Troubling moments? Sex isn't really the issue. There are functioning strip clubs where you can buy lap dances and try to convince girls to take you home, although there's no Hot Coffee mini-game and the dances are silly rather than especially sordid. There are also a couple of graphic representations of sex in the game, but nothing worse than you would see in a movie or TV show.
Where GTA5 goes a little overboard is in a mission around a third of the way through the game, where it takes violence in the series to a new and unpleasant extreme. It's not a great moment for the game, which can't pull it off without it feeling gratuitous. I've gone into my thoughts about it separately in another feature, which naturally carries a spoiler warning: Is the most disturbing scene in GTA5 justified?
Short answer: not really. Perhaps these are obvious targets and perhaps GTA has little to add to the discussion, but the way the writers and designers crystallise what's absurd about them is still rare and welcome in a mainstream video game, and it feeds into what I love most about GTA: cruising around, glorying in the details and watching and listening as the game holds mirrors up to things we see every day - and then breaks them over someone's head.
There's an intoxicating richness to that experience when you first arrive in Los Santos that I've missed in the five long years since GTA4, and the game bites just as sharply after 30 hours.
The main thoroughfare through the game, though, is Rockstar's latest narrative hike up the criminal mountain, except this time it's delivered with a twist: GTA5 has not one but three main characters, each with his own history and goals.
Michael's a retired bank robber, bored out of his mind in a Vinewood mansion where his wife flirts with the tennis coach and the kids play video games and hang out with sleazebags.
Franklin's more sympathetic - a young black man with a gangster-wannabe best friend and an appetite to learn. Trevor, who we meet later, is a certifiable bad guy who kills people for no reason and is tougher to like. Things start off interesting as Rockstar plays it fairly straight, dragging Michael out of retirement with wit and a few good set-pieces as Franklin falls into step alongside him, before they plan a heist together and Trevor comes onto the scene.
Apart from a few story-specific periods, you can switch between the three of them at any time by picking someone else on the character wheel. The camera zooms out into the sky, pans to their location and zooms in to find them - you might catch Michael cycling through the hills or Trevor waking up half-naked under a rock - in a process that only takes a few seconds. If they're in the same location then the transition is instant.
Cars have a habit of self-righting now, too, so you spend less time cursing while upside down. The best thing about their adventures together, which span 69 story missions, is that it breathes new life into Rockstar's mission templates. You still spend a lot of the game driving around having conversations, crouching behind walls, hunting down red blips on your mini-map and watching people swear at each other creatively in cut-scenes, but in the heat of battle you have more tactical options, and Rockstar has more directorial ones.
A high-speed chase on a freeway can see Michael firing out his window while Franklin climbs aboard a stolen yacht on a trailer, for instance, or Michael can shoot out a plane's engine with a high-powered rifle so Trevor can chase it on a dirt bike until it crashes spectacularly in the desert. Even simple gunfights are elevated by the ability to switch from Trevor in cover here to Michael on overwatch there to Franklin sneaking around on the flank.
There are different approaches and outcomes throughout, and far fewer standard shooting galleries. Each character has a special ability, too - Franklin can briefly slow down time while driving, for instance. The high points are the heists, where the gang's tech wizard friend Lester puts together a plan, you choose the approach and backup personnel, and then the trio spread out and collect the materials needed to pull it off before everyone plays a part in the score.
It's all very scripted and stage-managed - go buy three boiler suits, steal a fire engine, modify some cars and stash them under a bridge - but each heist has a blockbuster set-piece feel to it, and when they go to plan and you walk away with a thick stack of cash to spend on Los Santos' many expensive distractions, you feel like you're living the life.
In a way, though, your criminal success is also the downside to GTA5's lengthy story, which loses its way after an interesting start.
Michael and Franklin could both carry interesting games on their shoulders - Michael's going through a midlife crisis, depressed because he can't control his family after giving them everything, while Franklin's torn between his roots and a desire for more. When Trevor arrives, though, the game reverts to a standard crime story - can't escape my past, enemies everywhere, one last job, etc - and more interesting themes are abandoned in favour of endless cut-scenes of roaring arguments.
Customs and exercise 6 There's a lot more scope for customisation of weapons and cars in GTA5. AmmuNation has a huge range of guns and add-ons for them - I tended to whack a silencer and a scope on anything I could and grew very fond of jerry cans and sticky bombs. Los Santos Customs respray shops also let you upgrade vehicles with more than just paint jobs - bulletproof tyres and chrome plating work very nicely on that superfast getaway car.
Each character also steadily improves their physical attributes over the course of the game, including stamina, strength and damage dealt. Jack Sparrow's Pirates of the Caribbean adventure fares best, simply because the chance to steer, upgrade and customise your own ship gives it a unique feel. The naval combat is a bit sloppy but is rousingly presented and offers a good example of how the Infinity concept could thrive when paired with the right inspiration.
The Incredibles world is also appropriate, offering a bite-sized open-world superhero playground, but repetition quickly sets in as you run, jump and glide around the same city blocks performing simple fetch quests and battling the endlessly respawning Omnidroids and their frustrating knockback attacks. Monsters University is the real let-down of the trio, clearly only included in the starter pack because the movie is still in cinemas, but offering no clear gameplay point of difference.
For a game concept built around characters, there's precious little character on display 2 The fact that there's a launch playset for this year's blockbuster flop The Lone Ranger rather than any number of classic Disney characters rather betrays Infinity's covert purpose as a marketing platform.
What's missing is the magic. All three games feel rote and oddly sterile, with none of the wit or verve you'd expect from their movie counterparts. Characters regurgitate the same handful of quips and there's little environmental detail to add life to the worlds as you jog along, following the green arrow that directs you to everything you need to do. For a game concept built around characters, there's precious little character on display in these first three examples.
Nor do the playsets allow kids to release that imagination Disney is so fond of invoking. All three supply whimsically charming and pleasingly familiar self-contained micro-worlds to explore, much as Disney's theme parks do - but once in the playsets, characters can't crossover, so you can't have Jack Sparrow cleaning up Metro City or Sulley as the captain of a pirate ship. Segregation comes as standard, and it immediately limits the potential of both the game and the toys.
It also means that the "starter pack" is a non-starter as far as co-op play goes. There's a second slot on the toy portal that allows another player to jump in, but since you only get one character for each world, it's actually impossible to have a two-player game - in the playsets at least - unless you also buy the Sidekick pack which comes with Elastigirl, Barbossa and Mike.
This problem feeds through into the worlds themselves, with lots of locked chests and bonus challenges that require a specific character to access. Of course, you can't buy all the characters for a set in one go.
Buzz and Jessie from Toy Story are in one pack, Woody in another. It's here that parents will really feel the pinch. If you want to create a crossover mash-up, you need to venture into the game's second main element, the Toy Box.
It's here that you're free to remake the world as you want, grabbing, moving and placing the scenery with a magic wand, and importing new elements, gadgets and characters from your expanding inventory of stuff.
This stuff is accumulated by gathering little vending machine capsules within the playsets, but mostly by taking spins on the Infinity vault. This kid-friendly one-armed bandit spits out one random building element for every spin of the wheel earned through gameplay. It's a mechanic that will be familiar to kids weaned on blind-buying, whether in the form of collectable card games or sticker albums, but it means that the long-term potential of the Toy Box is forever reliant on a roll of the dice.
As a world editor, the Toy Box is rather nicely designed - putting a lot of power in the hands of children and only occasionally getting bogged down in complexities. Contraptions and switches are easy to link together to create moving parts, but making actual games will likely be beyond most young players.
The patience required to grind out the parts needed, then to place everything just right, is a big ask. That the best examples that the game itself offers are fairly ropey kart racers and crude platform games, or bland worlds filled with simplistic grind-rail rollercoasters, doesn't inspire much confidence for Infinity's future as a robust creative tool. Where Infinity really falls down is in how poorly it ties all its disparate pieces together. The game is a tangle of menus and incompatible game modes.
Objects bought in the Toy Store inside a playset aren't the same as objects won from the Infinity Vault, meaning kids will be easily confused as to what they've unlocked for use and where. Some tools remain in the playset, others can be brought out but with limited use. A Monsters University toilet roll gun drapes trees in loo roll inside its own playset, for example, but they only bounce off pointlessly when taken into the Toy Box.
Anywhere that a little charm or delight could be injected into the experience, Infinity too often fails to deliver. Structurally, Infinity can be a bewildering maze, as well.
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