Grand Theft Auto V Talk.

[RUkered]

23 hours ago, Robert C said:

Golfriend?  Is that one of those things that makes the ba-Ding sound?

I'm so terrible about that, I was ba-dinging in the middle of a stunt race the other day. Still managed to come in third because it seems there's always a gigantic pile-up within the first 20 seconds for some reason. I Days of Thunder my ass right on through. 

22 hours ago, jstout said:

IT ba-dings every time he takes a shot.

I'm still pissed I missed you when you were in town, RUkered. I fucking went to a friend's party and it had to be the worst party ever to exist. I would've had more fun with you and the mayor in 15 seconds than I did the whole 2 1/2 hours I was at the party. I wanted to go to see my friend, who I hadn't talked to in months, and I said about three words to him. He did give me some great little figures of John Morrison, John Cena, Seamus and somebody from his mom's thrift store, so that helped. He gave me the Undertaker's casket, but no Undertaker. I'm still trying to find a good use for that.

My other buddy got a Conway Twitty eight-track, so he got the better end of that deal, for sure. I got the privilege of catsitting for him the next weekend. Dalm, that was a bad party.

I hate that I missed you too. If it makes you feel any better, you only missed the usual - drunk covers of Conway Twitty's "That's My Job" and flaming brush fires.

[jstout]

Jesus, that last time, I couldn't quit thinking "that drunk fucker's falling in that fire. That drunk fucker's falling in that fire." I felt like a mother watching a toddler get too close to falling in the pool.

[RUkered]

"This fire sucks."

*drags gasoline can from garage*

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

"Hey man....didn't you used to have eyebrows?"

 

In GTA news, to sort of piggyback off of J.T.'s comment about the game just hitting on all cylinders sometimes...last night I hopped into freemode for a little while before signing off. It spawned me up near Trevor's airfield and I called in my Entity just because I haven't driven it in a long time.

What pops up but Challenge: Drive the farthest distance without crashing.

I glanced over at the runway and chuckled at the damn near cheating I was about to do, then easily beat the next closest player by about 10,000 ft. I don't know if it was the guy in second place or not, but I kept hearing WHAT THE FUCK????? 

[jstout]

I do that constantly. I see the no crashes thing is about to start, so I head to the airport. As the mayor would say, "fuck 'em."

[J.T.]

Lamar Down is down! 

Headshots? Check.

Kill at least one enemy with each character? Check.

Shooting accuracy of 80% or more?  Well.. um.. er... Hey, at least it was in the low seventies.

Tanisha's little rant at Franklin's crib used to piss me off, but I think I understand where she's coming from.  You can still care about the people that used to be in your life and still be wise enough to realize that sometimes you really can't go back home. 

Franklin's a good bro, but his idea of self-improvement is to become a better grade of criminal and Tanisha would prefer a life where her husband has a low percentage of winding up murdered.... and then have his killers come after her..... or be arrested by the cops for conspiracy to commit a crime..  Tanisha's Bleeter and Lifeinvader posts are pretty shallow and materialistic, but at least she's intent on moving her life forward in a positive direction and she's very appreciative.

Steve Haines and Dave Norton very much want Franklin to kill Trevor so the obvious endgame option is for Franklin, Trevor, and Michael to double cross these assholes at the first opportunity.. I am going to enjoy putting those two Tenpennys in the ground.

I remember thinking that Martin Madrazo would ultimately be the BBEG of GTA5, but he was the Mikhael Faustin of this game, although Madrazo suffers a much better fate.

[Neil Koch]

I've been playing single player also since I never beat it on PS4.  The mission where you have to jump a Sanchez onto a train can eat a bag of dicks.  Seriously thought using the skip option on that one.

[AxB]

You know if you want a gold in a mission, you can do that one mission over and over again, meeting one objective each time? You don't have to get one perfect run. Some of those would be next to impossible, like chasing Lazlow at a constant close distance without unhooking the trailer and that.

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, AxB said:

You know if you want a gold in a mission, you can do that one mission over and over again, meeting one objective each time? You don't have to get one perfect run. Some of those would be next to impossible, like chasing Lazlow at a constant close distance without unhooking the trailer and that.

The achievement for 70 Gold Medals is spread across Missions and Strangers & Freaks encounters so it is not difficult to unlock.  I got it a while ago.

The S&F Gold criteria have a pretty low bar so you can let some of those story missions hang at Silver so long as you can consistently get Gold medals with your S&E stuff and make up the difference in the story missions. 

I have yet to get less than Gold for any S&E side mission and I can usually get it done in one attempt.

[AxB]

I think I'm the only person on the PS side who actually went and got the Platinum, last September. Don't know if anyone on the XBox side bothered with it.

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, Neil Koch said:

I've been playing single player also since I never beat it on PS4.  The mission where you have to jump a Sanchez onto a train can eat a bag of dicks.  Seriously thought using the skip option on that one.

Yeah, that is all about timing and you can still fuck up the mission if you are shooting for the Reach Top Speed criteria and mess around and accidentally drive off of the train while you are punching the gas.

[Black Angel]

Anybody do those bullshit(I think they're bs because I suck at them)CEO missions?

[jstout]

I quit those days after spending a bunch of money to do them. They suck in a full room. Wait to see if the servers inevitably screw up and put you in a public room either by yourself or with a few people in it. Then see if you can't arrange a truce between folks in town so you can all do CEO work.

I hate the whole "fetch" aspect of the crates. I really like the two-person ATM hacking game. You hardly ever see anyone doing any of this anymore. There's a VIP game involving hacking and helicopters that's fun. 

Did everyone see the supposed next update content - a Benny's Custom shop, kinda, for motorcycles? I assume there'll be races and etc., but more chances to spend money on more crap. I admire them for figuring out how to make more money off this deal with each update. And they still haven't put work into the always-wanted-but-never-delivered mansions, so there's plenty of opportunities to make money.

 

 

 

[RIPPA]

Microsoft has GTA V on sale for 30 which is like $20 cheaper than what GameStop is selling used copies for

[jstout]

So that's just the game with no shark cards? Still, that's a good deal.

This afternoon, Dragon and I struggled to get into the same thing, finally got into the same room, then got separated into two race lobbies, damn it all. Sometimes the game tells you what it wants you to do.

[Neil Koch]

There's no reason for them to reduce the price all that much since it's still in the top 10 every month. 

[J.T.]

Well, I got through Meltdown.  Why is it that I can get headshots at will, but I can never seem to get a hang of the Reach Max Speed bullshit?  I took the Pegasus Vacca that the game wanted me to take but no matter what, Vinewood Blvd. always seemed to spawn some magical car that would run an intersection and T-bone me, thus slowing down my acceleration.  Oh, well.  Another silver medal.

I like the missions like Parenting 101 where you get a free Gold medal just for completing it.  Too easy.  Sometimes I want to punch Jimmy De Santa in the face, but the family is on the mend and they don't treat Michael like shit anymore.   How the fuck is it that the De Santa's are laying low while staying at one of the most expensive hotels in the city?

I chose the Subtle Approach for The Big One and have acquired the Gauntlets from the pics.  Finding the cars wasn't hard thanks to running with DVDVR and having nearly memorized all the major landmarks of the city.  I kitted them out with everything including armor and tint and whatnot.  I had Michael take the cars to be tricked out for the job since he has the most money (nearly ten million).

My crew consists of Packie, Chef, Talina Martinez, Karim Denz (the not so good driver), and Rickie Lukens.  The difference in skill between Rickie and Paige's hacking skills is fairly stark and Talina's driving skills are only a tad under Eddie Toh's, but their respective % of the take still makes them attractive team members . 

I took Karim Denz as a second driver to cut a corner (Talina is my lead driver so hopefully Karim will not fuck up too badly) and I took two decent gunmen to make sure we survive the inevitable shoot-out that is bound to happen.

I think I am just going to have to be content with passing this mission with Silver.  Twenty fucking headshots is a lot and I am sure that the traffic light hacking is going to be more convoluted than advertised.

Oh, and a belated RIP to Dr. Friedlander.  Dude signed his death warrant with all of that "I don't use real names" bullshit.  He got his ticket punched alright, but it wasn't for an airline trip to Liberty City.

[jstout]

 Didn't know you could do that. I just left him alone and never returned his calls when I finished the game. He seemed like an unnecessary expense when I didn't have the super-big money. I see what I did wrong there.

[J.T.]

Money was tight for the first couple of sessions but after you screw over Cris Fromage in the Epsilon mission and invest Mike's cash after the first assassination mission and one of the Hitch A Ride encounters, Mike should have a few million dollars to burn..

Buying the submarine dock with your new found wealth and taking care of the nuclear waste contract nets you even more cash, especially if you keep an eye out for the briefcases full of money that are on the ocean floor.

Paying Dr. Friedlander for therapy sessions isn't that expensive once you have a shit ton of money and shooting him in the head as he tries to make a dash in his Comet is very cathartic.  He does have like a hundred bucks in his pocket when you off him and you can drive off his car, mod it, and keep it as a trophy in Michael's garage, so there is always that.

 

[J.T.]

So, with the last Gauntlet found, I am sitting at 94% Complete.  I am going to hazard a guess and assume that I don't have to be 100% complete by the last story mission. 

In GTA4, I did the LC stunt jumps and pigeon hunting after killing Jimmy Pegorino to get the 100% Complete medal, I killed those fucking seagulls for Luis and Johnny after the last story missions in TBoGT and TLaTD for 100% Complete.  

Thank God that the old shoot the heli-tour guide thing still worked for when I needed a chopper to reach a fucking seagull that was on top of a tall building.

If I do need to be nearly complete before the last story mission, no biggie.  I have two saves before The Big Score and I can buy two or three more cheap properties between all of the characters and I have the website to an interactive stunt jump map bookmarked in Firefox on my tablet..

[Technico Support]

19 hours ago, J.T. said:

  I kitted them out with everything including armor and tint and whatnot.  I had Michael take the cars to be tricked out for the job since he has the most money (nearly ten million).

If you bought the LS Customs out in the desert as Franklin, all that customization would have been free.

[Neil Koch]

Cash is really easy to get in single player especially once you start the assassination missions/playing the stock market and there is really nothing but properties, cars, and weapons to spend it on.

[J.T.]

10 hours ago, Technico Support said:

If you bought the LS Customs out in the desert as Franklin, all that customization would have been free.

Yeah, but who wants to drive all the way out to the desert to save a buck?  Mike has nearly ten million in his bank account.  He can afford to invest. By the time I am done manipulating the fake stock market during the assassinations, money won't really matter.

And HEY~! Of all of the heists to get a Gold medal run in on the first try, I do it on the Big Score~!  Where was all of this skill during the Jewelry Store Heist or the Bureau Raid?

Normally that would sound impressive to me, but the mouse maze puzzle passing as the traffic light hack was pretty easy to solve despite Rickie the Bargain Hacker being all "Oops, lag!" (I got the armored cars to the destination with eight switches), twenty headshots was not all that hard to get with a million Merryweather thugs trying to kill us, and the weapon accuracy target of 60% is pretty low when compared to other missions.

Not surprisingly, I mostly played Michael during the firefight and used his Special as often as I could to bullet time my headshot kills.  I switched to Franklin once to countersnipe the merc snipers, and used Trevor to zerg the last three guys with an Assault Shotgun..

I figured that choosing Karim Denz would be problematic, but little did I know that he'd be a really really really shitty driver.  Denz couldn't keep the camouflage truck steady to save his ass, so no sooner did Franklin say , "This driver really sucks.  He's all over the road!" than I popped his Special, hit the gas, and bullet time drove into the cargo trailer. 

SUCCESS~!

I wasn't going to mess around and fuck things up during the last stage of the mission. I wasn't in the mood for a do-over.

I can only imagine the heartache and frustration of trying to do that mission with unmodded cars.

Good thing I chose Talina to be the lead driver for the gold hauling convoy.  I'm guessing that something horrible happens to the score if you use a crappy driver in that role.  They probably crash their car or something and you lose part of the take and have to shell even more money paying out casualty expenses.

The game waits until the very last mission to give my characters access to the Advanced Rifle?  Really?  I don't really need it since I have all of the DLC and have been using the Special Carbine and Bullpup Rifle for a while now.

So I assume that completing Option C and finishing Lester's assassination missions will satisfy the Story Mission part of the 100% Complete checklist.  I think I have purchased enough properties purchased to satisfy that Miscellaneous criteria and of course I have Stunt Jumps to complete.  I screwed up and didn't make an attempt to get the Three Man Army achievement before buying the hangar at LS Airport so I can get past the security gate without alerting the cops, but I think you still get three stars for driving out on the runway. 

If that is the case and I am still able to hang out with Trevor and Michael post Option C, I'll just call them up with Franklin after the Deathwish mission and go play tag with the cops at the airport.  if not, then I'll fire this up again, start up a new game, and play just long enough to get the band together and shoot up the airport as soon as I can.

[AxB]

I got Three Man Army by having the three of them go drinking together, then driving past the police station until some cops noticed. Franklin's Buffalo, fully modded (with 100% armour), with Franklin's special to get out of any potential tricky situations is all you need. And they sober up pretty fast so you don't need to worry about crash damage.

[J.T.]

By the time I thought about trying to get the guys together off mission, Trevor and Michael were laying low in Sandy Shores after kidnapping Madrazzo's wife and ever since then whenever I have had one of the guys call any of the others to grab a beer or something, they've waived off hanging out by saying that they were busy at the time.

I just tried recently right after The Big Score and no matter what, if one says he's available the other says that he is unavailable.  I'm hoping that after I'm done with Option C, the guys will be able to hang out together and I'll just cause some ruckus in town to attract the law.  There will still be some gaming to be done since I've got to finish up the assassinations for Lester and make a mountain of cash.

[jstout]

23 minutes ago, AxB said:

I got Three Man Army by having the three of them go drinking together, then driving past the police station until some cops noticed. Franklin's Buffalo, fully modded (with 100% armour), with Franklin's special to get out of any potential tricky situations is all you need. And they sober up pretty fast so you don't need to worry about crash damage.

Are the cops harder to lose than online? JT, you should know thousands of ducking points to lose the cops from your brief time spent online.

JT is like the Kung Fu of gaming, destined to roam the earth finishing games everyone else gave up on years ago.