Anyone playing this yet? I am really shocked what Rockstar came out with here... Its not a bad game but its not GTA, more than half of the game mechanics is absent, the controls are not tight at all and the driving is just lack luster. What happened Rockstar? The city is just dead, there are people moving about but they hardly talk and there are no public places to visit and play a few mini games.You cannot break the law, you can run people over or crash into a cop car and no alarm goes off (you do get a rating report after every mission), no chases no random encounters nothing...
The side missions are all the same, you get and APB announcement and then you show up to the spot and chase the assailant down till you either kill him in mid chase or kill him at the end of the chase or he just commits suicide. The central plot moves at a snails pace and with the constant clue searching and interrogations (which are the high points of this game) for every main mission the game gets more and more like a chore to go through.
The plot and characters are well done and help keep you interested enough to finish the game and find out what the deal is with Colton Phelps. The graphics and animation are superb but the world lacks stability. I can turn the camera around from an empty parking and turn back to a parking lot suddenly filled with random parked cars. Unlocking new cars does not do anything, sure it may be faster or have better handling but the side missions can only be discovered through the squad car. Even better is when you do respond to the side missions your car, if you decided to use a regular car, will suddenly switch into the squad car. Also the game holds your hand a little too much when it comes to navigating the environment, you cannot seem to veer off the right track as Colton at times will automatically start steering towards the exit door or target by himself. Also you don't see Colton's private life as he has ho apartment you can check out, there are not save points just an auto save.
And the best bit is that there is no GPS like route highlighted in this game. Granted the streets are easier to navigate in this game than in the other two iterations (GTA 4, Redemption) but still how come John Marston in the wild west had a GPS on his horse and Colton doesn't?? I liked the change they tried to do but man Rockstar dropped the ball in my eyes. On the surface it has similarities to GTA style of play but it lacks most of the magic and variety in missions that made GTA/Redemption the game we know it to be. Also what happened to the satirical aspect of the game?? Why did they use real names and markers instead of making their own version of Los angeles as they did with the other games? Honestly they could have done a lot better game than this... right now I feel like I am playing a wii version of heavy rain or something (might be a stretch seems WII version of anything would be inferior)
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