I’ve been playing GTAV in my spare moments for the past week and a half, most of it on stream thanks to my new setup. I feel GTA lends itself particularly well to streaming, because there are so many potential “holy shit, did you see that?!” moments around every corner. All the little things, like the first time a bird gets sucked into your helicopter rotors, are better when shared with others.
Overall, what is there really to say about the game. It’s fantastic. A masterpiece. The crown jewel of this console generation, etc etc. However the shooting still sucks. You basically have two choices… either all of your enemies are made of metal and you have magnetic bullets, or you fumble around with free aim taking five bullets for every one you land. The latter is not really an option if you want to progress through missions without tearing your hair out.
It’s a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things, for single player, but it leads me to question what the deal will be for GTA Online, which launches in a week. I think everyone needs to be on the same page for the sake of fairness, but which page will that be? Free aim or auto-aim? I haven’t come across any concrete details one way or that other.
My vote is for free-aim. It’ll make the inevitable gunfights/liquor-store-robbery fallouts much more chaotic, and not just a contest between who can snap the left trigger faster. If they give an option based on servers, you can expect to find me frequenting the free aim parties.
I’ll be sure to stream GTA Online when it launches, though I expect the servers to absolutely melt down the first week or so.
Other than GTAV, I’m mostly in a holding pattern until the new consoles launch in November. I’ll likely pick up Beyond Two Souls, but other than that, there’s nothing in my queue. I’ll be holding off on Assassin’s Creed IV for a week in order to play it as my PS4 launch title. Then the following week it’s Dead Rising 3, Watch Dogs, etc, and the ball will officially be rolling for the holiday season/next generation.
The past couple of weeks I’ve had my nose to the grindstone working as far ahead as I can, to take some personal time. I’m putting the finishing touches on roughly four weeks worth of updates, so that I can put the site on autopilot for a while. I’ll take a break from the Console Wars storyline next week (don’t worry, we’ll pick up right where we left off in a few weeks) to do some one-shots, and then we’ll launch into this other story project I did.