Reviews// Grand Theft Auto Online

When you’re speeding along the streets of Los Santos it’ll feel like PGR, when on bikes it has a Motocross Madness vibe. When it offers power-ups it's sheer Blur. However the crashes don’t feel like Burnout’s cutscenes, they’re more real than that. When being knocked off the cliff by a good friend while he laughs his balls off I felt every bump against the rocks as the games physics engine kicks in. I wasn’t crashing on a course, I was flying off into the world.

This might be lost on some but it’s evident in everything you do. In scripted missions, you feel free to go about things the way you want. If one of your friends gets into a car crash you decided whether to ditch them or wait for them to catch up. When playing tennis, you’re not in a tennis game, you’re simply playing tennis in GTA’s glorious open world. You’ll hear people arguing in the street near the court, or watch drivers spin out on corners nearby.

You’re not playing a minigame, you’re existing, and the impact you get from that can’t be underestimated.

However, there are still problems. Lag seems to be a major issue when it comes to the less crime-filled activities. Tennis is a mess for this. Balls being returned despite them passing your opponent. Bad calls when the ball goes out. It’ll mean you’ll rarely return to the less stable activities and that’s a shame.

One thing the game seems to forget to tell you is how to find missions. In order to play through the specially designed parts of the multiplayer you need to call an NPC from your mobile. You can then invite friends to join you as you work up the underground ladder. It’s not a great system and breaks you out of the immersion somewhat.

The missions can be tedious at the start, much like those from the opening hours of GTA IV. But they build into more complex jaunts that will force you to only invite the people you trust. Frustratingly, your mission tree can only be unlocked by you. Although you can join later branches when being invited by friends, the game wont recognise that you’ve completed them and you’ll need to do them again yourself to progress further. What’s even more frustrating is what happens upon a completed mission. Instead of being returned to Rockstar's open world you instantly join a lobby of other modes along with others and have to vote on what race or activity to do next.

It’s an awful decision that seems to try and force players together when all you want to do is return to the hub and decide what to do next. The game punishes players for quitting out of games early but it doesn’t lay its own rules down clearly enough.

Many times I’ve been branded a ‘bad sport’ for leaving a lobby too late. I since found out that the only way to safely return to Freemode without a slapped wrist is to choose ‘free mode’ from the options given to you. However selecting the option looks like you’re simply voting for the full room to return and if others don’t select it you’re forced to play whatever your co-gamers have picked. This isn’t the case. They’ll continue to the next activity while you’ll go to where you need to go. Again though the game fails to make this clear to you and at first you’ll cancel your vote and go with the crowd.

The main progression is found within the leveling system. Although there is a hell of a lot to do from the start, even more will open up the longer you play. From new missions to tools to help you mess around with other players. Once you have the ability to put bounties on other players heads the sense of power gets to you and you’ll start trying to get everyone killed.

Then after a while... You only use it for special occasions.

It’s genius like this that sets GTA Online apart from its competition. If you’re hounded by someone constantly, you have the option to pay players to kill that person. If you’re being a bully, the community will turn on you.

In fact, GTA Online is full of organic moments that. Back stabbing, thieving, gang crime, griefing, it has it all but for every dark side there is something to counter it. If someone decides to blow up your car you can get it insured and claim it back. If you’re in a room full of arseholes, you can buy a pacifist pass that makes you invincible for a short period. If you enter a race with people who are clearly more skilled than you, you can bet on who you think will win in order to make some cash despite losing.

The most outstanding thing about GTA Online, though, is the sheer size of it. The map is huge but the amount of stuff to do is even larger. After each play through it feels as though you’ve played a few games instead of just the one.

Because of the variety I think it’ll be hard pushed to find anyone that wouldn’t find any fun here. I personally didn’t like the death matches, but it doesn’t really matter because the races and missions more than made up for it. The fun we had in free mode only added to that.

It wont replace the online staples that we’ve all stood by for the past few years, but GTA Online is certainly the most fun I’ve had online since those early days of Battlfield 4. And with Rockstar promising more to come, the future looks very bright indeed.

I just hope that it’ll make its way onto the next generation of consoles because this game deserves to be played for a long time.