Bank heists, car robberies, psychopaths, narcissistic celebrities, corrupt federal agents, hipsters, and self righteous billionaires, this and much more is included in perhaps the biggest video game release of the year Grand Theft Auto V.

Grand Theft Auto V revolves around today’s society and modern concepts such as celebrities and paparazzi, marriage struggles, corruption in government agencies, and everything else that is wrong in our society. Grand Theft Auto V is made by Rockstar and is available for PS3 and Xbox 360, but do not be discouraged those who play on PC, for it has been announced that they are working on a PC version of this game coming as early as spring of 2014.

Your story is played in “Los Santos” a city based on Los Angeles. Everything that is great about LA and Hollywood such as celebrities, sports cars, rivaling gangs, poor neighborhoods, retired movie actors and crazed fans, “Vinewood”.

You get to play as 3 different main characters – Michael de Santa, Trevor Phillips, and Franklin Clinton. Michael, a retired bank robber with two ungrateful children and an unfaithful wife, is going through a midlife crisis.  He is depressed and trying to get his life together, hate every minute of his current life. Trevor a hillbilly, meth cook, drug lord, CEO, Canadian, psychopath is tied to Michael’s past.  Trevor is a really scary person with chronic anger issues and tons of issues that you’d wish you never knew as you play him throughout the game.  He is also one of the greatest characters in all of GTA history. Franklin is a gangster who is tired of the “Thug Life” and feels like he earns very little income in the gang so he leaves the “hood” and joins Michael as he comes out of retirement as a professional robber.

Throughout the game you will do missions with the group and individually and there are a variety of missions making the game told from three perspectives. The only issue is that there is no one main objective, like in GTA IV, where the point of the game was rising to the top and going on a manhunt. The story seems a bit more scattered but it makes up for it for its amazing gameplay.

There are 69 main missions with various side missions, as I have invested around 60 hours into this game I would say that it took me 30-40 hours to finish the main campaign. The story strings along smoothly allowing for maximum enjoyment. Each of the main characters has a special ability you can use – Michael has his slow-mo shooting, Franklin can slow down time while in a vehicle allowing for cleaner turns and be able to do sharp turns while keeping your initial velocity and Trevor has a rage mode where his damage increases as well as the damage taken is reduced. All of these abilities have an application in various missions and you will find yourself relying on them more as the story progresses and the mission’s difficulty increases.

The most memorable moments in the game are most likely the heists. The heists just give the player an amazing experience as he/she is allowed to choose the members for the heist as well as the approach you take. Your income is determined according to how well you do in the mission, as well as the crew you hire; the better your crew, the higher their cut.

You gain various amounts of money and with this money you can spend it as you please whether it’s buying a new car, getting some tattoos, getting a new wardrobe, investing it in stocks in hopes of getting more money, buying a garage, buying more property, or perhaps even just making it rain at a gentlemen’s club.

One of the best things about the game is that there is always something to do and some of those activities you can do with friends. You can call someone and go and play darts or tennis or golf.  I enjoy this much better than someone calling you and pestering you to go bowling with them, like Roman in GTA IV. You can also do several things through your smart phone such as buying a car, boat, bicycle, helicopter, or plane. You can also buy stocks, visit random websites or simply update your social media page which in the game is called “Life Invader.”

You are allowed to switch between all 3 characters at any point of the game, except during key points of the campaign. Sometimes when you switch between characters they might already be in an active car chase, drunk, or perhaps passed out on train tracks when a train is coming. This is truly amazing since when you are not playing one character, an AI takes over them and continues what they would be doing.

GTA V has once again revolutionized the way games are played everything just works smoothly in the game and that’s a hard task in a sandbox game like GTA with three main characters. Not only that but the map is huge and best of all no loading times. One thing that people were fearful of is that it would be the same thing as other GTA games; this was proven wrong as it was unique in various aspects while still having an over all GTA type of game play they stuck to the core and redesigned the outside. I think this game was much better than the last one and allowed for more emotional connectivity to the game rather than being an audience just playing the game.

The graphics and cinematics in this game are amazing, considering that it is running on seven year old hardware. The scenery is amazing when you drive to your missions, the beaches look amazing, and the mountains look just as great, the world looks very realistic almost as if you were playing a video of a car driving down Los Angeles into the sunset. In the beginning there is a long loading time when you first start the game, but after that there isn’t anymore loading screens the whole world is already loaded and running with hardly any lag plus all the missions are ready and will activate when you get close. In fact some of the transitions into the missions are quite smooth, like going to your next objective and the character is ready and the camera will zoom into the character beginning the cut scene. Not to mention that the characters have very realistic faces as well as all the NPC’s(Non-Playable Characters) making this game beautiful.

I am still working on putting some more game play on GTA online, so I will write about it in a separate review but for now I do want to note that those who played during anytime of October and installed the 1.04 patch will be receiving 500K in game money, which is a lot!

GTA V is overall one of the best, if not the best, release of this year. I would rate is overall a 10/10 because once again Rockstar has given us a revolutionary game that will make so in love with the story and at times be amazed by the things you’re doing and at times you will stay completely shocked and awe of the insane and twisted things Trevor is capable of, but GTA V game play is some of the most fun I have had in a while even more than Saints Row. I highly recommend this game as it is my favorite game of the year my only complain is that they should include a disclaimer saying that you are not only given up your money to Rockstar but also your time, girlfriend, and soul.