Corridor's Real GTA Nails Grand Theft Auto V, From Venice Beach to a Car Chase We Still Can't Call

Our verdict on Corridor's Real GTA is simple: "overall they got the essence of the game really really well," and that is what matters. The short came out on June 8, 2015. We picked it because Grand Theft Auto generally wins whenever we let our audience vote on which game we should play, often with 50% or more.

The Venice Beach opening looks just like Grand Theft Auto V

It looks just like the game from the first shot. It is Venice, and we suspect that is fairly easy to make look right as long as you shoot it the right way. The details are what sold us: the walk, which we think they really studied, the money falling out, the random comments from people passing by, and the way the camera follows the character.

There was a single gripe in that stretch: he looked left and right before crossing, and characters in the game probably don't do that. They are not worried about getting run over. The coolest part may have been the police officers in the shot at the very beginning, because we couldn't tell whether they were caught by chance or set up.

We could not agree on whether the car chase was CGI

"The tracking they're doing on this is pretty incredible." One view was that the car was green screen, or possibly CGI, because it looked a little too sharp and bright. Maybe they shot the performer moving through Venice, shot the streets separately from a car, and superimposed the car for that smooth video game drive.

The other view was that the heavy stabilisation is what gives it an uncanny valley feel. Corridor are very competent CGI artists, so the whole driving sequence could have been built in a computer. But the reflections in the water and on the car look so real that recreating them would presumably be a frustrating enough process that you might as well drive it for real. Perhaps the background and the car are real, just not filmed at the same time.

Small misses, but Los Angeles is spot on

They skipped the camera punch the game does. One thing they could also have added is the character reacting to being shot but not caring, and we didn't get a strong sense of the faded screen you see as you lose life. The behind the scenes material suggests they used something like an iPhone on a gimbal, and we imagine there was a lot of reframing in post, since it is probably physically impossible to hold a perfect distance from the subject the whole time, and the human hand is not perfect.

"Having lived in Los Angeles my entire life, Grand Theft Auto 5 really looks like LA," which makes these spots accessible. At Venice, as long as you never see the sign that actually says Venice, everything else looks spot on. For a short of nearly three and a half minutes, it feels like it must have taken them a really long time.

We would love the same treatment for The Last of Us

It was a reminder of how The Last of Us never stopped feeling like a game, because collected items simply disappear into your bag as you move. A live action version showing that would be hilarious, though it might be the only joke since the rest is so realistic, apart from annoying moments like hunting for ladders. There were doubts the second game would live up to it, and a counterpoint that you don't know yet.

So which side are you on: was that LA River car chase real or built in a computer?