Game Inbox: Will GTA 6 be better than GTA 5?

Friday’s letters page discusses the problems inherent with previewing video gamesas a reader hails the release of Rhythm Paradise Groove on Nintendo Switch 1.

Games inbox is a collection of letters, comments and opinions from our readers. To join the discussions, email yourself gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Evolution or decline?
As we creep towards the release date of the GTA 6 I find myself asking what some people might think is a silly question: will it be better than GTA 5? Of course the graphics will be better and I’m sure there will be more things to do and a bigger open world and all that, but none of those things make one game better than another.

The things I like most about GTA 5 are the characters and dialogue, the open world design, and the individual missions. And with so many people leaving and joining Rockstar in the more than a decade since GTA 5, there’s no guarantee that any of these things will be as good in the new game.

I am particularly concerned about dialogue, because both the main writers are gone and that should have a big effect on how the game turns out. There’s very little dialogue in the two trailers so far, so it’s very hard to tell if it’s good or not.

There are also things like driving and combat, which were never great in GTA and often have weird control systems. This can improve or it can go the other way. Thinking about it, I would hate to work on the game because there are so many things that can go wrong, I wouldn’t want to make these decisions.
Purple Ranger

Portable market
I just saw some stats about Switch 2 sales in Japan and apparently is almost caught up with PlayStation 5 now, on 5 million consoles to 7.5 million. It will easily make it through this year and it blows my mind Sony it had a nearly five-year head start.

I don’t think the reasons are too hard to find: PlayStation 5 is much more expensive (Switch 2 is cheaper in Japan than here) and it’s not portable, but it’s still a really bad number. It makes me think that PlayStation 6 portable is something Sony wants specifically for Japan and they don’t necessarily care how well it does in the West. Rumors of this certainly make more sense to me now, seeing how badly the PlayStation 5 is doing.
Onibee

The state of Sony
Witcher 3 DLCs and the Assassin’s Creed 4 remake are all well and good, but that’s about it another game state with little to no first party Sony games. The last one was good, but there were hardly any. We have at least a few on the docket for now – Saros, Marvel’s Wolverine and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet – but it’s still not much and definitely not enough to make it clear that Sony has made a major U-turn on their previous policy. It is slightly better than the last two years.

If the God Of War spin-off is announced in the summer, it will probably be that one, and I just don’t know how excited I am to be playing as Kratos’ wife, who we saw for five minutes at the top of the last game. I’ve seen people suggest that Sony is keeping most things for the PlayStation 6, but man, what a lost generation that was.
box

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Classic sequel
Just a heads up to say Broken Sword Smoking Mirror: Kickstarter Reinforced has gone live, where you can pre-order a digital or physical collector’s edition of the second Broken Sword game remake.

I don’t know where they are going after this game for the remake, as even though the other Broken Sword games are very good, in my opinion, they don’t class up as classical such as Broken Sword 1 and 2. I just backed up for my physical edition and my name in the credits!
Andrew J.
PS: I noticed that the date may have slipped for the Pragmata amiibo. Originally, I thought it might have been released on April 17th, 2026, at the same time as the game, but it seems to have recently dropped to June 11th, 2026. I’m assuming the game isn’t delayed and it’s just a production delay with the amiibo.

GC: The game does not lag.

Time travel movie
So I just got back from watching Mario and I have to say I really enjoyed it. We saw it in 4D and I really think that added a lot. I watched a few movies that way, including the last Mario movie, but this time it felt really good.

The seats never stopped moving and the vibrations, blasts of air and splashes of water really got me, the 3D effects were pretty good too. I probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much watching it at home, but overall a great experience. And it made me want to dust off my neglected Switch 2 for some Mario Kart.
BP

The strategy wizard
While Specter is getting the Inbox spotlight, I feel compelled to mention what, for me, are two of his best games; Chaos: The Battle Of Wizards and Rebelstar, both by Julian Gollop. Chaos was up to eight players on a single screen, with mages being given random spells to place creatures that could be real or illusory, and it’s still a blast today. Top tip: always cast Distrust if a player spawns a dragon.

Rebelstar was Gollop improving the turn-based limited action point strategy game that would later become XCOM. It’s one of the best value games ever, having been released on Firebird’s budget label for £1.99, which wasn’t that much 40 years ago in 1986. Very addictive for 1 or 2 players and very innovative.

Loads of features, such as opportunity fire, various reloadable weapons, complex inventory management, healing items and melee weapons, as well as ranged combat. Like XCOM, you took care of your troops, and if Rita Rumpo got killed in turn after using AP on a reckless missed shot, it left them with insufficient points to fall back to cover, you were pissed.

What Gollop got out of the 48K spectrum was surprising. A tired Raider can even pick up a coffee token and grab a drink from the moonbase vending machine or equip a lawnmower and mow the garden area if they get fed up with exploding robots.
Reg Smythe

Press ZR to comply
I can’t say I’m particularly interested Rhythm Paradise Groove but I’ll still hail it as Nintendo’s last first game on the original Switch. An amazing keyboard and I think it will definitely be considered one of the best ever the more we get distance from it.

The Switch 2 has a lot to live up to in terms of its legacy, and I don’t think anyone would try to argue that its first year was as good as that of the Switch 1. It wasn’t terrible, but it looks worse compared to what came before. Personally, I think it was a mistake not to have a proper Nintendo Direct earlier.
Coolsbane

Wrong impressions
The old man shouts at the cloud at the entrance…

Reading your review of Samson and it’s making me think that the preview sessions that game journalists go to are just a big scam, or the writing that follows them is (not you, I honestly believe you’re one of the good guys).

I’ve read multiple previews of it SAMSON gushing about how promising and exciting it was. How on earth can we believe any of this with the way the comments have turned out. I think subjectivity can’t be argued in this case either, it’s crashing across the board.

Same with Crimson Desert. Most of the previews I read didn’t mention how truly atrocious the controls and writing etc. were, and some of these people had hours of practice time. It is disingenuous and sells people on an experience without full facts.

Makes me enjoy your content even more, and I’d add GameRanx on YouTube.
RJ

GC: thank you Predictions are always difficult to judge, as you always have to keep in mind that the game is not over yet. However, we haven’t previewed Samson or Crimson Desert, so we can’t comment on that. However, in our Resident Evil Requiem Review, we pointed out that our review of it was based on the absolute best parts of the game – although, of course, we didn’t know that at the time. Not that the end result wasn’t still great, but what we played wasn’t a completely fair representation of the final game.

Inbox-ka too
When I see a quote about GTA 6 makes players millionaires I just want to roll my eyes, but the worst part is that it’s probably true, if it’s anything like Roblox. I just hate to think about the kinds of games and ways they’re going to do with it.
Hoover

I wanted to ask if SAMSON it’s coming to consoles, but then i read the whole review and, you know, it’s good. Keep it on PC.
passerine

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