Got this last week. Finally finished the main storyline yesterday. I have to say it's essentially worse than I feared. The driving is good (though very similar to the last game), shooting is better (though difficulty is tweaked for autoaim which makes playing on free aim frustrating at times), fighting is better, having weather is so cool. Nice wide variety of cars (though most are familiar, they pop up in greater variation which is sweet). Terrible writing, the worst of any GTA game since 2. Very surprising. I thought they were going back to SA to reclaim the goofy fun of The Truth and OG LOC. Sadly, they just went back to SA to have... hills but no san fran..? boats, I guess. Bizarre. If they wanted another shit nigga talking gangsta why not set it in chicago or something?
Ironically, Franklin is the most likable character of the three. He's boring, but he's a decent dude, relatively speaking. Michael is a douchebag who has the added benefit of
also being boring -- and the one good thing about his character (that he goes to therapy) -- my wife tells me is just ripped off from some HBO show. The therapist going to sell out Michael's story is another classic GTA plot, along with the FIB using you endlessly, and most of the game. The "liberal" tycoon being in bed with Blackwater was a nice touch. But it's all very dark and you have very little reason to ever proceed. Trevor starts terrible and steadioly gets worse as time goes on -- but at least has the benefit of being
amusing. The bit where he falls in love with Patricia (and also with MaryAnn) was really great. The only cut scenes I really looked forward to seeng were when Franklin wold be leaving Denise's house. Her voicemail message is great, too.
Interactivity is still sort of a step backward as well. Shopping is back with a vengeance and I loved dressing up the characters but the strip club was
disappointing and the fact that they had such a lousy B team on the side missions was pretty shocking. Biking is prob my favorite thing to do in the game, but not as fun as in SA. Overall though a lot of the gameplay is very good. Fun to drive (esp w Franklin), fun to shoot w Trevor, fun to try and steal fighter jets and use the Rhino and fun even to go swimming. The jet ski races were not as good as before but the waves are pretty nice. Minigames are fucking awesome. They really showed up Yakuza 4 on this one. I don't know if either team thinks of the other as competition, but in my mind, they are.
Surprisingly, the weak point was the writing. The misogyny doesn't bother me by itself -- but this time most of it was terribly unfunny. Like the first ep of the Fernando Show -- a true gem from SA, the first ep has a "reformed" Fernando making stupid sideways comments -- it doesn't work. The second show is more in the old "keep it funny stupid" mold and a lot better. Laszlo also not funny in ti one, and he was possibly my favorite radio segment in all of SA. No Andy Dick is sad, Chakra Attack is good though. It gets old, but it's a pretty damn funny joke the first time. Perhaps worst of all, no Catalina!! Again, it's not just that she was the lone counterpoint to all the women are worthless crybabies jokes -- she was just unpredictable. It helped, a lot When the best writing in the plot is Michael's son explaining to him that his daughter is wannabe porn star... well it's ok, for a video game, I guess... but compare that to SA. Even some of the stuff from IV was better than this. But The Truth? Wow. This game hada lot to live up to, andin most respects, it failed.
All that said, yes, I will deifnitely be going back to finish all the stunt jumps!
