Recent reviews by José Mengelez

Improving every update.

Duel mode really is the apex of 1v1 gaming. Surface simplicity gives way to incredible depth and a stratospheric skill ceiling. slowly mastering the intricacies of movement and strategy is a pulse pounding adrenaline trip and i just can't kick the addiction.

The influx of new players means people of every skill level can find an equal now instead of being constantly stepped on by pros and veterans. Every weapon is viable and has its own situational role. The health armor/stacks are a lot saner now so the champs are on even footing.

This game also seems to attract a more friendly, helpful and considerably less toxic playerbase which is incredibly refreshing.

Be warned however; free for alls and team deathmatches can be quite demanding on the cpu (especially with the excellent gore effects turned on) hopefully further optimiziation is on the horizon.

I'd held off on leaving a negative review due to the excellent moddable singleplayer, but now we're stuck with vanilla sp for the forseeable It's time to vent about the dreadful online experience.

From as early as a fortnight after release to present day (with a few very brief moments of respite after major updates) the online portion of this game has been absoloutely rife with cheaters to the point of unplayability. GTA online uses an easily exploitable peer to peer network model similar to the call of duty series where the players client is trusted for pretty much all data such as position, amount of health, weapon damage, vehicle speed... you get the idea. This gives those with the ability to inject nefarious code unprecedented control over other players such as the ability to freeze you in place, or spawn objects in your field of view that will cause your game to crash.

It also has an mmo-lite style progression system and a focus on grinding, with the idea that those willing to put in the most work will rise to the top and become crime bosses acting as anchorpoints for a lot of the freeroam sandbox gameplay (buying/selling shipments of various illegal products, pve encounters and inter organizational gang wars) while those newer to the game can tag along as muscle and earn enough to eventually set themselves up as a big boss, whether that be a sharply dressed CEO, a grimy biker gang president, a cut and shut stolen car dealer, an arms dealer or any combination of the above.

Unfortunately, the games currency is easily hacked and a combination of basic human nature (everyone wants to be the boss after all, and why specialize when you can have everything?) and take2's ludicrous ingame pricing of items and miserly pricing of 'shark cards' (a way to purchase digital currency for real world cash) have created a fertile black market for third parties selling tools to hack the game. Youtube has provided the marketing and the end result is its almost impossible to play the game as the developers originally intended on this platform.

The game's recent updates are designed around groups of players competing to buy and sell various types of cargo around the game world and theres a certain thrill in fending off a rival organization to make a sucessful sale. What's far more likely though is you'll be pulled from your vehicle and exploded remotely or teleported to an unkillable player and shot dead, losing your progress. At its worst, (usually immediately following the update of a well known mod menu) every 32 player session has a minimum of five cheaters running mod menus and the vast majority of them have a major chip on their shoulder (and features at their disposal to easily prevent you enjoying the game). This also has a negative impact on connectivity creating lag and frequent disconnects. Cheaters's ability to spawn in objects also effects performance as these will persist between sessions and can only be removed from the game world by restarting your client.

The laughable part is that all of this could have been easily preventable by investing a little more in the games network infrastructure before launch or at least made more difficult for the hackers by licensing a third party anticheat, but to save costs and increase revenue the publishers have allowed cheaters to run rampant and taken draconian measures against those seeking to provide an alternative.

If you are considering buying the game at this late stage in its life for the online portion alone please reconsider as its simply an excercise in frustration.

I'd be amazed if they could turn it around at this point.

Cant believe how much prettier and better optimized this is than reincarnation. The new map and vehicles are great and the AI opponents are far more believable, even using powerups and fighting amongst themselve.

not sure if its just having a stready framerate but the handling and physics seem much slicker now and I can drift all day :)

if you enjoyed the classic carma's or wonder what the love child of destruction derby and twisted metal would play like grab this quick.