The pile of shame is something that every gamer is faced with. Those mountains of unfinished experiences that are just begging to be completed but are constantly ignored for the latest and greatest release. Here at Player2 we decided to do something about it. We decided that these games deserved to be finished, no matter how long they had been members of the infamous pile. Welcome to our journey of completion. Welcome to The Shame Game.
The Shame Game
Title: Grand Theft Auto V
Released: September 2013
Reason for stopping: Distracted by other releases
Number of completion attempts: 3
Final completion date: September 2015
So this entry is more than a little embarrassing for me. Basically my confession is that up until recently I had never completed the story in a GTA game. Over the years I have spent hundreds of hours in the various locations of the GTA universe but I have never made it to the end. I was ok with that because frankly the stories these games told didn’t really appeal to me. It was the worlds and the freedom they offered that always attracted me to GTA so I was happy to spend my time cursing around and just enjoying my time causing chaos and completing side missions.
That changed with Grand Theft Auto V because for the first time the story had me interested. The 3 different characters in play kept the game fresh for its entire length so when I put Grand Theft Auto V down for the first time I swore to myself that one day I would get around to finishing it. My first playthrough saw me reach about the midway point of the game. I was loving every minute of it and was completely absorbed in the world that Rockstar had created however I found myself being distracted more and more by other games, both games for review and other new releases. It was becoming harder and harder to get back into the lives of Trevor, Michael and Franklin with every day that went by so eventually I put it aside to return to at some point in the future when I had some spare time.
Fast forward 12 months and Grand Theft Auto V was re-released on the current gen systems so I took this a sign that I was finally meant to finish the game. So I restarted and once again found myself in love with this wonderfully crafted game. Even though I was running over previously completed territory I was still having a blast and that is a huge credit to the developers. However time constraints once again began to eat at my playtime and GTA took a backseat again.
Thankfully though about a month ago I took ill and was off work for three days. This time was a godsend because I placed Grand Theft Auto V into my Xbox One and never looked back, ploughing through the remaining missions and finally taking the game off my pile of shame. Boy am I glad I dedicated some solid time to it because as the game moved on the story ramped up to the point that I could no longer put it aside. I had to finish it and find out what happened to this unlikely trio of reprobates. Thankfully that after such an amazing build up I found the end of their tale an exciting and satisfying conclusion to my many hours of playtime.
This however has led to some feelings of regret, sure I was finally finished but I really didn’t want it to end. There was something comforting about having Grand Theft Auto V in my back pocket knowing that I could always play through some more missions if I need a break from whatever it was I was reviewing at the time. But now with the story complete and a good 80% of side activities finished I don’t have that safety net to fall back on which is sad. Unfortunatly the multiplayer side of things didn’t really grab me so unless I want to start the game again (which I may very well do in the future) I have no real reason to come back. I guess that when it comes down to it my biggest complaint about Grand Theft Auto V is that it finally had to end and that is a complaint that any developer would love to have made about their game. Well done Rockstar, well done.
Matt Hewson
