this video took me from "doubt I'll ever pick it up" to "I'll never pick it up"

any free time I have for gaming these days is entirely consumed by either TF2 or The Room, although the Room is just too damn short.

Protip: You can make The Room last a lot longer by only playing it when you are taking a shit.

"GTA IV" lost its appeal for me when it was still boring the shit out of me after the first two hours. I ragequit after I installed the DLC disc and it broke the core game's autosave.

I love "GTA V." There are aspects of it that are horrible and juvenile, but God help me I love it.

GTAV gets "next gen" GTA right, in my opinion. Everything that made me kinda "meh" about 4 is gone or improved, and it helps that the setting and story is about typical GTA nonsense instead of "GRITTY COMMENTARY ON SOMETHING SOMETHING." It isn't as balls-out crazy as San Andreas (though at times it comes close), but it's best to think of GTA5 as "San Andreas II" really when it comes to it.

I never got the appeal of San Andreas. To me, that's the game that started the whole Sims trend that GTA IV would go on to perfect.

You can take over gang territory! Except all that work was for nothing when without warning the storyline strips you of all territory! Sucker!

The main thing though was that it was TOO big. Fail a mission (usually due to some bullshit arbitrary triggers) and I have to do 5 minutes of driving up a recreation of Mulholland Drive to get another shot?

fuck---->that

One thing I've noticed is that the writing for every major Rockstar sandbox release is always awful. The script for "Bully" was good only because that game was a Nicktoon with swearing and brawling. "Red Dead Redemption" has way too many characters talking about how "gosh, things sure are changing. Look at how much things are changing, Mr. Marston!" and that hilarious bit at the beginning where your former partners shoot you outside of their fort and just absent-mindedly disappear inside so a wagon can slowly swing by and pick you up.

The moment of absurdity in "GTA V" for me was when Michael went to 'rescue' his daughter from the porn yacht early on. I get what Rockstar was trying to do with this Taken-style "nobody touches my daughter" trope but it flopped miserably on its face. The entire last half of that mission just gave me douche chills. I hate Michael's one-dimensional cartoon character family.

Despite all that, I can still turn off my brain and enjoy these games. Doesn't change the fact that the scripts are goddamned stupid, but they're fun as hell. Except "GTA IV." I wish I could get a written apology from Rockstar for that.

"San Andreas" had wide appeal because it was a high octave swansong for the Playstation 2. The world was huge, and Rockstar packed so much detail and so many hidden secrets onto a single DVD it's almost unbelievable. It was the closest thing there was to virtual reality at the time.

On the other hand, my problem with "San Andreas" was that it started Rockstar's trend of the "'sympathetic' character who complains about killing but can slaughter the entire city in free roam." I'm not sure if it helps that in addition to being 'nice,' Carl Johnson is also a two-faced, murderous hypocrite and obedient automaton. This is the asshole who drives a manager and a screaming woman into the ocean because history's most prolapsed anus of a video game character says "go kill them because they made fun of me."

The magic of San Andreas was in the highly customizable avatar that some people seem to hate. Your Carl is a murderous hypocrite. My Carl is a victim of circumstance. Someone else's Carl is a fat asshole that does what he's told. Every time I would see someone else playing their saved game of San Andreas, Carl was a completely different person. Those stats and dolly dress up clothing choices, coupled with who was playing him, really altered the perspective of who and what Carl is.

As for the torture scene: I always saw Rockstar's Manhunt as a direct answer to all the critics claiming that GTA was a murder simulator. Manhunt was counter to everything a GTA game is. No freedom of choice. No exploration. Nothing to experiment with. Just locked in an on-rails experience where you are told to kill people over and over and over again. I think the game is purposely repetitive and boring as a statement. That, hey, this murder simulator you guys keep talking about: winds up that idea is boring and uninteresting compared to GTA.

This shit is Manhunt-ish. Maybe I am giving Rockstar too much credit, but it feels more like a commentary on the industry's hard-on for torture gameplay/narrative in our modern "army games". This doesn't look fun at all and I think that's the point.

...but I find the attempt to redeem the character performing torture during the drive to the airport flimsy...so...whatever...

I don't think it's meant to redeem the character (who does plenty of other horrible horrible stuff) it's just meant to be funny, which it is.

I'm starting to see a pattern - anybody who disliked IV pretty much always turns out to be a retard who never made it to the DLC and keeps judging it based on Niko's retarded ass lame storyline. New york is stupid.

The way the mission ends certainly isn't meant to redeem Trevor, but it might be intended to redeem the level. "Torture is both wrong and ineffective as an intelligence tool," the game seems to be saying, "and is more properly the domain of freelance demented psychopaths than those employed by government agencies." Thus the controversial torture mission ends with an anti-torture message. It feels a little contrived, but is consistent with the rest of the game, which is an unforgiving parody of American culture in which every character is a destructive monster driven by lust and ego.

Trevor is the answer to the problem of reconciling a sympathetic protagonist with the random, unbridled, consequence-free violence that is one of the game's main draws. There are two other protagonists with whom the player can sort of sympathize; Trevor is a murderous lunatic and nothing the player can make him do would seem uncharacteristically antisocial.

Also, the FBI forces the gang to torture an arab in order to figure out who to kill (the guy they kill, by the way, is later revealed on the news to be a famous philanthropist). While trevor is more than willing to carry out the torture (given he's a sadistic sociopath), I'd say the whole mission is also commentary on America's foreign policy rather than being a gratuitous "TORTURE SIMULATOR!".

Ooh Ooh! Right here!

What a dumb looking game. I lost interest when you stopped getting points for running over pedestrians.

but there's always Carmageddon 2 for that

Ugh. Carmageddon 2's interim "skill" levels sucked.

"Here, stop having fun and try and destroy every satellite dish by jumping your car from rooftop to rooftop." Bleh.

Great game, loving it so far. Most entertaining story Rockstar has ever done. GTA 4 was really boring but this one is packed with shit to do and while some elements of it's plot are obviously inspired by crime movies, the package as a whole seems a lot less derivative than previous gtas.

You guys all fucking suck at everything. Carmageddon 2 is awesome and if you never beat that satellite level that's because you suck at carmageddon in general. I beat that whole fucking game without cheating.

And there are some really sad motherfuckers saying they aren't getting this game - fine, be a moron and skip the best GTA that's ever been released.

That was my motivation for buying "Bully," so I'm glad that turned out to be a fun game.

Still haven't watched the video but here's five for "GTA V" anyway. You should give Rockstar your money because this is the GTA of GTAs.

So, how are you feeling about the overall story now that you've played some more?

Personally, I still think it has problems, but overall it's my favorite Rockstar story so far.

The script is silly and stupid, the usual with Rockstar's writing, but so far it's a fun ride. I can get behind almost nothing but planning and executing heists and then having to deal with the consequences that happen after them. I love the Strangers & Freaks/random distressed people that Rockstar has ported over from "Red Dead Redemption."

One thing I'll definitely commend Rockstar for is the diversity in the three characters' personalities. I like playing Michael as a man suffering through a midlife crisis, Fraklin as a man who suddenly has more money than he's ever come across and with no idea how to spend it, and Trevor as a straight-up psychopath. I never feel bored as one particular character; they're all a blast to play in their own right. This is the first time I've ever played a GTA where I was anxious to to see what unfolds for the protagonists and where they'll end up. In the previous games it was like "CJ and Tommy get rich, Claude gets his revenge and who gives a fuck about whatever else happens."