Nobody makes an open world quite like Rockstar. Others may be bigger, moodier, or crazier, but between Rockstar's obsessive attention to detail and its anarchic approach to gameplay, something emerges that's deeply memorable and filled with a constant sense of discovery. In Grand Theft Auto 5, that something is the newly re-imagined state of San Andreas, a huge, beautifully realized landscape with miles of highway, mountains, desert, and rural towns - and, of course, the city of Los Santos, where all the real action unfolds.
Where Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City was gray and gritty, Los Santos is sunny and gleaming. And where GTA IV was dampened by a relatively somber tone and more "realistic" portrayal of criminal life, GTA 5 brings back the fun, the pursuit of insane riches, and the remorseless, action-comedy approach to mass murder. You can drive awesome cars right off the bat, there's much more to spend money on than guns, and the entire state is yours to explore from the first moment you're set loose in it (although most of its cooler activities, like hunting and skydiving, are unlocked gradually via side missions). And despite these concessions to fun gameplay, Grand Theft Auto V is able to tell a mature, engaging story within one of Rockstar's most believable worlds yet.
GTA V focuses on three protagonists, each fitting a different criminal archetype. Franklin, who takes center stage at the beginning, is an ambitious young gang-banger who's sick of small-time thuggery and wants to work his way up to something better. Michael is a retired, self-absorbed middle-aged bank robber who's had something better, and now spends his days arguing with his family and seeing an unhelpful therapist. And Trevor is a raving lunatic speed freak who ran with Michael back in the day, and who's somehow likable despite being prone to fits of uncontrollable violence. Once they've been introduced into the story, you can switch between them at will, with the game whisking you off to whatever corner of the world they're currently inhabiting - provided you're not in the middle of a mission and/or being chased by cops, anyway.
After the three are united, the story alternates between them dealing with personal dramas and story arcs, and larger, more elaborate heist missions. The former are what we've come to expect from GTA, with plenty of firefights and high-speed chases, and sometimes they even bring in two or three of the protagonists at once.
The latter, meanwhile, are multi-stage affairs that require the involvement of all three characters, and are usually preceded by several short prep missions that usually involve stealing or sabotaging something. Once started, the jobs themselves are pretty diverse, ranging from Heat-style robberies to elaborate espionage missions that have more in common with Splinter Cell than they do with previous GTAs.
You're usually presented with two radically different plans for tackling a heist. For example, Plan A might involve sneaking into a building dressed as a janitor, planting firebombs, and then returning disguised as a fire crew; Plan B, on the other hand, could have you parachuting into the building's top floor and fending off waves of enemies. Each plan requires you to hire a crew of helper characters for a cut of the take, and while you can pick who to bring along - i.e., the costly expert hacker or the cheap newb who'll improve with experience (while still staying cheap), but might screw up at first - crew roles are mandated by your tactician, Lester, and you can't opt to not hire anyone.
Be forewarned, however, that not all heists are as lucrative as they seem - like in GTA IV, failure is a frustratingly prominent theme, as is getting cheated by bigger fish. So while multimillion-dollar properties dot the map, just waiting to be bought, you likely won't be able to afford them until after the story ends (unless you're a whiz at playing the in-game stock market, anyway).
Just as well, though - as cool as it is to buy a $2,000,000 nightclub (or an $80,000 strip joint in the boonies, for that matter), they feel like afterthoughts. You can't actually go inside them, and apart from kicking you a little extra income and the occasional short, simple side mission, they don't really do much once purchased.
