GTA VI: 10 Things It Must Learn From V

The GTA of 2015 is a strange old beast, as even though everyone suitably drove over to a million respective midnight releases to snap up the latest entry in Rockstar's world-enslaving cultural behemoth, some year and a half later it rarely crops up as an essential title you'd recommend to friends. Where GTA III was the first game to truly 'do' an open world, Vice City had more retro charm than a 60's Batman marathon and San Andreas' take on 90's gangster rap tied into an entire generation discovering the same material, GTA IV was then a pretty drastic tonal shift and V well, it's more of a museum piece than a game these days. What does that mean? Well just take a look at it, Rockstar have spent their millions fleshing out every part of an already fairly open structure, creating everything from TV and radio shows to working in-game internets and stock markets, car dashboards with working dials, creased clothing, weather systems, car damage models... absolutely everything - except the gameplay. All of this isn't to say GTA V was anything less than a brilliant release - but its marvels come more from the feat of what it represents as a programming achievement, more than something you'd fire up specifically for the feel of gameplay. When spending time in any given world is more fun than actually interacting with it, that's a problem - and it's not the only one.