked about it here at some point. Note that they also made progress on this front from SR3 to SR4.

Besides GTA, there have been plenty of games in which I was very uncomfortable being the bad guy.  Also sometimes simply watching.  Many of these are RPGs; I've probably blocked out many of them so I can't give a quick example, but I believe Bioware was involved.  Why is GTA being singled out?  Popularity?  Media?

Part of it is those RPGs tend to give you a choice to not do the things you're truly uncomfortable with, which has not often been the case in GTA-like games.

EDIT: Also I think the realistic, modern setting tends to make it a lot more difficult (at least for me) to flip off that 'real-life' switch.

[Fabricated]

Here's what has happened to me in every GTA game that makes me drop it.

1. I start playing and the game spends way way too long with all of the side shit. Here's a mission where you learn how to use a map. How to drive. How to use a gun. Get a change of clothes. How to ditch the cops. How to initiate whatever extra side stuff the particular game added.

2. You finally get to what feels like the main arc and everything is going pretty alright, but then some thing happens and you have to leave your first or second job contact for...

3. Wacky side-quest B plot guy. You have to do dumb shit that has nothing to do with anything or do one-off minigames like flying a remote helicopter with explosives to blow up a building or something.

4. I lose interest in the story, have a couple huge shootouts with the cops or run over pedestrians for a few hours, then I quit and never play it again.

RDR had some sideplot crap (the snake-oil salesman, the anthropologist) but it never felt as obnoxiously long as the "Wacky side-quest Job Guy" shit in all the others. Sleeping Dogs is the second one of these sandbox games I finished but Sleeping Dogs was also really short and hacked down to the bone so it wasn't piled high with extraneous shit.

Having almost no likable characters, or a mute/unlikable protagonist didn't help.

[Rasix]

GTA would always lose me where there's one shitty, difficult mission that you have to drive 5 minutes before you even start the difficult part.  Go pick someone up, drive halfway across town, etc. Then the mission starts and there's about 5 different times that you can easily get scragged and lose.  Then, if you die, do the whole fucking thing over again.  I'll finally beat this mission and then just lose the will to play anymore.

RDR helped this greatly with just being able to restart the mission, and if I'm remembering right, mission checkpoints.   No 5-10 minutes of prep dependent on 30 seconds worth of execution (on a gamepad most of the time).

[Ironwood]

Fucking Helicopters with bombs.  Yeah.  Stopped playing all of them there.

[Malakili]

I've had quite a bit of fun with GTA since GTA 3, but the only one I ever actually beat was Vice City, because I'm a sucker for the 80s schtick in that one.

[Miasma]

GTA would always lose me where there's one shitty, difficult mission that you have to drive 5 minutes before you even start the difficult part.  Go pick someone up, drive halfway across town, etc. Then the mission starts and there's about 5 different times that you can easily get scragged and lose.  Then, if you die, do the whole fucking thing over again.  I'll finally beat this mission and then just lose the will to play anymore.

RDR helped this greatly with just being able to restart the mission, and if I'm remembering right, mission checkpoints.   No 5-10 minutes of prep dependent on 30 seconds worth of execution (on a gamepad most of the time).

That drives me nuts too and I don't think I can do it anymore, it's the only reason I haven't bought the game yet, I'm going to wait to hear about if there are checkpoints and such. I can't count the number of times in past GTA games where I have violently smashed my controller, switched off the system swearing never to play it again, only to pick it up the next day.  I manage to get through all the shooting and then have to escape on a fucking motorcycle only to hit a bump and go flying to my death.

And GTA helicopter controls are painfully bad.  I can fly in every other game I've ever played but put me in a helicopter in GTA and all I can do is go careening off at an angle into the nearest building.

[Segoris]

Personally, I'm able to separate video game from reality and this shit doesn't bug me too much no matter the era or world setting. I'll feel bad about some things but am always able to remember that it is a game in the end. Also, I kind of enjoy the fact that there a game allows us to play as a bad guy, but I can see where there needs to be more disconnect.

Regardless of anyone's issues with the game's tone, it now has the #1 opening day sales for video games at $800m or 13million copies within the first 24 hours. Numbers do not include Japan or Brazil as it has not launched there yet. Now, here's hoping they port to PC....fuckers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/grand-theft-auto-v-tops-800-million-first-day-4B11187483

[Margalis]

The characterization and morality in GTA don''t bother me nearly as much as that the games are just deadly dull.

The promise of a huge open world where you can do lots of cool stuff is neat, but the stuff you end up doing is almost universally boring. (That describes my view of most open-world games)

Did anyone play The Getaway for PS2? The on-foot sections were mostly terrible but the driving around was really fun. The driving in GTA has always felt lousy to me in comparison. The Getaway was half great game and half terrible game, which to me is better than whole mediocre game.

It's interesting that the lowest review for V is a 70 from Escapist and all other reviews are 90+. Is there not a single reviewer like me who plays the game, can see the craft in it, but just doesn't have much fun? Of course the answer to this question is that a place like IGN simply would never publish a review of GTA V with a score of 6 - they would never assign it to someone who might give it a 6, they would make it clear in advance that a 6 was not acceptable, and if the review came back with a 6 they would rewrite it and that person would probably have trouble finding future work.

[Malakili]

Personally, I'm able to separate video game from reality and this shit doesn't bug me too much no matter the era or world setting.

It's about normalizing the ideas.  It isn't about "It happened in GTA V, so it's ok in real life."  Sit down with practically anyone and they'll tell you intellectually that sexism is wrong.  But when it comes down to what they actually do and say, there is a whole lot of sexism.  At some point we taught people that sexism and racism is something mustache twirling super villains do.  But well meaning, well intentioned people can help perpetuate these things every day by dismissing the importance of media, or making jokes "ironically" or as "satire."  Next time someone makes a comment like that with that defense, see if you can actually locate the irony or satire because it is almost never present.  It's just uncritically presented.

I'm not saying GTA  stands out as particularly sexist in the sea of sexist media that already exists, but as a general point I don't think we can just wave our hand pretend it doesn't matter.

[MisterNoisy]

That drives me nuts too and I don't think I can do it anymore, it's the only reason I haven't bought the game yet, I'm going to wait to hear about if there are checkpoints and such. I can't count the number of times in past GTA games where I have violently smashed my controller, switched off the system swearing never to play it again, only to pick it up the next day.  I manage to get through all the shooting and then have to escape on a fucking motorcycle only to hit a bump and go flying to my death.

There's actually a decent checkpoint system in place this time around.  After a failure, you can either restart the mission completely or just from the last checkpoint.  They're not quite as liberal with them as Saints Row 2-4, but I'll take it.

[Kageru]

I feel better about never having been interested in this title now.

I assume the positive reviews are part of the "block-buster" mentality. The actual content of the game is secondary to the excitement the event of its release has generated, and the industry supports and feeds it being a big event you must buy into. The negative comments on the game, if any, will come out later.