GTA V is a fully interactive hedonist’s playground. The world of San Andreas is designed to allow you to live out any brand of mayhem that your heart desires, whether that entails joining both sides in a mafia civil war, starting a murder spree at the local bodega, playing knifey-spooney with a shark, or revealing your dark deeds to a petrified psychiatrist.
It is quite a feat then, to attempt to find a new brand of GTA madness over 18 months since its initial release. Yogscast mainstays Lewis Brindley, Duncan Jones and Paul Sykes (aka ‘Sjin’) attempted to do just that in their GTA V Airbase Assault let’s play video.
The Yogscasters’ self imposed mission is a degree of difficulty above any of the myriad of quotidian crimes one can commit on the streets of Los Santos. Attempting to steal a P-996 LAZER — a glorified F16-C Fighting Falcon — or a LAZER Falcon, if you will, is, ostensibly, an act of war against the pixelated US government. This is a put-a-sack-over-your-kidnapped-head-and-rendition-you-to-Turkish-prison kind of crime. This is Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden level stuff, which is quite lofty for player character, Michael De Santa, a former snatch-and-grab bank robber.
It is perhaps expected then that Lewis, Duncan and Sjin, under the guise of De Santa, plot out a raid of a local Air Force base with all the subtlety of your challenged brother Ruprecht:
They first hijack a helicopter, and upon hearing that the local REI closed early for the night, they proceed to murder a couple of recreational skydivers to pry parachutes from their cold, dead, hands. They then carry out an airdrop from said helicopter (diving directly into the rotor blades on first attempt) onto the base itself, in the hopes that their trusty slim jim can pick the lock of a $19 million jet. Spoiler alert: it can’t, but a swift kick to the cockpit does the trick.
Ditching an air assault completely, they Dukes of Hazard a beat-up Mercedes through a barbed-wire fence, directly into the path of a patrolling tank.
Several botched attempts later, Sjin finds himself piloting his very own fighter jet to the befuddlement of the local police force. And oh the adventures you can have with your own hot LAZER. You can strafe Venice Beach drum circles, provide air support for your other friends attempting to pilfer the local armory, or simply supersonically crash it into a lamppost. Just the kind of unbridled, murderous, fun we’ve come to expect from the GTA franchise.
