The greatly anticipated, “Grand Theft Auto V” video game hit the shelves on September 17th, 2013 and was released only for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This was a heavy disappointment for many who were looking forward to their purchase of the next-generation consoles. “The next generation consoles just aren’t going to be released close enough to the release date that ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ originally planned for us to make it compatible with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox 1” said director Dan Houser.

With “Grand Theft Auto V” costing a whopping $265 million U.S dollars to produce, that makes “Grand Theft Auto V” the most expensive video game ever made. Although this sounds expensive, “Grand Theft Auto V” brought in an even more impressing amount, collecting $800 million dollars on opening day alone and $1 billion if the first three days. This made it the fastest selling entertainment product in history.

Although the single player portion of the game was released first, the online multi-player wasn’t released until October 1st. This is because “Grand Theft Auto V” did not have enough Internet / Wi-Fi power to support the massive servers that had to account for nearly 880,000 players who planned to play online with their friends or by themselves. This turned out to be more of a plus for Rockstar, as it made the online portion more exciting for people that had to wait before they got to get to the meat of the new game.

After the online servers became active, players got to start robbing stores with their friends or do survival missions where you have to fight off 20 waves of enemies that range from meth-abusing baddies, gangsters, or your not-so-neighborly-friendly Los Santos Police Department. If you do survive the 20 rounds and eliminate the targets instructed for you to take out, you can take your $20,000 and go buy some new upgrades for your car. You can also save to do something more meaningful with your money like buy ammo, a house, a garage, or use some of it to place bounties on other players that you want dead for any specific reason. There’s also much more than just Survival missions you can do. You can also risk your life and try to raid the military base known as Fort Zancudo for a fighter jet that resembles an F-16, an attack helicopter, a C-130 cargo plane, or maybe try to even get a Tank that is allegedly modeled after the M1A2 Abrams battle tank and cause some chaos within the walls of the military base.

In the single-player portion of the game, things get a little bit more eventful. As now you have almost total control of all three characters. First we have Michael, a rich, stressed out family man with a wife, and two kids and is in Witness Protection after a bank heist went wrong in the late 90 with him and his crew of three. He was wounded and one of his friends killed. When he was taken in for interrogation, he ratted out Trevor (who we’ll get to later) and put into the Witness Protection Program. He kept his share of money and bought his large house. Tracey and Jimmy (his kids) are spoiled and his wife Amanda is a little bit more out-of-control and cheats on Michael constantly throughout the storyline. Next, we have Franklin, who repossesses cars for a living when we first meet him. He meets Michel through this job for reasons you will have to discover yourself. He’s more stereotypical than the other three which is probably why he was an instant favorite among “Grand Theft Auto V” enthusiasts. Lastly, we have Trevor. Trevor is the most mysterious character as we find out where he was raised through one of the side missions; and we only meet his mom once after the end of the main storyline. He was part of the group in the beginning when he and Michael were robbing a bank. The bank robbery was the first mission of the game and also doubled as a tutorial. Trevor is downright crazy and does outrageous things in his free time. When he is presented with a problem, his go-to solution usually involves either kidnap or murder. Despite all of this, he is definitely more comical than the other two playable characters when he meets a new character during one of the missions, although, his sense of humor is pretty cruel.

Altogether, this game was absolutely phenomenal. The map is massive, the storyline is complex, and the dialogue said by each character absolutely matches with the personality of the given character. The Rockstar development team really did create a marvelous game and will definitely be played for years to come by anyone who has either played the franchise from its early days to even those who find themselves with this as their first “Grand Theft Auto”. With its high ratings from every video game magazine out there, if you love video games and like to have a good laugh every once in a while at a cruel joke, this is surely the game for you.