Hard to put everything I dislike about GTA5 in a concise way. I wouldn't say it's bad by any means but it feels rushed and dumbed down in a lot of ways.

The driving is one of the bigger issues. People will argue it's not meant to be a driving sim, but why not? Driving is probably what you'll be doing at least 60% of the time. GTA4's driving wasn't perfect but I felt it was far better. It's obvious that the physics are cut down and this effects a lot of other things like ragdolling being all but entirely replaced by preset animations. It's no longer fun to mow pedestrians down or jump out of your car to see how random the outcome could be. Stuff like racing is boring because it really just comes down to who has the fastest car, rather than any skill with speed management or drifting.

They've gone in the entirely opposite direction with flying for who knows why, adding this annoying wind resistance to simulate any sense of challenge. Helicopters wobble like crazy without any input. Once again I prefer 4's flying, having had many hours of fun having heli battles online with friends. Cutting off other heli tails with the blades doesn't even seem possible with 5's watered down physics engine.

The story started out ok but seemed to really just turn into a hollywood action flick. San Andreas and 4 didn't have amazing stories but I felt they were a bit more genuine and had better side characters and villains. The bad guys in 5 are all incredibly bland. As much as Trevor's my favorite of the three playable characters, it's believable that he was probably meant to be the villain before the idea for more than one protagonist came about. Michael would have been the hero, and Franklin is almost entirely useless and way underdeveloped, so he was most likely written last. Of course it's hard to discuss without spoiling too much.

As far as gameplay goes, 3 playable characters really didn't add a lot. Was stupid to believe it then but I think it came as a surprise to a lot of people that the transitions between characters just put them into preset scripted events that would eventually become repetitive. Adding more clothes and hair styles and customization was good but felt pointless when characters would change into whatever they wanted when I was busy playing as someone else. As far as missions go, there just aren't a lot of opportunities to switch, negating any idea of variation. It actually feels too restrictive at times. Being scripted is a huge problem for 5 in general.

Cops no longer actually roam the streets, whether by car or by foot. Occasionally you'll see some chasing criminals but you'll be getting deja vu before too long; these scenarios are more scripted than in past games. They'll all happen in the same places, at the same times, and this applies to more than just cop chases. Other seemingly random events will feel like a bore once you start to see them happening in exactly the same way over and over again. It makes the world feel a lot less lively when almost nothing is dynamic.

The online is up there with the driving for me. Nevermind the most horrible launch I've experienced - things like bigger garages, buying houses and apartments, and a ton of other features that were promised and should have been in the main game have only made it into online. The rewards for the boring and overly simplistic missions were already pretty low amounts of cash and xp, but Rockstar decided to cut them down even further in an attempt to get people to buy their cash cards. The whole "bad player" thing is absolute bullshit; having to blow up an excessive amount of vehicles or kill an excessive amount of players is a null point in its defense because it should not warrant any punishment at all in the first place. Going out of your way to avoid any and all violence goes against the nature of the series, but I guess I should know better when they spent time and money developing a yoga mini-game.