Plus a nostalgia freak???

Well, i have enjoyed GTA San Andreas, and to a lesser degree, ALL 3d era GTAs, IMMENSELY! I found their style, gameplay and feel exactly what i was looking for and suited my playstyle PERFECTLY!

As everyone knows, GTA V, since the very moment it came into PC, made a big ruckus. From bashing it to overpraising, to openly claiming from other players that it is the best in the series! Well, i decided to finally exit my cave, go to an internet cafe with high performance desktop pc and try it out personally. But i was startled...

Game felt to me as GTA 4 did and that is NOT meant to be a praise. The acceleration, handling and steering of cars seemed pretty terrible, chaotic and abysmal to me; i mean, even a great-looking sports car felt slow, would be derailed off-course as if it had been a bucket on wheels, driving a car outside of the main road is like a frost-cube sliding uncontrollably and long story short, for someone who has played San Andreas, modified, garaged and raced ALL sports and racing cars in it without problems like those, V seems and feels like a broken, clunky, piece of sh*t type of mess... There is no faqing CROUCH either, a key feature before. As others say, too, no gang wars, casino games, gym, stats etc., either... What is the idea behind all this content loss? I bet there is no stealth or stealth missions, either.

I am sure as hell don't buying it. Don't get me wrong, i won't pirate either. Is it my idea, on the long run, or this game is actually pretty bad, or if you prefer, lackluster? Or maybe i am a prehistoric freak doomed to be a pc caveman forever? Discuss, please...?

My professional opinion would be that your taste is weird. Seriously, though, I understand people who don't like GTA V but the reasons you listed are silly. The car handling is in my opinion perfect, I actually even know many people who only play the game for online racing (really, a friend of mine does that and is member of a huge group which is all about setting up races). And the gang wars in San Andreas were quite a ridiculous mess IMO which got old really fast, in GTA V you get enough great shooting during the missions and I don't see a need for it. And yeah, you can't crouch, so what? You can take cover and you can sneak, that's all you need in the game. And generally, you mostly list stuff that was only in San Andreas and already dropped in GTA IV and lemme tell you, San Andreas was one huge bloated mess, I'm just glad that in GTA V they dropped tons of useless nonsense in favor of more actual gameplay and more refined content, while there are still tons of fun side activities. Also there are stealth missions. Heck, the first mission in the game (well, the first one after the heist in the prologue) is a stealth mission. Oh, and there are stats, each character has his own and you can improve them via schools, targeting ranges, sports etc. or just frequent use of the corresponding skill. For someone ranting this hard you have done some really awful "research".

Every game should have duck walking.

I will gladly trade not having a gym or casino games to "dear cousin" constantly harassing you via the phone or having to deal with the aforementioned turf wars.

Well, true, and Red Dead Redemption actually had it. I wonder why they dropped it. This.

"Content" loss? I'd say it's a loss of artificial game length. And the idea is not to annoy people with mandatory, useless crap. No need to eat, no need to go bowling with stupid Roman, no need to defend some useless gang territory you didn't even want, ...

If you WANT, you can call someone to go for a drink, or some other activity. I did this with Amanda a couple of times, because I heard people saying that it reveals interesting things about Michael's relationship with her. If you WANT, you can do stupid missions for your businesses (if you don't do them, you'll lose one week's income, which isn't that important). If you WANT you can visit your psychologist. And if you WANT, you can do strange "rampage" events with Trevor (you could say that's your beloved "gang war", since all you do is killing a shitload of random people for a couple of minutes).

I hated eating, annoying friend calls and all this other crap that prevented me from playing the game. GTA 5 just got rid of it and replaced it with optional alternatives. Perfect. Have you ever driven a real car??? I mean, outside of a video game? Great looking sports cars drive like shit off-road. You can't go 200 km/h+ on a dirt track with a sports car. You'll have serious problems to reach 100 km/h without overturning because of bumps in the road. And you'll have zero grip. 1200 kg+ vehicle, 50 km/h, no firm pavement, a corner... Say "Hello" to Sir Isaac Newton. And the handling on tarmac in GTA 5 is the best I've ever seen in the series. It's not like it is in a racing simulatior, but it can compete with most arcade racers.

Acceleration sucks? Well... I'd say it just got a bit adjusted. Get your ass into some real sports car, like... The Porsche 911 GT3? A car built for the race track! Even a monster like this needs more than 10 seconds to reach 200 km/h. Or the LaFerrari, the mother of all Ferrari's, one of the best cars ever built. It still needs 7 seconds to reach 200 km/h. There are cars in GTA 5 that look like something in the league of the LaFerrari. Get one of those (there's one mission where you have to dress as a cop and steal two of them) and you'll get acceleration. Or get a Coil Voltic. It's a pretty common (you can't visit Vinewood without seeing one of them), electrical car and has insane acceleration (the best in the game?!).

You don't have to like GTA 5. But saying it's a bad game because you don't have to eat at Cluckin' Bell and go to the gym afterwards to reduce fat again...? That's a bit silly. It's GTA, not The Sims. And I think it was the right choice to focus on the gameplay again. Vice City started with the crap where you had to drive around and collect the income of your property (there was a very low maximum that each property could store, so you HAD to do this often). San Andreas went completely mad with all the shit you had to do. At some point it felt like it was preventing you from playing the game. GTA 4 was better, but... God, I HATE Roman. I tried to keep him, Little Jacob and Michelle happy, always calling them first to do short things (eat, drink), but I didn't give a shit for the rest. It was just annoying. GTA 5 did good to drop all the useless stuff.

real.geizterfahr

Interesting analysis... Still though, all this extra content... It's pretty tough for me whenever i see this phenomenon; an older game have a huge load of extras and a newer one less than half of it...

Also, about cars, i wasn't talking about realism at all; on the contrary, i was implying comparison to the 3d era mechanisms. Drive a sports car in San Andreas, drive one in GTA V... In San Andreas it goes much faster, handles better and you CAN drive it off road well enough if you try. I never asked (or liked) implementation or "realism" in GTA myself, i am one of those disappointed with it... What to do with realism, anyway? It's a video game...

Usually features like these get dropped for a reason and the features prominent in San Andreas and GTA IV you listed were largely hated by fans. And in my opinion serious gamedesign failures. :P As for the car handling in GTA V, I don't think that it's particularly realistic, I think it's perfectly balanced arcade driving that's just complex enough to be believable and fun to master.

It's still there. You can still go for a drink, do yoga, play tennis, etc. I'd say you can do even MORE stuff than in earlier GTAs. It's just something optional now. There's a thin line between "Games don't need realism at all" and "Holy shit, what's happening here?!?" You wouldn't want to drive your car on water ;)

No, seriously, I know what you mean. But modern GTA isn't about insane physics anymore. GTA is divided into three eras: 2D, 3D and HD. 2D is GTA, GTA 2 and GTA London, 3D is 3, Vice City and San Andreas and HD is 4 and 5. Garbage trucks flying around with 200 km/h were a part of 3D GTA. Call it a limitation of the Xbox's and PS2's hardware. HD GTA took another route. A very realistic world where characters use realistic instruments and semi-realistic plans to do extremely unrealistic and absurd things. Crazy physics don't belong there anymore. They ruin the picture of the realistic world, which is needed to work out the unrealistic stuff the characters are doing.

Try Saints Row. It proudly fares away from this trendy "realism" nowadays' games try to achieve (including GTA) and embraces the sillines about mid GTAs and takes it to another limit. For example, in SR3 (which I don't know if has reached GOG yet), if you don't like how cars drive, you can fress like a witch and ride your broomstick. Check some videos, and if you like the silly approach, I think you shall enjoy it.

You don't say! 3 is in my wishlist! I lost the summer sale before, though...

Still, i don't like the turn HD GTA took. I like the physics of the past.

Bought retail GTA V at launch and I don't regret anything. GTA V is so much better than GTA IV it's not even funny. It's been constant 60fps for me throughout the game, be it singleplayer or online. Basically everything feels smooth and reactive, I do drifts while driving (something which can't be done with shitty, laggy framerates) and dives with planes and helicopters. I use it as one of the examples of how PC ports should be made. After Vice City, GTA V is probably my 2nd fav GTA.

(The latest patch seem to have broken the constant 60 fps in some areas but Rockstar says they are looking into it)

In SR3 physics so cool, you have to make insurance fraud minigames which consist in ragdoll through the city!

I can confirm that Saints Row: The Third rocks. While I don't necessarily like every design choice in it (such as some of the more typical parts of modern gaming), I'm pretty sure that I had more fun with it than with any 3D GTA title I've played.

And if you ask me, after GTA 2, the series has been going downhill anyway, even though I quite liked Vice City and San Andreas.

LOL. Stopped reading after that. Car handling has been a disaster throughout the series. The cars handle like bricks.
And people bringing realism into a GTA V discussion smh. Who cares how cars drive in real life, it's supposed to be a game ie fun. Also, i'm pretty sure some games have been very faithful to car driving and the cars don't handle like bricks. That's just being lazy and saying "oh, you know, cars do that in real life" and not bothering to actually design something cool instead. Take a look at the F1 simulators, or rally games. The cars have very realistic driving YET they're still fun. (and don't tell me they're not realistic, some F1 simulator champions actually competed in F1 tournaments while never having tested the thing before).
But yeah, keep buying half assed games and believe they rock.