5. The Comedy Physics
The physics in GTA IV were often hilariously poor, despite Rockstar's commitment to bringing in a new system to make climbing and vaulting smoother. In theory that was a major step forward for the franchise, but the execution was far from smooth, and the result was a main character who was beyond stupid when it came to interacting with environmental changes like tiny ledges, or choosing whether to vault over a small wall or to leap into oncoming traffic in entirely the wrong direction. This was one of the areas fans hoped would get a total revamp to fix the stupid moments, but GTA V is blighted by similar idiotic blips. It might not happen so often, but the controlled character definitely still suffers from a lack of basic intellect, and the punishment for poor physics completely outweighs the actual mistake - such as moments like the video below, where attacks go wrong and a simple misplaced jump into a seemingly harmless monument can result in death... And then of course there are moments like the flying car glitch, or the fact that being run over can either result in you falling over and cursing, or being flung long distances and dying immediately. Or the fact that crashes often elicit comical results (such as a train being able to shrug aside two giant dumper trucks, as above, despite the fact that a single wet leaf can often make the train network in Britain grind to a halt for hours.) Physics and collision detection are better than they have been in the past - particularly in GTA III - but the problems that happened in GTA IV are still present, because the game is still based on the RAGE physics engine (albeit with some positive tweaks.) Perhaps it was unfair to expect a whole new physics engine with the improvements that came in with the implementation of the RAGE system, but there are just too many jaw-droppingly stupid physics fail videos out there to suggest that the problems have been sufficiently dealt with.