Grand Theft Auto V celebrated its ninth birthday recently, and somehow it still manages to stay head and shoulder above other open-world adventures.
That’s been made obvious with the release of the new Saints Row game, an unengaging landscape with a lot to do but little to enjoy. Even now, having played through it three or four times, it’s more exciting to see Trevor and Michael arguing than it is to live the lives of almost any other character developers have put into a sandbox environment in the last five years. Now, having seen what GTA VI will look like, the anticipation has risen a notch.
The recent GTA VI leak consisted of 90 videos, according to Hypebeast, and it pushed Rockstar’s future title into the news. Still, it’s been hugely damaging for the developer, damaging that people got a glimpse into the development of their next big title. There was no denying the game was in the works, but to see it was something else, and now gamers might be finding GTA V a little less alluring, knowing what is coming.
One map feature not revealed during the leak was the Vice City Casino, which is almost certain to be included in the game. The Diamond Resort and Casino in Los Santos has become a focal point for much madness in GTA Online, and with daily wheel spins and games to play, it is perhaps the single-most enjoyable DLC the game has seen.
How can Rockstar ensure that any casino on the Vice City map is just as enticing while adding new, fresh elements? We’ve got some suggestions.
Better Slots
The casino is popular because of the poker exploit, wheel, and nothing else. The slot machines are poor, reflecting the image of a casino perhaps a decade ago rather than 2022. GTA VI has an opportunity to incorporate much better slot games, maybe using the same themes they used in the arcade add-on. If you own an arcade, you’ll know the games feel like titles within a title, and the slots could be the same.
Today’s online slots tend to leverage popular themes and brands to increase their attractiveness, and there’s no reason Rockstar couldn’t use that. The online slots at Foxy Games include Top Cat and Inspector Gadget, using popular characters in their titles. That would certainly help make the GTA casino more interesting, especially if they rotated the games like real casinos. As a point, the same developer has Gangsta City Slots, aping the GTA brand, so if it works one way, there’s no reason it could work the other!
Varied Table Games
The table games in the Diamond Resort and Casino felt solid enough, especially the poker, as it was exploitable, meaning players could max out those in-game dollars. However, it also felt a lot like a missed opportunity. Red Dead Redemption has a different variant of poker, Texas Hold’em, which introduced elements of skill. It’s baffling why the same didn’t appear in the Diamond Resort and Casino; instead, we got three-card poker which is essentially an entire game of chance.
Roulette and blackjack felt solid enough, but perhaps those could be expanded. Is baccarat too complex for GTA? Perhaps, but bringing something new to the casino feels necessary, even if it is just a better poker variant.
Better Prizes
Unless you were using the poker exploit, the prizes in the casino were pretty rubbish. Unless a hot car was on the wheel, nothing else felt lucrative enough. Sure, the wheel kept people returning, but if you won the car on Saturday, would you be back before the prize reset? Probably not, because 15% off a boat or a flashy jacket wasn’t enough to tempt you to the map’s east side. You could even win XP, which was pretty useless for players who’d been on the game for six or seven years.
Instead, we need to see prizes worth winning, cumulative jackpots on those newly branded slots, for instance, making the occasional player a millionaire or even richer. The car was a good start, but why not play for a selection of cars, giving you a pick? How frustrating was it to win the Deluxo if you already owned one? Incredibly, so having a pick would also be good.