GTA 5 PC Review

GTA 5 PC Review

The long wait has been worth it. If you’re a PC gamer who’s spent the last eighteen months envying the console crowd while they all got stuck into the latest, greatest GTA, then rest assured that you can now play the definitive version. Sure, the Xbox One and PS4 versions were amazing, delivering GTA 5 at higher resolutions with more detailed textures, smoother surfaces, better lighting and cool depth of field effects (see our full review below), but the PC version offers even more enhancements plus a couple of additional features that play to the PC’s strengths. In doing so, it adds a few more metres to one of gaming’s towering achievements.

Having covered the game twice already, we won’t go too far into the detail of what makes GTA 5 so good. Partly, it’s a question of experience. With four previous 3D GTAs under its belt plus Red Dead Redemption, Bully and assorted DLC packs, Rockstar has had time to refine its vision for open world gameplay and its systems, and GTA 5 has the best driving, the best shooting and some of the best mission design of the series.

It’s also a question of structure. Dividing the action amongst three protagonists with three interlocking storylines and three distinctive flavours means you nearly always have the option to flick from Michael’s ageing career criminal saga to Franklin’s ambitious hoodlum story to Trevor’s crazed, amoral brand of mayhem, where the dumb, cathartic slapstick violence we all – deep down – love GTA for finds its natural home. With repeated play, it only becomes clearer how well all three tales mesh thematically with Rockstar’s savage satirical take on the Californian dream.

And the budget definitely helps. The more time you put into GTA 5, the more you come to appreciate what a large and intensely detailed creation Los Santos is, and just how much is packed into the surrounding Blaine County. That’s because Rockstar had the ambition and the money to put in all the golf and tennis mini-games, all the stunt challenges, all the bizarre side missions and all the weird, hidden stuff that probably 90% of players will never see. The amazing thing about GTA 5 is that you can spend hour after hour playing it yet still be struck by all the stuff you haven’t done yet. No other open world feels this coherent. No other open world has so much to do.

So, what does playing on PC bring to the experience? Well, for a start there’s the most visually impressive and immersive version yet. Those lucky enough to have a 1440p or 4K monitor and the rig to run it will have ample cause for amazement, and the rest of us who have to struggle along at 1080p won’t go short. GTA 5 PC benefits from the new lighting model, post-processing effects, day-to-night cycle and added vegetation of the next-gen console versions, but also additional levels for textures, shader effects, reflections and shadow detail that affect everything from the way characters’ faces look close-up to depth-of-field effects, water and grass.

It’s open to a huge amount of tinkering, but then it needs to be. Basic gaming systems, like a budget Core i3 with an old GTX 660, will struggle to run GTA 5 at a decent frame rate unless you reduce the resolution and start pulling settings down from high. Our test system, with a Core i5 and a Radeon R9 285, still wouldn’t run smoothly with settings above high at 1080p.

What’s more, GTA 5 is really tough on video memory. Try to set Texture Quality to High with a 2GB graphics card and you’ll be warned that you’re exceeding the limits. Ignore the warnings, and you may be gobsmacked by the detail on skin, background textures and – particularly clothing – but the frame rate will stutter all the time. It might just about be bearable when you’re walking around, but get in a car and try a driving-heavy mission and you’re in for a nasty shock.

GTA 5 scales up beautifully if you’re rocking a Core i7/GTX 970 or Radeon R9 290, but if you have a lesser system then you’re going to have to make some compromises. It’s also worth noting that we’ve experienced the odd collision-detection bug and some weird texture drop-outs, occasionally affecting whole scenes at a time. It’s early days with early GPU drivers, though, so we suspect these issues will be nailed down with time.

Beyond this, we get support for mouse and keyboard gameplay – a definite plus if you play in first-person view – and some new options for background music. Not only is there a new radio station to listen to – The Lab FM – but a rather ingenious way of adding custom soundtracks to the game. Drag your own music files into a subfolder called User Music, and they’ll play through a new Self Radio station while you’re in the game. It’s a shame that Rockstar didn’t make this a little more obvious or accessible, but playing GTA 5 with your own background tunes is a blast.

GTA Online comes bundled in, of course, bringing Rockstar’s online multiplayer crime sim to the PC for the first time. It’s due a reappraisal now that the new Heist missions have been dropped in, but it’s still a slightly odd combination of open-world exploration and ad-hoc PvP larceny and murder (all good) and more straightforward shooter and racer events, which don’t really play to GTA’s strengths. 

No, if we had to say that the PC version had a killer feature, it would be the new Rockstar Editor and its accompanying Director Mode. At any point, you can start recording the action, the game recording clips of up to 90 seconds in length. You can also use an instant replay function to grab footage from an always-on buffer after you do something cool or crazy. You can then use the Rockstar Editor to edit and montage these clips, trimming them down, adding markers and changing camera angles, so that you can switch from a behind the character view to a front view, then a custom view and back again within one clip. On top of this you can add a range of colour, vintage movie and TV effects, and also add and edit soundtracks, with a solid selection of songs from all the radio stations available for use.

Credit to Rockstar here; it has created an editing tool that’s both fairly sophisticated and surprisingly easy-to-use. Sure, serious video editors will bemoan the lack of multiple video and audio tracks and the limitations on transitions, but this isn’t that kind of tool. We can see a lot of players using the Rockstar Editor to create their own cool scenes – and that’s good enough for us.

With Director Mode you can take this one stage further. Switch out of Story Mode to Director Mode and a caravan appears, from which you can summon one of a range of weirdos, freaks and background extras, plus any principal story characters and heist recruits that you’ve unlocked. You can then teleport your start to a range of locations, kit them out with any vehicles you’ve unlocked, then get up to whatever you fancy in Los Santos, Blaine County and their environs. You can even throw in dialogue, if your star has any, and a range of actions. Most importantly, you can record what happens, edit it, and turn it into your own mini movie, which you can then upload to YouTube if you fancy.

It’s a whole new way to enjoy GTA. Want to see Michael’s wife, Amanda, going loco stealing golf carts in the sticks? Now’s your chance. Want to see LiveInvader’s Rickie Luken pulling outrageous stunts in the mountains? Be our guest. You could even create multiple clips starring multiple characters and stitch them all together into one weird little drama.

Since GTA 3, Rockstar has created games which feel like movies, and worlds where players can play out their own slapstick scenes or blockbuster set-pieces. Now it’s given us a way to record, refine and share our funniest, stupidest, boldest, most spectacular moments, and a way to make new ones that Rockstar might never have conceived. This isn’t just another clip editor. It’s closer in spirit to Lionhead’s The Movies or the old LucasArts classic, Stunt Island. In-game movie-makers should rejoice.

Maybe Rockstar Editor and Director’s Mode won’t be for everyone, but they and the other enhancements are enough to elevate GTAV on PC above its console brethren. We’d still hesitate to recommend a double or triple-dip if you’ve already played the existing versions to death, but if any game would make such a thing worthwhile, this is it.

Verdict

We called the next-gen console versions definitive, but this one is just that little bit more so. GTAV is as tweakable as it is replayable, and owners of high-end hardware and high-resolution screens are in for a treat. Owners of less stellar gaming rigs can expect a game that matches the PS4 and Xbox One versions, and potentially exceeds them. Throw in the new music options and the superb video capture and editing tools, and GTAV on PC is a major win for PC gamers.

Source:trustedreviews.com