Weapons are scarcer, making every bullet count, and, in the trenches, this sees me trapped 12 stories above street-level in a dangerous maze of partially-erected corridors and angry hitmen who’re after my blood. In practice, it commoditises weapons – more so than in vanilla GTA 5 – and changes the whole complexion of arms dealing in Los Santos.
This time, I’ve installed AtomiicNut’s Black Market Arms Dealing mod, which adds a functioning black market for guns wherein players must buy shooters from back-alley dealers across the state, rather than Ammunation stores.Īccording to the mod’s creator, the thinking here is that this prevents you from getting away with criminal activity with store-bought firearms, as per real life. I’ve blazed through NPC Lester Crest’s Grand Theft Auto 5 mission ‘The Construction Assassination’ umpteen times before with a careless volley of ammunition, high-impact firearms and devastating throwables – but this playthrough is different. This rooftop building site is teeming with bad guys. I smile, check the chamber of my trusted Saturday Night Special, and realise I’m out of ammo.
He rocks forward, eyes wide, and folds like a deck of cards. 25 bullet splits the goon’s skull with a crunch, and his brains coat the plasterboard wall behind like a Jackson Pollock painting.