We’ve all been there before: you’re just grinding along in your crummy little job that pays next to nothing, having to lift heavy boxes or deal with rude and/or annoying customers, possibly with a boss that feels the need to micromanage every single aspect of the business, when all of a sudden, a thought comes to you. It’s not a clean thought, and it’s probably not one you should go through with. But it’s still there.


“I should go into crime,” you think to yourself as the housewife you’re ringing up talks loudly on her cell phone about something beyond mundane, “it pays twenty times better than this and takes half the time.”  And, while that may be true, the risk you take with that line of work just makes it infeasible, at least for me.


With Grand Theft Auto V, however, what is and isn’t feasible, and logic in general, does not matter or apply. If I need some money, I’ll just go stick up a mini-mart. If I die in the process, so be it! It’ll only cost me $5000 in medical bills. It’s like a playground where all of those bad thoughts can truly come out to play, and I couldn’t love it any more.


For those not in the know about the series, Grand Theft Auto is, at its heart, a video game where freedom is priority and the cops don’t really matter. The first installment of the series dropped in 1997; the series has only grown stronger since, especially with the latest one, Grand Theft Auto V.


Grand Theft Auto V takes place in Los Santos, a sarcastic parody of Los Angeles and adjacent areas.


Franklin is a small-time gang-banger for the Grove Street Families, the gang you lead as CJ in previous installment Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. He looking for a way out of the gang life, which he feels is getting him nowhere except maybe an early grave.


Michael, a retired bank robber who was able to make it out alive and with the ill-earned winnings, has began to hate his new sedentary lifestyle and yearns for the chaos of his old one.


Trevor, a certified psychopath, has semi-retired after a bank heist goes all kinds of wrong, leaving him as the only one who walks away from it. Confronted with a ghost from his past, he goes out looking for answers and revenge.

These three all link up fairly early in the game and begin to do what they do best, break the law for profit. Between selling guns to be smuggled into Mexico as Trevor, hijacking an 18-wheeler hauling millions of dollars in cars as Franklin, and working as an under-the-table mercenary for the in-game parody of the FBI as Michael. The game never feels dull or boring, with no real stagnant parts of the story at all. Everything moves fast, but with a methodical twist.


This can best be seen in the crown jewel of dirty deeds you can commit in this game: heist. Whether it be robbing a high-end jewelry store or a small town bank, pre-planning is a requirement if you want to succeed. You’ll need to select your crew members for each job based on their skill and the size of the cut of the loot they demand, as well as collect assets needed for the job. These things will make a huge difference in how each heist will go down. If you hire somebody who has next to no knowledge about computers as your hacker or picks too slow of a vehicle to use in a getaway, you will pay for it.


These activities are just a few of what you can do in Los Santos: Stock market manipulation, triathlons, races, kidnappings, robbing armored trucks, driving a taxi, working as a tow truck driver, running a business, and more are all included with the $60 game. All linked together by an addicting storyline that can end in one of three ways, depending on the choices the player makes towards the end of the game: horrible and heart wrenching, even more horrible and heart wrenching, or beautiful and heart warming.


The backdrop of all these activities is noteworthy as well. The town of Los Santos and adjacent Blaine County feels alive and moving, much more so than the cities in previous titles. Unlike in Grand Theft Auto IV, where the city felt foamed in at the last second, every minute driving in downtown Los Santos feels smooth and authentic, from the traffic jams to the high-speed chases you’ll see speed by you. Driving around in Blaine County feels just like how I’d imagine driving around in rural California would, from the people you meet to the wildlife you’ll encounter. There’s been a couple of times where I seriously had to stop for a second and just take it all in.


While this game certainly wasn’t without its glitches (losing a vehicle you sunk nearly half a million into when it was supposed to be safe is a horrible ordeal to endure), most of them have been fixed through downloadable patches by now, at least with the single player part of the game. The multiplayer part, which comes with many bugs, is still just as fun and even more hilarious, and a great way to kill time with friends. The only real complaint I have is the current lack of content in multiplayer mode, which is being fixed by a steady release of extra downloadable content. The first of these, the ‘Beach Bum Pack,’ is being released for free to all players.


This game is a perfect release from any bad thoughts or chaotic urges you may have that’ll leave you laughing at times and near tears at others. It may even teach you about the stock market, like it did me. 


Seriously though, don’t go into a life of crime because a video game made you think it’d work out for you in the end. The story in Grand Theft Auto V was scripted to come out that way, while in real life millions of variables come into play, with the slightest mistake landing you in prison for 25 to life or dead. Keep in mind this game’s 100 percent fiction and should be treated as such. Just enjoy the game.