Truly baffling, I love the GTA games, they are the dumbest but I thoroughly enjoy Rockstar's humor and gameplay.
My past experience with R* is that I would go to a friends house, see he had a GTA game on a PS2. He would let me play it for a bit, I would enter the cheat code for a tank, blow things up for a bit and then get bored. I didn't think much of them.
Then RDR was coming out, and it looked interesting, so I bought it and really liked it. RDR is probably in my top games from last gen.
I then played Max Payne 3 and GTAV... and god those games suck.
Max Payne is constantly throwing action in your face, and is constantly making you watch cutscenes for a shitty fucking story. My friend who loves the first 2 max payne games fucking despises 3. He showed me a video of how Rockstar ruined Max's character, from being a cool noire cop, to some incompetent bum because of Rockstars abhorent need to make stories about the "hypocracy of america and the rich"
GTA V just feels fucking awful to play. The very act of moving your character just feels fucking awful. The mission design is fire and forget with stupid mini games being shoved down your throat in most of them. GTA V is probably the least enjoyable sandbox game I ever played. It feels like a bloated amalgom of fucking garbage.
Its obviously a case of different strokes because millions of people love these games.... but holy fucking shit, imo its fucking trash.