In the preface, I would like to say that I was not exposed to the “GTA hype” as such, because the last game in this series that made me “beep” was Vice City and I was still a schoolboy then. Therefore, when I sat down to play this game on the Playstation 3, I soberly assessed the game from the angles from which it is worth assessing any creative work.
The first thing that caught my eye was the graphics, at that time it squeezed all the juice out of the console and produced a beautiful picture worthy of next-gen (like MGS3 in its time on the second son), today, already on PC, the game continues to delight the eye, although it does not indulge in any special innovations with the exception of the notorious 60 FPS and, finally, a playable first-person mode (but this is more a disadvantage of console controllers than an advantage of the port). The draw distance also seems to have been adjusted higher. It looks great - it plays quickly, and what else is needed for happiness). Optimization at its best.
The gameplay continues the tradition of GTA and gives enormous freedom of action to young fans of extremism. In general, changes from series to series are minimal - except that they added some “special abilities” and took away the ability to throw various objects at passers-by (bricks in GTA 4) and a “rocking chair”, which would logically fit into next-gen San Andreas.
In all other respects, this is still the same GTA, only better, bigger, stronger.