Blog Archives
Video Game News; March 5th
- There is an expectation that there will be new Watch Dogs material coming out this week, according to a report from Gamespot it might feature a trailer along with the release date on the “new” game. I am interested to see if they improved the visuals, if anything that was the weakest point of the game. Well that and to this point we really do not know a whole bunch about the game as a whole outside of Aiden Pierce is out to do damage to those who somehow harmed his family. The game looked and sounded fantastic before the delay, but if there was one weakness that Ubisoft had, it was the lack of real info on the game.
- On Tuesday Rockstar Games released its “The Business Update” for GTA Online. The release offers 3 more new cars, a couple more weapons, a new jet, and a collection of new clothes.
- SCEA has put out a couple of new blogs on Operation Sports this week, the first one dug into your Universal Profile and Stubs which is virtual currency but not used like it was in NBA 2k14, you can read that here, and the second one released today goes into Online Franchise which can be read here.
- A notable release this week was South Park: The Stick of Truth was has released to some good fan fare, it was released on Ps3, Xbox 360, and PC.
GTA Online: The Business Update Coming Next Week, Tuesday March 4th
The GTA Online Valentine’s Day Massacre Special
GTA Online Free Beach Bum Update Hits Next Week: New Weapons, Vehicles, Jobs and More
Get ready to hit the beach with all new Jobs with the Beach Bum update for Grand Theft Auto Online, coming November 19th.
- “Grass Route II” (Race): In this sequel to the original popular Grass Route Race, go off-road in an epic heat starting on the North bank of the Zancudo River through the treacherous wetlands with a triumphant finish on the beach in North Chumash.
- “Survival on Del Perro Pier” (Survival): Skip the ferris wheel for a deadlier kind of thrill ride as you take on waves of relentless enemies at this beachfront attraction.
- “View of Vespucci” (Parachuting): This leap sends you from 2,980 feet, down towards Vespucci Beach, weaving through palm trees to land on the basketball courts of the rec center. If you’ve got skills, it’s possible to freefall through the first few checkpoints before even opening your chute.
- “Paleto Beach” (Team Deathmatch): The locals complain that not a lot happens in this sleepy town, so do them a favor and wake ’em up with a barrage of gunfire exchanged between you and a rival team. This Team Deathmatch takes place right on the romantic shoreline for 4-8 players.
- “Sundae Driving” (Bike Race): Sure to be a new fan-favorite motorbike race, menace Vespucci Beach on your two-wheel rocket, taking breakneck corners as you try and best the competition.
Expect these and lots more Jobs to be added to Grand Theft Auto Online next week.
New Vehicles
Hit the shore with four sand-and-surf-ready vehicles perfect to take on the all new Beach Bum Races and Vehicle Deathmatches: the BF Bifta dune buggy, the rugged Canis Kalahari off-road truck, the Bravado Paradise beach camper van and making a special return to the GTA series, the fast and stylish Speeder speedboat. All four vehicles will be available at no in-game cost, with the land-based vehicles accessible from the southernsanandreassuperautos.com website and the Speeder available via docktease.com on your in-game phone (call Pegasus for delivery). These vehicles are also available in Story Mode for Michael, Trevor and Franklin to enjoy – to access them, visit your garage property and the Marina property for the vehicles and the boat respectively.
Take to the seas and waterways in the classic, nimble Speeder.
Beach bums with attitude. Hit the coast with all new customization options to style up your GTA Online character.
Grand Theft Auto V Review
NOTE: Due to the problems that have hit GTA Online I am basing this review off of the offline play only. I might do a brief GTA Online review in the future, I am still figuring that out.
On September 17th the gaming world was hit with Grand Theft Auto V’s release, a game that many critics and gamers were eagerly awaiting for. The series that layed the ground work for other sandbox type games such as Saints Row and Sleeping Dogs (formerly the True Crime series that made its mark on PS2/Xbox and was originally supposed to be another True Crime game before being dropped and scooped up by Square Enix) to be released this console generation. Grand Theft Auto V had a huge bill to live up to but does it hit the mark?
Some More Details on Grand Theft Auto Online
Dear All,
We are humbled and overwhelmed by the response to Grand Theft Auto V – literally overwhelmed in the case of some of our servers! We sincerely hope you’re enjoying your visit to Los Santos and we know many of you have plenty of questions about Grand Theft Auto Online. First, we thought it would be useful to provide some details of the roll out of GTA Online, and how we hope you will be involved in making the game everything it can be.
- Grand Theft Auto Online is going to be something brand new for us: a fully realized and living world for multiple players that will continue to grow and take shape over time.
- The ultimate shape of GTA Online will be determined as much by you, the player, as by the work we put in. What you like and don’t like, what you play and what you want will determine how the game develops and what it turns into.
- Everything we do will be informed by feedback from you all – from the types of missions that roll out to all kinds of future content.
- We are planning for a constant stream of new content, tweaks and updates in the weeks and months ahead.
- The first couple of weeks we expect to be heavily focused on tuning the experience as it goes from internal testing to the reality of being played by tons of people in the real world so that all the usual teething problems for an online game are overcome. We hope it will all run incredibly smoothly, but please bear with us if it doesn’t, and help us fix any and all problems!
- After that, we will begin releasing content updates and giving you the opportunity to make your own content.
GTA Community Feedback Needed from Day One
This is vital for the ongoing success of the game. The first few months of Grand Theft Auto Online will be critical as everyone enters this dynamic new world for the first time. Plenty of issues are bound to occur.Remember this interesting character?
One thing we are already aware of, and are trying to alleviate as fast as we can, is the unanticipated additional pressure on the servers due to a significantly higher number of players than we were anticipating at this point – we are working around the clock to buy and add more servers, but this increased scale is only going to make the first few days even more temperamental than such things usually are. This is part of the problem some of you have been experiencing with the iFruit App and some Social Club services – we apologize in advance for this and thank you for your patience in this area.
More than ever, we need your help to report your experiences, findings, likes, loves, dislikes and hates – and we will be looking at your feedback constantly to tune the game into its optimal shape and help guide how Grand Theft Auto Online will grow and evolve past this initial period. We will be checking out how people are playing and what they are not playing or not enjoying, while also monitoring feedback via two other new Rockstar channels:
- GTAOnline@rockstargames.com: This email address will be active from launch day as a place to send your input and feedback direct to us relating to the game.
- GTA Online Forums at Social Club: At some point this fall after the initial release of GTA Online, we are planning to launch Social Club Forums where players can chat with one another about their online experiences as well as access a GTA Online Suggestion board to post about any suggested features, tweaks and changes you want to see.
Here’s a rough overview of what you can expect on day one as well as initial details about how the GTA Online world will evolve from there.
The Launch of Grand Theft Auto Online:
From launch, up to 16 players can enter the world together to partake in everything from:
- Open-World Crime and Chaos: Go on your own or round up your friends to explore the open world together – catch a movie, go mountain biking, hit the shooting range and much more. Want to test the law? Knock over a convenience store, take down a gang or rob an armored truck for easy cash and Reputation.
- Jobs: Los Santos and Blaine County are ripe with opportunity for the ambitious and criminal minded. Take on Missions and an array of other Jobs as a lone wolf, team up with your Crew or join fellow mercenaries and degenerates to pull off a wide range of robberies and illicit activities together.
- Races: Everything from classic street competition and off-road tracks to boat racing on the open ocean, or take to the skies in aerial events. Jump into the madness of a GTA Race, or try out a brand new race type, Rally, where driver and co-pilot work together to navigate treacherous courses at high speeds.
- Sports: Join your friends / any random stranger for a game of tennis, a round of golf or go base jumping and more, all for cash and Reputation.
- Customization: Create your character using the Character Creator – then earn some cash and spend it getting dressed for success. You can also collect and customize cars for your garage and personalize your full weapons cache.
- Reputation and Cash Flow: Reputation is earned from all your online exploits in everything you do in GTA Online – and will help you rank up, providing access to new features, weapons and criminal contacts. Spend cash you’ve gained on cars, clothes, guns, properties and much more. You can either quickly accumulate cash through profitable activities like knocking over armored cars, winning street races, doing stick-ups or a host of other cash-making endeavors – or if you’re the completely instant gratification type, you can choose to buy denominations of GTA$. You will have the option to purchase GTA$ through the in-game Store. The game and its economy have been designed and balanced for the vast majority of players who will not buy extra cash. There is no in-game paywall and nothing that should disrupt the balance of the game. You don’t have to spend real money to attain the cars, guns, clothes, flash and style of a high-roller in Los Santos, but can if you wish to get them a little quicker. The economy is balanced differently from the single player economy, and cash earned in one cannot be taken over to the other. Most players will earn cash much faster Online than in Story Mode.
- Growing Pains: There will be the typical growing pains for an online game, including but not limited to crashes, glitches, crazy bugs, gameplay modes and mechanics that need re-balancing and other surprises! Even in GTAV Story Mode, some of you may have seen a few odd and even amusing little glitches out there last week. This sort of thing is inevitable in a massive open-world game and there’ll surely be lots more unexpected oddities like this in the Online world next week – rest assured we’ll be monitoring and actively doing all we can to smooth such things out as they happen, but we need your help to find them, as well as your feedback to help fine tune all of the game’s systems so everything is perfectly balanced.
Currently Planned GTA Online Content Updates:
Here is a quick overview of a few initial things we’re working on for the first few weeks of Grand Theft Auto Online, alongside an aggressive period of tuning and finessing the game. We will give you dates for all of this content as soon as we have them – bear in mind that the order of things may well change, and we will probably add some extra stuff as well!
- The Content Creator: The Content Creator will launch with tools to tailor and publish your own Deathmatches & Races.
- The Beach Bum Pack: Featuring 4 new amazing beach fun vehicles, over 300 new items of incredible down tempo leisure wear and 2 new but not remotely relaxing weapons.
- Capture the Flag: GTA Online’s take on the classic CTF mode including the ability to make your own using The Content Creator.
- Heists: This update will introduce full-on cooperative Heist missions that will require careful planning, teamwork and sharp execution – along with the Heist Planning Board for your apartment.
Just to be clear, all of these updates will be free. We’ll have more info on this and much more additional content as our plans develop through the launch period, and as we get feedback from you. Please stay tuned for further info and updates. And remember – we need your help to make this experience all it can be.
Thank you everyone,
Rockstar Games
GTA V: Burning Firetrucks! Yeahhhhh hahahaha!
There are no spoilers, just some good old fashioned burnin’ of some fire trucks. That will show them for trying to put out the the fire to the $100,000 sports-car.
Initial impressions of GTA V
My first full game experience for Grand Theft Auto V came Wednesday, and I am happy to report, it was a long and enjoyable one. I did a little bit of playing on Tuesday night because the game came in so late, and that was more of a quick play-through instead of judgement time.
But the point of yesterday was to play some missions and mess around. I went from 3PM to 8PM playing this game with a few breaks in between and I loved what I was playing. Two of the missions really stood out as memorable. And I am sure there will be more as I continue to play. However I won’t say what the missions were to avoid spoiling anything for anyone who may not yet have the game. Plus I also want to save them for the review.
However when you aren’t playing missions there is still quite a lot to do on the side from driving on the highway at excessive speeds being chased by the police, to lighting fires at will with the help of gas cans then shooting the trail to spark the fire which destroys whatever you’re trying to blow up which in the case of mine from last night was two ambulances a medical center. Also remember you can also start mischief with the Police in the usual ways, and unconventional ways such as using the phone to ask for police to come out and ambush them when the solo cop comes out. You can also play golf and tennis, to going hiking in the mountains. There is a lot of stuff you can do on this game.
The city is lively, I have seen a lot of random things, from police chases to random EMS vehicles going to different locations. You can also choose to help people in need. For example I helped a woman who had her purse stolen from her, I caught the robber and got her purse back to her. And when I returned it, I lost the $1800 I gained when I took the purse from the robber. I didn’t get tipped by the woman so I killed her with my fists and took her money.
As you can tell I am having a blast with the game overall. And I am just scratching the surface.
The review will be here soon, until then I might post some various stuff as I capture it.
Information on how the GTA V review will be done
DUE TO THE SHOOTINGS IN WASHINGTON DC I WILL NOT USE ANY VIOLENT SCREENS FOR GTA V TODAY
Usually when I review a game it is done before the game is even launched. This is due to the mere fact that the publishers are nice enough to send us copies of the games in advance of the release of a game. Unfortunately due to lack of a relationship with Rockstar Games and Rockstar North, I will not be getting the review for Grand Theft Auto V in early. In fact it won’t be done probably until next week or the week after.
So with that said, I will explain why it will so long until the review. I like getting to play the game through completely before I release a review. This is done to ensure the game gets a fair shake and to make sure no exploits pop up during the review process. For example, NHL 14 I reviewed last week and I ended up having an issue with the game freezing after the review and then I eventually found a work-around to it which was disabling the custom soundtrack. Had I spent an entire week on that game, I would have been able to spot the issue and reported it in the review. But since I found a work-around for the issue the scores and comments stand. Otherwise I would have had to amend the review with another score probably much lower.
Anyway back to GTA.
I am also going to do this in two parts. As some may know, this game will be released without an online component to the game to start. Which means I will have to review the offline experience only to start, which as you know I’m fine with. And then two weeks later Rockstar will release GTA Online which will be the online part of the game. So I am going to review this game in two separate pieces. One of offline and one for online. The Online review will probably be faster to do since it is expected to be a close representation of the offline game but with a custom character.
So as I said, depending on how quickly I get through the game the review will be up within a week or so. I am very excited to play this game and I expect that this will be the game of the year. Which is saying a lot because The Last of Us was such a great game, and Watch Dogs is coming out this year, and I am super excited for that game.
GTA V Reviews from around the Web
DUE TO THE SITUATION IN WASHINGTON D.C. I HAVE DECIDED NOT TO USE ANY ACTION SCREEN SHOTS FOR GTA V FOR THIS NEWS ARTICLE.
USA/English Reviews
International Reviews
Game Informer GTA V Online Info
Game Informer has released on it’s web site the article that will be featured in the October issue for GTA V Online Mode. It is a hands on piece of its impressions of GTA Online mode, and it’s a fairly long read. GTAV.net has a summery of the article, but you can also read the full story here.
Impressions? Complaints? Post them below. And remember GTA V is out on Tuesday.
ELECTROSPORTS 