Grand Theft Auto Five is now the best selling video game in history but it is not without it's fair share of rage inducing aspects which somewhat tarnish an impressive overall design. I for one have fallen victim to these rather annoying features on many an occasion and have decided to cover a few of these in this article. I shall vigorously dissect each one with as much precision as a doctor performing open brain surgery whilst striving to offer suggestions on how the general functionality of the game can be greatly improved.
Let us start with what I percieve to be the game's biggest fault, or crime depending on which way you look at it, which is the obsessive amount of time it takes to load into any particular online session. I have literally grown a full beard waiting for this game to function online sometimes and on occasion snuck in forty winks just for good measure! Infact, when the loading process finally ends I almost expect to lumber out onto my street and be confronted by the sight of little green men such is the extent of time which passes.
There are a few possible reasons for this though which might start to shred a little light on what can be a very frustrating experience. First of all, we have to take into account the game's monstrous size with it being over 50 giga bytes for both the next generation consoles. Every time we load into a particular part of the game it has to load up the most detailed and advanced open world to ever be produced on a computer. Then there is the fact that GTA 5 Online has to synchronise each player in your session so that we can all experience actual gameplay events at precisely the same time. The problem here is that some poor sap in some unpronounceable corner of the earth might have an internet connection slower than a tortoise on tranquillisers causing the rest of the lobby to wait for what seems like an eternity.
Another troublesome area of GTA 5 is having to go to Timbuck Two and back to evade capture by the Los Santos Police Department who have a ridiculously incessant nature. I have lost count of the number of times I have been on the very brink of freedom only for a police car to pop out of absolutely nowhere and start an already exhaustive chase all over again. I would compare them to that of a hungry lion on the arid planes of Africa sinking it's teeth into a gazelle before never letting go of it's beleaguered prey.
Even with a one star wanted level the police will hunt you down like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive before accepting nothing less than your head on a seafood platter. This can all occur from a simple speeding offence to an actual cop car crashing into you where you didn't have any control over the situation whatsoever. Then, if you still foolishly harbour any lingering hopes of survival, you are confronted with the grim realisation that these uniformed pests have a never-ending supply of manpower. It doesn't matter how many of them you shoot they just keep on comin'!
Moving on to the game's next charge of being a grievous bodily pain in the ass we have the rather devious mentality of the enemies to contend with. Picture being on the last wave in survival mode where you only have a handful foes to kill, before you reach that magical $30,000 jackpot, only for one of those sneaky buggers to mysteriously spawn out of completely thin air directly behind you and take you out with a single bullet from their shotgun. This is the kind of frustrating element that keeps rearing it's ugly head at alarmingly frequent intervals during the overall gameplay experience. I would love to see all shotguns taken away from every enemy in the next patch but sadly my cries will probably be in vain.
The game's enemies also have the tendency to hide in a particular spot and not move a single inch whilst they shoot through your body armour as though it was made of wet tissue paper. Back in the good old days of COD we had a term for this rather underhand strategy, which we often cried out in contempt sometimes at other players if we felt somebody had placed the proverbial knife in our backs, and that term was CAMPER!!! These enemies camp so often that they make a bunch of boy scouts look like they suffer from a severe case of Agoraphobia.
Finally we arrive at the most annoying aspect of the game which is the presence of online trolls. GTA 5 has a mechanic set in place that seems to aid these irritating scoundrels where you are unable to view the full game map when you are either in your lavish apartment or visiting Los Santos Customs. The problem with this is when you leave these two places, with your obscenely expensive car that took many gameplay hours to earn, you enter a short animation sequence whereby you are left completely prone to attack by any hovering troll. A sticky bomb later and you find yourself minus your pride and joy on four wheels having had no idea that some wretched little snot was ever there in the first place.
If you are dealing with somebody who resorts to this kind of lowdown activity on a regular basis then the chances are that they would've craftily emptied their bank account beforehand leaving you with the grim task of forking out the readies for a replacement car from the insurance company. I can only assume that these individuals are pathetic dweebs who were bullied every single day of their school years.
Nothing in this life is absolutely perfect though and GTA 5 is no exception here but after analysing all these faults I have come to the conclusion that this game has a rather unfinished feel to it in certain areas. Perhaps Rockstar North, the company who made this game, will make sure that any more titles in this very famous trilogy will be thoroughly tested first before shipping out there product onto supermarket shelves to earn the almighty dollar.
