In my opinion...
- You're supposed to enjoy the heavily scripted curated gameplay. This is a AAA IP which made Rockstar tons of money. For GTA5 development, they spent even more $$$ on top-tier writers, did storyboarding, and talented voice actors performing throughout the plot.
- You're SUPPOSED to enjoy the game's major selling point which is a highly polished and curated single-player experience which GTA5 offers in the age of multiplayer games such as COD and Fortnite.
- You're supposed to soak in the highly detailed city which was ground breaking and state of the art at its time (and still looks great today).
- Go bowling, go buy some clothes and pimp out your character, go to a strip club, how about exploring that beautiful mountains? Go skydiving, go hit the pier and play games.
- This was state of the art and industry leading of the sandbox games - the GTA series. Whatever other games that are similar are actually derivatives of GTA.
- Also, it's not always heavily scripted. You can do whatever you want - go steal a bicycle or helicopter and infiltrate the military base right from start. That's the beauty of a sandbox open-world game which GTA series invented.
I am just not sure what you're precisely complaining about. GTA5
is open world (again they are the industry leader in sandbox). You can do whatever you want. Also you're supposed to enjoy the scripted experience which the writers, actors, mo-cap, director of photog all spent blood & tears making it.
i've been playing it quite a lot more and i have some thoughts.
1. i started enjoying it from the mission where i need to steal the bug spray van. I thought it was clever to show you that the security cars get to go in the secure zone, and let me figure that out by myself.
2. i hate flying. Maybe if i had a controller, but with WASD and on a tenkeyless, flying reaaally doesnt work.
3. i am generally speaking not too keen on the switching characters whole thingamabob.
4. the UI in general isn't great. It took me forever to learn how to set a waypoints, and still have trouble figuring out where a mission start point is.
5. the sub mission was horrid.
6. shooting seems overpowered.
I mean .. GTA has always been a game where you carry every weapon AND a rocket launcher, but the assault rifles with scopes and silencers that stealth-kill everything are a bit OP, when you aim with a mouse.
7. driving is fun, but i have to say that the story game is always always throwing me out of the decent car i got and into a piece of junk.
8. i've only gotten 3 stars of heat until now, but getting away from the cops seems waaaaay too easy. Just hide where they dont see you, that's it. And wait.
9. the characters aren't exactly likeable.
Ok so, this may be debatable as someone else may be looking *exactly* for what these characters are - a bunch of scumbags. Franklin seems ok, up to a point.
10. heavy scripting during missions leaves me with more challenge in finding out what controls to press, that to fight the game. I had to google how to beat the Yoga mission, lol.
I gotta say that some things are spectacular. The amount of detail in design is staggering, if you rush to a mission checkpoint where a character voiceover dialogue is still going on, and they get out of the car too soon, their mouth will be moving to voice the dialogue. There's audio feedback from the tarmac on the side of the road, through the wheels.
Traffic is excellent. Visually, the game is stunning, however i think this is a game best enjoyed hotseat style on a large TV and controller, because with all the driving, it's easy to get tunnel vision and not actually pay attention to the surroundings.
The city design is ... again, debatable. I hate the overpasses and would have much preferred a more straightforward street design.
I really hope that further down the road we get to some good ol' GTA mission styling. I'm ok with the occasional "hey, drive this weird or awkward vehicle in this unusual fashion" mission, but the real meat of the game is "kill X anyway that you want, he's over there" and i get to plan the attack, decide what to use, and cope with the shitstorm that i have caused.