Hi all, I have recently made a few changes to my Brick Mansion,
specifically I have now walled off the “relaxation zone” which included the
pool, the sauna and the spa. I had been thinking of doing this for awhile and
of course open plan is nice but no-one wants the smell of chlorine when having
dinner.
The wall was brick for the border obviously though this time the doorways
and doors themselves were made from Acacia wood as I had not used this type of
wood at all in the building of the house (as it wasn’t in the game yet for most
of the construction) Most of the wall itself featured large windows of which I
set stained glass in a chequered rainbow configuration that looks ok but I may
change in the future. Unfortunately I have just noticed that Acacia doors are actually the most
flimsy letting a lot of air through and are almost not like a door at all, but
anyway the area was mostly blocked off so it was fine.
The new wall sorrounding the relaxation zone.
View from the 'Relaxation zone'
Another thing I did was widen the steps leading down to the
basement to three blocks instead of two as the biggest staircase down is on the
other side from the relaxation zone though it would actually have less people
going down it.
The widened staircase going down to the lower level, still no barrier though
I still didn’t construct a barrier as it would have covered too
much of the jungle garden below, so people will just have to be careful hah
though maybe I will make one in the future I don’t know. I also re-did the
planter in the middle to make it a bit smaller and I also had to take out the
tree.
The new wall view from the dining area
I re-did the stonework for the Sauna in polished andesite as I think
it looks much better than the cracked stone brick used before.
The newly decorated Sauna
The last thing I
did was make a doorway instead of just an alcove into the resource hall as when
people are having dinner and dancing they probably wouldn’t want to hear what’s
going on in there, all the Minecart noise and such. Though now I also realise there would be all this sound coming from the Forge below so maybe I should think about doing a chimney from the roof of the forge though it would have to go sideways out though that may be an idea.
The new doorway into the resource hall from the dancefloor
From a suggestion by a
friend I also thought about making some sort of diving board for the pool or
some way of getting into the middle area without having to clamber over the
outer lanes but I tried making a way across but it didn’t look too good so I
just thought I’d keep it the way it was.
One last change was that I was looking to possibly add some
windows to the areas which had none. I created some steel barred vents on the
very top of the walls of the forge that let outwards to the wall of the house
letting the heat escape including one which out into the soccer pitch.
Speaking
of which I managed to fit two large iron barred “windows” on opposite all of
the indoor soccer pitch, one of which you can only see the bottom of the
outdoor pool but at least it’s getting some fresh air in and a way for the heat
from, the forge to get out. There wasn’t many other places I make windows where
there weren’t already.
The Library really didn’t have any space, the theatre
and club obviously didn’t need them, I did have a spare wall in the alchemy
room where I put a window into there, I made sure all the lower level windows
were barred for safety reasons especially when some were on the non-walled side
of the house.
Window in the Alchemy Room
The air vents and windows on the non-walled side of the house
So just some small changes until a new patch or a think of
something else.
Release Date: April 14th 2015 Genre: Action-Adventure Publisher: Rockstar North Developer: Rockstar Games Platform: Windows/PS4/PS3/Xbox one & 360 Players: 1 Classification: R (Restricted)
Well you’ve all been waiting for this haven’t you? Yes I’ve
now finally played through GTA5, as you’ve probably guessed what took me so
long is that I was waiting for the PC version to come out, I did actually try
playing the game on PS3 but got frustrated with the stick aiming and decided
just to wait for the PC version. Of course as you all know this did take
roughly two and a half years to become available on Steam on the 14th
of April 2015, but was it worth the wait? Well I guess. It feels weird to say
this but after GTA: San Andreas came out I never felt as much hype for a GTA
game since. Maybe I was so awash in the world of MMORPGs (I was playing WoW
heavily at the time) that It didn’t really matter to me anymore. Nevertheless I
got right into GTA4 when I heard about it and that I could use it on PC (even
though it did use that awful Games for Windows Live thing) and as you’ve
probably read in my review
of it. I was very impressed by the greatly updated new look and ragdoll
physics. I didn’t care at all about the gripes with the car handling and the
limited amount of flight and extreme sports options though this was brought
back mostly in the Ballad
of Gay Tony expansion.
This is one of my favourite shots of the game, in the park with Chop
As I said I was not at all fussed about waiting for the PC
version to come out, I was excited but honestly I had enough games to play and
could endure since I would have to compete with my brother to play it on the
PS3 and I’d have to put up with awful stick aiming. So I waited, and waited for
a damn long time at that but I suppose it was worth it. Before the game came
out it was listed as being just over 65gb! damn talk about blowing your hard
drive space,looks like I wouldn’t be putting
it on my solid state any time soon though this will all change once I get my
new solid state drive of course. I managed to download it at Lanslide Lan as
they had a steam server dedicated to it so I bought and downloaded it in no
time, I decided to purchase it on Steam just to make sure playing multiplayer
went as smooth as possible. I still had my credentials from the Rockstar social
club so was able to log in to that ok and thankfully that was the only thing
that was needed then you just went straight into the game.
Michael and Lester plan a heist
When I heard that GTA5 would be set entirely in Los Santos I
wasn’t too surprised, I didn’t think they were going to do the whole map of San
Andreas again with the three cities, as you know the entire map of the region
was suitably huge, when looking at the GTA5 map in comparison to San Andreas,
GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption. GTA4 is pretty much the size of the city area,
the San Andreas map takes up about half and the Red Dead Redemption one takes
up just more than half, which as I suspected doesn’t add up to all of them
meshed together like I’ve heard some people saying. Red Dead Redemption was
pretty damn big but was mostly desert and rock, which is true enough being set
in the early 19th century. The “Island” of Los Santos is similar as
the majority of the landscape is wilderness with just under a third being the
Los Santos City itself and there’s a whole host of people and activities out
there, some random some not and I feel even though I’ve finished the game I
haven’t explored out there to the fullest degree.
A Map size comparison with that of GTA4, San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption
Indeed I enjoyed GTA4 as a simple gritty realistic
experience with semi-believable characters though GTA5 was a very different
story. The first images I saw of GTA5 were pretty damn impressive, the
picturesque views and awesome graphics looked great but I wasn’t too pleased by
the introduction of the three-protagonist feature. GTA had always been about
you being a single guy, yes guy I actually would have preferred a female
protagonist rather than 3 guys or maybe just one playable female character to
make things interesting at least. I always liked the fact that most of the time
you had come to a new city and were relatively unknown and had to work your way
up but with the descriptions and the history of the three new protagonists only
Franklin seems to fit this which I believe was the intent, Michael was the
retired criminal who has beat the game, Trevor is the crazy player who just
likes killing and carnage and Franklin is the similar protagonist to the
previous games. Don’t get me wrong I liked Niko and I liked CJ and I I liked Tommy Vercetti, but for
some weird reason I think I liked GTA 3’s Claude the best cause he was the
most unknown and the most small time and also that he didn’t talk, I don’t mind
silent protagonists, I was very much a fan of Gordon Freeman and
found it funny when lots of people are talking to you but you say nothing which
is exactly what happens with the GTA Online Protagonist.
In my view the GTA5 Protagonists had too much going on and talked way too much
but then again I guess people like action and drama and few hold my view as
Claude being one of their favourite protagonists.
Now that's quite a view
GTA tells the story of the three protagonists Michael
De Santa, Franklin Clinton and Trevor
Philips with Michael and Trevor being playable in the intro and Franklin
being the first played in the main game, the introduction sequence shows some
history of Micheal and Trevor as you actually play out the intro as you get to
grips with the controls and are introduced to swapping characters while they
attempt to rob a bank some place called North Yankton which is an actual town
called just “Yankton” in South Dakota. In short the heist doesn’t go so well
and then we are treated to GTA 5’s opening sequence.
Part of the Prologue set in North Yankton, I showcase the screen flashing when an enemy is killed and first person shooting and driving.
After starting story mode
and watching GTA5’s impressive intro you are then treated to a cutscene of Michael having a
conversation with his psychologist which tells us a bit of background for him
and then we switch to Franklin
who is walking with his friend Lamar
before they both steal some high end cars from the back of a house then have a
high speed race then are chased by the cops then drive them back to the Premium Deluxe Motorsport business of the
shady Simeon Yetarian then after that we finally drive
with Lamar back to Franklin’s Aunt’s house where he lives. Starting with
Franklin would seem the right choice though the other problem was I had
pre-ordered the game so it gave Franklin (and Franklin only) $500,000 to start
off with, which doesn’t really make sense and I couldn’t even distribute the
money in between the characters. Oh well not that it mattered too much, I was
soon doing more missions that involved more money. The missions with Franklin
start out fairly low key and introduce you to the game, Franklin is from eastern
Los Santos and is part of the “The
Families” which I did look up and it appears that The Grove Street Families
from San Andreas were actually a “set” of this gang not the whole gang as it
was implied or so I thought. I also read that apparently there was something
said by Lamar in the game that the Grove street OG’s eventually got out of the
Gang bangin lifestyle and moved on with their lives possibly to be rich CEO’s
lol which given the events of San Andreas made sense.
Playing a few missions with Franklin, Lamar and Chop were pretty fun to start with,
the control scheme of things is basically the same as before so I had no
problem with driving moving and shooting,you are soon introduced to Michael via Franklin sneaking into his house
and trying to repossess his son’s car. I must admit I was looking forward to
playing as Michael as no GTA character had ever really had a wife and children
in the game before and boy were they dysfunctional hah. Michael is by far the
most well off having a mansion in the Vinewood Hills but apparently he is in
debt. Trevor’s introduction to the game was one of the most horrifying scenes
I’ve seen in a GTA game basically he is seen screwing a woman from behind then
getting angry and stomping a man to death, I won’t go into detail who it was
but man was it confronting and funny to think that young kids may be playing
the game and watching this.
Trevor's first appearance was quite violent indeed.
I have to admit I didn’t feel right swapping
between characters just plonking yourself down in the shoes of one, plus it
made things even more difficult with the fact that you had to remember who had
what weapons though it only really bought weapons with Franklin cause he did
most of the assassinations, you didn’t need to bother though cause most of the
time you were given what you needed for the mission you were doing. The other
thing was, as fun as doing heists and missions were, switching between the
three characters at once just didn’t feel right, one minute I’m flying the
chopper then the next I’m inside the building, though It works I guess, I just
much prefer the way it’s done online with each person doing a certain job. Also
each character has their own special ability. Franklin has the ability to slow
down time when driving to make quick manoeuvres, Trevor’s ability is basically
Invulnerability so useless to me haha and Michaels is the best in my book as
it’s basically bullet time a la Max Payne and makes those headshots much
easier.
The game's three protagonists along with Lester Crest planning a heist, Michael was in his underwear from a previous mission but I just decided to leave him in it.
Other changes to the game are evident as the Weapon Wheel
is now used to select your weapons a la Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3,
and there is now much a larger weapon pool, made even larger by the addition of
DLC weapons and boy was there a lot by the time I got to the game. Apparently
the card handling had also been fixed though as I said I had no problem with
the previous games car handling, maybe they just suited my style though it
seems they were now a bit lighter and twitchier whereas the GTA4 physics were a
bit heavier.
Franklin using his special ability hence the green tinge, from what I can remember Franklin was green tingle, Michael was blue and Trevor was red.
Probably the most notable change was the first
person mode which was a (pardon the pun) first for a GTA game, I initially
felt like I should play the game through like this as it was a whole new way of
playing, but after a bit of playing around including running and punching
people across the footpath, having a fistfight, having a gunfight, standing on
top of trucks and getting whacked in the head then ragdolling off the truck
onto the ground all while in first person felt a bit nauseating. I will note
here that you can actually turn first person ragdoll off and I did a small few
missions in this mode where it worked rather well this was one point where I
was running from the cops and climbing over walls and fences to escape then
hiding behind a wall, another time where I was hiding from the cops while
inside a car and I could see some cops around still looking as I sat inside.
Using first person mode in both of these situations made the game feel more
tense and realistic as it’s more personal though part of this feeling is the
fact that you can’t see around corners etc and this does make things harder as
you don’t generally have the “third person cheat vision” to see around walls
and when in cover.
First person view from inside the car
Another reason I couldn’t play the game in the third person
is though when driving there is now detailed interiors, similar to Test Drive
Unlimited 2 and most driving games now I still want to see my damn car lol,
driving with the mouse and keyboard makes this even better as it’s easy to
place the camera all the way around when driving to get some different angles.
Oh yehh, wiiiiiiiide angle shots, the mouse swooparound helps a lot when being attacked from all sides especially in large vehicles.
The game’s controls as I’ve said before are relatively the
same though this time I have utilized my Logitech PS3 style controller to the
fullest, the game allows for seamless use of keyboard and gamepad even changes
the on-screen button prompts with you so much as move the stick of the
controller which is a great help when changing all of a sudden to gamepad
control before a street race starts or when you’re flying though no matter how
I tried I still couldn’t stop spinning the tires when taking off though the
controller made it much easier to turn and brake more fluently rather than the
full on or off that you get with the keyboard. I only use the controller when
flying and in races most of time, the first time I flew a plane in the game I
had no idea what I was doing as there were no planes in GTA4 but now I even use
the controller for helicopters as it just works so much better, I sometimes
using it when driving but not when I’m going to be constantly getting in or out
of a car of I’m going to need to at a certain point.
Got the gamepad contols for this jet down pat now.
On the ground I mainly
used the keyboard and mouse due to the ease of the mouse aiming but even then I
still went for headshots as there is this great new feature that when you kill
a person the screen flashes blue or something showing that they are now dead,
this was awesome for letting me know that I got a head shot. Annoyinglyif you missed their head they would flail
around then fall over and appear dead
then they just got back up again and I don’t know how many times I can’t
remember whether I had killed an enemy and was sitting there waiting for them
to get up before shooting a few more bullets into them. As with Niko in GTA4
you’re restricted for the most part by human physics and endurance you have to
time your sprints so you don’t run out of stamina and also I noticed when doing
things like running and pivoting it’s much more realistic as you can’t change
direction rapidly you have to actually twist around as you would in real life.
The 'Repossession' mission with Franklin and Lamar, I try to do half the mission in third person and the rest in first person, this also shows the gun combat dynamics.
I will add in here that I was using a trainer throughout the
game, the Script Hook V
+ Native Trainer to be precise as this was the most similar to the Simple
trainer for GTA4 though with less options though I’m sure more will be added,
there’s also the usuals there though inc invincibility, teleporting, never
wanted, fast running, vehicle spawning etc and also a model changer which is
quite hilarious as it has animals available such as monkeys and even cows
though some obviously can’t drive cars and you unfortunately you cannot do
missions with non-humanoid models. The vehicle spawner is great as always as I
always like to try out unique vehicles in ridiculous places like driving a golf
cart through the backwoods and being able to spawn anything at any time is a
huge time saver. And yes I did use invincibility but not the infinite special
ability and I also I tried to use the thing minimally for cheating but that
damn health and stamina interface is so goddamn minimalistic and tiny that it’s
hard to notice how fast it goes down plus if you’ve seen the mod you would
know how awesome it is. On other thing I’ll add is that I no longer needed to
use the “progress time forward” or back option as now if you attempt to start a
mission that requires it to be night time it progresses time forward so it’s
correct, so thank god for that no more goddamn freakin “come back between this
time and that time” message.
Well that didn't exactly work out the way I planned
A few other GTA games included golf courses but you could never truly play golf or just use a driving range this time it's it's fully fledged golf with a course and golf carts.
Probably the biggest new feature of missions is the heists
which form a lot of the main missions of the game, this basically sees you
planning a heist with Michael’s friend and former affiliate from his old life Lester Crest who organises
and sets them up. Lester plans the heist and at the meeting offers two ways of
doing things which are usually some as aspect of “quiet” or “loud” approach,
you also have to choose what crew you are going to take on the heist and you
can see their skill and what percentage of cut they want, the more skilled they
are the more of a cut they will take though the lesser skilled crew members
will gain more skill with each heist they do. With the infamous first jewelery
store heist I made the mistake of taking some lesser skill individuals and paid
for it, I tried this mission more recently doing everything right and it worked
well, I’m going to try it again at some point doing the bustin-in loud option
with all of the worst crew I can and see what happens. These heists which you
do a few of throughout the story game form a basis for GTA Online which
is actually shipped as a different game altogether where basically most of the
time you are doing heists or setups for heists but I’ll get into that another
time.
The Jewelery store heist planning board
The world of GTA5 is incredibly varied and full of life as
the three characters you interact with everyone including friends and family
members even in free roam mode, for example as Michael I once got up saw my
wife and son on the breakfast table then when I walked out of the house I saw
my daughter drive past out the gate quite fast actually almost running me over.
It feels really weird to see people you know just walking around, it certainly
wasn’t like that in GTA4 where seeing someone when not on a mission was
incredibly formalized. People around the game world are more reactive as well,
the screams gasps and reactions to what you do are slightly more realistic now.
Once of the more prominent things I noticed is that people are now doing more
things, their lying on the beach, their doing gardening, their driving in and
out of their driveways, their running and cycling and working out and doing
everything that you see when you walk around (and not see as well in some
parts) their even diddling on their phones and taking selfies! Dang lol this is
getting way too real. The internet makes a return in the game which is now
accessible via your phone to make things a bit easier and yes it’s never been
funnier, the entire “GTA internet” is a satirical haven with everything from
facebook “aka Lifeinvader” to the stock market to real estate websites. The
internet also has lots more functionality this time around with forward and
back buttons and more interactivity for each website. The flight school made a
return and you can also use the ammunition gun range though there was no car,
bike or boat school that I could see.
Angry Trevor tries to enjoy the beach but is still plagued by mobile phones.
One of the biggest things that fans were looking forward to
with GTA5 was the updated graphics though after the major update to HD and the
introduction of ragdoll with GTA4 I wasn’t really sure how much better they
could do as modern games are just getting better and it’s hard to expect
anything more. Case in point, the graphics were pretty damn phenomenal as with
the PC and Console next gen releases they received more than a tweaking. I’ve
got my system set for speed rather then graphics but it still looked pretty
damn great, there’s so much detail in there it’s crazy, grass, weeds, roads in
disrepair, papers blowing past, random trash cans and traffic cones all the
little things add up. The scenery and HD weather elements such as fog and
sunset are greatare the best they have
ever been as most of my screenshots were out in the country on dirt roads and
forests where you could really appreciate the sights though I must admit the
city at night looked amazing especially during the mission Did Somebody Say Yoga? which is one of my
favourite missions in the game.
Another great shot of the graphics, you can see the details everywhere
The character models have never looked more realistic
though still aren’t quite up to the photorealistic quality though this is also
due to my machine limits though the 4K resolution modding is
already happening as far as I know.As
for the technicalities of my machine I recently upgraded my monitors part way
through playing so I went from 1680x1050 resolution to finally being at least
1980x1080 also I had a bit of a play around with the colour settings, I was
unimpressed with the gaming setting due the dark parts coming up much lighter
though I suppose it would help with visibility but I didn’t like the look, I
also tried the “scenery” mode but it made the game just saturated with colour
so I just decided to do the normal view which worked fine. There’s not much
more I can say but the characters, the vehicles, the scenery, the water the
sunsets all looked amazing and absolutely up to standard.
Ahh the end of a hard day's killing, on to a long night's killing.
The soundtrack in GTA5 is quite huge but the best feature in
my book is the addition of an original
score which was mainly used during missions but was played throughout both
the singleplayer and multiplayer modes. Most of the time I actually didn’t turn
on the radio much as I was just enjoying the soundtrack and tense music that
played during the missions and suited them perfectly I might add. Regarding the
Radio stations
there is now a huge amount, roughly 17 stations were available in the original
release now an extra one has been added making it 18 and damn it is a lot of
music with some new and returning celebrity DJ’s including Kenny Loggins, Pam
Grier and Cara Delvinge. Though I didn’t exactly spend much time listening to
the radio the in game soundtrack suited just fine or maybe just what the
characters had on at the time, I did at one point load some MP3’s on and listen
to the self radio but though there really wasn’t much point as you have to copy
a whole bunch of MP3’s into a folder to be able to listen instead of linking to
your music folder and also there was more than enough music on the many radio
stations not to mention the soundtrack. I never have that much to say about the
sound effects and general speech though it’s top notch, I’m not exactly a big
audiophile when it comes to sound, so everything sounded fine to me.
Push it to the limit! Crash the gaaaaaaates!
So in conclusion the story between Franklin, Michael and
Trevor can be finalised in several different ways of which I have yet to try
but even so it finished so quickly, I was always waiting for some big thing to
happen but after several big things that I thought weren’t the big thing the
game just ended though I should have known from the last game that it ends with
a “choice” similar to GTA4 but I don’t know I’m not really that fussed. Having
now played through the story I really don’t much of an urge to go back through
it, this goes back to the whole three unlikable protagonists and the way it
seems to just go from one big shooty action sequence to another. Frankly I’d
rather just go back to being an anonymous hoodlike in GTA3 and this is technically what you are in multiplayer. I’m
not going to talk too much about it yet as I’m going to do a separate review
but technically what I really want is a way to play the singleplayer as a
random hood, but even after you’ve finished the main story this just isn’t
possible the whole game would have to be redone.
Franklin, Michael and Trevor gear up for Heist
I suppose I can say I enjoyed
GTA5 not for the story but for the presentation, there was so much to see and
do and I feel like there’s still a bit more to do and much more to explore and
that’s what I want to do for next playthrough or maybe even next time I boot it
up, after all most of the fun you get out of this game was what you made yourself. My qualms with the game were minimal though and was the only thing keeping
me from aperfect score.
JD
8/10
Things I liked:
Improved on just about everything from previous GTA
Immaculate presentation
Heists and planning them are great fun
First person view is a great addition
Seamless keyboard to gamepad transition
No more time of day requirements for missions
Things I didn’t like:
Unlikable characters, no female protagonist
Switching between characters during a mission
Didn’t enjoy story too well, too spontaneous and action
orientated
The Grand Theft Auto V: PlayStation 4, Xbox One & PC Announcement Trailer
