GTA V's First-Person Mode is Pointless

Shifting the game's hype train into high gear, developer Rockstar has been hard at work filling in our news feeds as of late, touting everything from radio station teases , to brand-new trailers and even a recreation of the GTA III Banshee sportscar . Now, the studio behind the mammoth sandbox franchise is sitting down to discuss the game's unusually sourced voice w


"After many months of designing, testing, rewriting and re-testing, we settled on the four-player structure that you will experience in the game. It took a ton of work from our programmers and mission designers to make it work at the level we were happy wi


Players jumping to the Xbox One, PS4 and PC versions of Grand Theft Auto V will have a little more to do in-game than the last-gen versions, a bonus for anyone returning to Los Santos. The purpose of this new content, as Rockstar puts it, is to give returning players a way to "experience the game's massive world in new and exciting ways." Although, with the existence of GTA Online and the potential still contained within, new ways to play the game aren't that hard to achieve alre

Tweets about Hatred are much more skewed, and conversation about Gta 5 Secrets|Https://Gta5Play.Com/ V, much discussed in the video game press, seems to paint a two-sided issues. Defense of Target's decision as not censorship and a positive step toward equality were just as rampant, if not more so, than concerns over the kind of precedent their move set. Consider this, if it's not censorship for Target to pull the game, what if all retailers pulled the game? It's well within their rights, but it would achieve the exact same effect as a blatant censorship did. Thus, a de facto censorship - a universal lack of availability that's not necessarily enforced by law.

When both of these incidents took place, there was controversy. Debate ensued with two sides each offering up different points and demanding equal validity. But Sony has been met with almost universal admonishment after pulling The Interview. A quick search of The Interview mentions on Twitter reveals a starkly one-sided picture. A tweet by Judd Apatow (long-time associate of Rogen's) calling the move by Sony "disgraceful" was retweeted more than 5 thousand times in 11 hours.

The content of these games shouldn't matter. The greater principle at stake here is the idea that people should be free to express their ideas, a value clearly held dearly by movie-goers but not so much by the gaming community. Society has spoken about movies: we want any film, regardless of how controversial the subject matter, to be available to the public in an exercise of our right to free speech and ideal of free expression. The question remains when, if ever, will society feel the same way about video games?

The moments of awe that the first-person mode demonstrate (like the flying segments) are constantly overshadowed by an obstructive and pointless statement. As the fanmade mods have shown us, first-person GTA is a novelty, a fleeting distraction that you’ll use for five minutes, then realize that it was just better the old way. Re-releasing GTA V barely a year after release is already a questionable move, but using something so disposable and out of place as a selling point is the real issue at hand. And yes, it’s optional. I understand that, but why treat this as a game-changer? GTA V on PS4 and Xbox One will sell, likely very well, but not because of the first-person mode. GTA V’s first-person mode is a pointless addition that does more to shamelessly lure in FPS fans than deliver any substantial inclusions to what Grand Theft Auto is about.

Hatred saw the effects of this much more than GTA V. Being pulled from Steam Greenlight can be a death sentence to indie game developers, as Steam is essentially the only game in town for newcomers. Fortunately for them, Gabe Newell decided that this wasn't a good decision . Without extrapolating his reasoning, it's nice to see someone in the gaming industry care about whether a developer has an honest shot and releasing their creation, regardless of how tasteless the content may be.

Overall, The NPD Group explained that consumers spent $605.2 million on gaming products at retailers in January, marking a 4% decrease from the same time last year ($627.6 million in January 2015). Hardware sales also accounted for $157 million in January, marking a 15% decrease from $185.4 million in the same period last y

It baffles me as to why Rockstar would even consider a first-person mode for GTA V. Perhaps it was the success of open-world shooters like Far Cry 3 that inspired them to do this, which is understandable. However, Far Cry 3 is a shooter. It’s built as a shooter and the shooting is a huge part of the game’s appeal. Sure, there’s exploration, but the action is Far Cry’s appeal by far. Grand Theft Auto V, for all its gritty action and violence, is not a shooter. Its action comes from something less primal and more intelligent. If anything, this first-person shooter setup does more to pander to the FPS crowd than to thoughtfully expand on what Grand Theft Auto has always been about.