Yeah, I really liked V's sound track. It was not better than Vice City or San Andreas, but IMO, it was worlds better than IV.
I would rank them:
- Vice City
- San Andreas
- GTAV
- GTAIII
- GTAIV
I didn't play enough of the "Stories" games to say either way, and this isn't counting the DLC for IV. I'd bump IV ahead of III in terms of listenable selection except III gets points for the novelty of having a real-feeling radio. IV and V, for me, had horrible talk stations as well... Probably my favorite thing about GTA:SA was the awesome talk station. IV gets bumped down too because of a bug that would "reset" radio stations. I'd hear nothing but "Badder den dem" on one of those stations over and over again, which is the worst song in any GTA game ever, and it was on infinite repeat for me (and others).
I really hated IV's and I'm always pretty astounded when I hear how people liked it so much. I think I didn't like it because I wanted it to feel like a real radio... And besides only a handful of tracks, the majority were not radio songs, but they felt like custom playlists that a music producer would put together. FlashFM and Emotion 83 in GTAVC felt like they could be radio stations, almost every one of the songs were songs with real radio play on them. Similar with some of the stations in GTA:SA... I felt like if you were tuning into a classic rock station in 1993, you'd hear Eminence Front, Grand Funk, Eddie Money, Tom Petty, etc. But, with GTAIV, other than a small handful of songs, I don't think you'd ever hear any of those songs on a radio station other than maybe a very ecclectic college station or very specific, specilized hardcore station... which are increasingly rare.
But, that also appeals to a lot of people, too... they want to hear more underground, undiscovered music, and GTAIV was good at providing that. The euro chillout synth, Russian station, etc., just aren't my thing if I want to hear realistic radio.
I thought GTAV was an improvement, with more recognizable hits. Los Santos Rock Radio was a semi-realistic classic rock station, West Coast Classics seems like a decently realistic 90s hip hop station (at least, the artist list, not so much the track list)... I liked Radio Mirror Park a lot just for the track list, though it seems more like if you were putting an Indie playlist together on Spotify rather than an actual radio station playlist.
It's a lot easier to make a throwback station or a whole throwback sound track than it is to do something modern. It's a lot easier to look back at 1984 and say "these were the radio hits that capture an era..." On top of that, cost is impossible with modern pop music... The expense would be ridiculous to get any big 2013 pop song onto the playlist. This is why I'm hoping that they include a custom playlist for consoles with GTAV nextgen... I doubt they will... but I'd just make a 2013 Pop hits station to replicate it.
