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The Good: Car Customization
I would have very much enjoyed creating some unique vehicles to park at my safe houses in GTA4 and actually make my save spots feel useful. I did like that there were rarer, modified versions of certain cars occasionally driving around (the 'performance' versions of the Feroci, Intruder, and Presidente, to name a few), but how often did you come across them? In GTAV we are heading back to Los Santos and the surrounding etceteras, where the people are tan and state law requires 100-spoke gold wheels on every car over ten years old. The custom car shops in San Andreas allowed you to change the exhaust, wheels, and paint, add hood scoops and spoilers, and even hydraulics to a variety of vehicles. If Transfender is still in business you should expect to see at least all of these options from eight years ago, if not more (hello, tinted windows?). I will be shocked if car customization isn't in GTAV as this has to be one of the most requested features since 2004. What good is a drive-by if you aren't rolling on 22's? At an absolute minimum I would want to see a color palette when visiting the Pay N Spray. It's rather irritating to pull a Sabre GT in and out of the garage fifteen times before it gives me the base/stripe color combo I desire.The Bad: Money
Vice City had asset properties, and San Andreas more safe houses than ticks on a monkey's ass, all of which you could spend your hard-earned virtual cash on. GTA4 had...weapons and taxi rides. I don't know about you, but my Niko is a millionaire with nothing to show for it but a crappy apartment. What's the point in rewarding us with money when there's nothing to spend it on? We may as well win expired coupons for killing that gang member and stealing his dope. Reintroducing car modifications is a great way for the player to start spending money. Reward yourself for shooting down that police helicopter by painting a Trashmaster pink and throwing a nitrous bottle in the back. Let us buy a landing strip (another thing San Andreas did right) and an airplane to go with it. In similar fashion, you could buy a safe house by the water and save boats at your dock. Or even buy extra parking spaces or a garage to save all of those bitchin' cars you just customized.Honorable Mention: Hidden Packages. In order to 'collect' the pigeons in GTA4, you had to kill them, which more often than not gave you a wanted star and a nasty phone call from PETA. I think I only bothered with four or five before saying fuck it. Go back to the old ways and use bricks of cocaine. Maybe give the packages more meaning - the more you collect, the more leverage you have in brokering a drug deal which could be a part of a mission later in the game.
The Ugly: Traffic Spawning
The mechanic for spawning NPC traffic has been a straight-up catastrophe since GTA3 (not a typo). It seems that NPC traffic is generated based on what the player is driving, and not what the rest of the pedestrians are, or even depending on the area of the city. It took me forever to find a Super Diamond driving around in the Ballad of Gay Tony, and once I jacked it, I drove through a shitbox part of town and saw six more parked on the street. Further, if you exit your vehicle, traffic seems to vanish. Whatever is within the draw distance at that time is all you've got to work with, and after that, vehicles stop spawning almost completely. If I want to leave my car and get in position to JFK some fool in a convertible, by the time I climb the ladder there are no more cars on the road. What. The. Balls. And since it appears we will be able to pilot airplanes in GTAV, spawn some real (read: explodable) NPC-driven planes in the sky to compose air traffic, instead of the typical solid, indestructible dummies. I know I'm not the only person who would chase and then shoot down a civilian plane while doing a barrel roll in a Hydra.
), but be able to spend your hard earned GTA dollars on girls dancing (maybe the more you pay the more they strip, or do a more seductive dance). Be able to buy drinks at the bar. Purchase a lap dance, where you can pick a girl and or song (which you can kinda already do). Maybe one the side missions could be to collect strippers panties, sounds about par for GTA's nastiness.
