The Justifying Price Tag of GTA V

Look at this trailer. Seriously, look at it.

This is how $60 games should look and play like.

Is the game going to be good? I have no idea. Although Vice City remains one of the greatest games I have ever played and San Andreas was a true gem in itself, GTA IV left me desiring a bit more.

But the fact of the matter is they are definitely providing enough stuff to justify the $60, which is something most video games just don't do nowadays. You can hate Rockstar all you want, but they will shell out so much detail and so much material in their games you can't laud them on lack of effort. You simply can't.



This review was from ions ago and San Andreas looks like a game that is lengthier than most of the games we see today. Your shooters are becoming shorter and shorter. Your Mario games have yet to really deliver on the gameplay hours. And let's not get even started with Zelda and your real-time action games with bazillions of hours of cutscenes. Grand Theft Auto V needs to become a success so it can usher in more games with more meat.

And this is why older franchises like Zelda, Mario, Sonic, Star Fox, Mega Man, and then your one-trick-pony genre games like your racers, and your fighting games have dropped a bit in terms of sales and success. They don't have the variety to justify the rising costs required to continue gaming. The GTA V trailer gives you multiple storylines with clearly multiple potential paths to take, three massive overworlds, the ability to play sports, drive like you are playing a racer, shoot around like its a shooter, and venture around so it feels like an urban Fable game.

We need to see more variety from more games. I want to see more variety from games. How about adding a little action and more RPG elements to Zelda? How about adding some more chores, mini-games, side quests, and gambling to Pokemon? And (I will get slack for this) adding a little more space and scope and ability to improvise to Metal Gear and to a lesser extent the Assassin's Creed games? How about adding some storylines to the racing games? The one genre evolving in this direction are the sports games, especially (especially, especially) the NBA 2K games. But more needs to be done. Call of Duty, I am definitely looking in your direction.

The system that wins this generation will be the one with the most heavily-varied games. One-Trick Pony games may have worked last gen but with the rise of small games on Facebook and tablets I don't see this trend repeating itself. So get to work you three.

$60 is a lot of money. And not too many games deserve to be priced this high. But Grand Theft Auto V? Consider me excited and willing to fork over this money in a heartbeat.