It's unrealistic to hope to lay a bitter wreath of negative sentiment at the feet of a giant like GTA V without being stomped into oblivion by the collective ubertroll of the interwebs. But it's worth a shot. Not to antagonise the masses or to reignite an already tired firestorm, but purely because Rockstar's crown jewel deserves to be examined with an open mind. This is a case of playing the Devil's advocate - only the most wicked of cynics would argue against GTA V as a defining game of its generation, but is it truly deserving of the praise continually dribbled on it? We all agree that Rockstar's latest money spinner is an exemplary technical achievement, a masterclass in narrative construction and a most impressive way to kill upwards of fifty hours of your life, but let's be honest: it's far from perfect. It may seem like a cheap shot to call out the biggest game of the last generation's twilight years, but it needs to be looked at critically. For all that GTA V pulled off with aplomb, there are a number of missteps which we've been all too eager to ignore. Some of these are ancestral sins, niggles which troubled GTA IV and the games which came before it; things that Rockstar was surely aware of but didn't deem worthy to rectify. Things like fiddly gunplay and quirky camera positioning issues. Or the continually flimsy vehicle handling - no one expects Gran Theft Turismo here, but it's still too difficult to weave through traffic without clipping an indestructible park bench and being sent reeling into a Cluckin' Bell drive-thru window. A persistently heavy reliance on padding also needs to be addressed - some of the time spent on throwaway sideshows could have gone into refining the core experience. For some the biggest concern is not a legacy issue, but an all new element, one which was raised early in the hype cycle: Rockstar's decision to split the story into three character threads. Some felt that having three protagonists sharing the spotlight brought new depth and more opportunity for character development. But for those with a bone to pick with GTA V, this new idea took something away from the experience - the feeling of intimate connection with the player character. In the same way that Call of Duty insists on ripping the player in and out of various roles like some kind of out-of-body spirit traveller, flicking between Trevor, Michael and Franklin was enough to jerk us out of the dreamworld we were lost in. For a game so set on creating an all-consuming immersive second-life experience, some saw this as a design concept at odds with itself. Irksome? Possibly. Enough to damage Grand Theft Auto V's reputation os one of the greatest games of its generation? Unlikely. But anyone who tells you that this is the perfect game is having a laugh.
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
