[FOR MORE INFORMATION REGARDING MY THOUGHTS ON GRAND THEFT AUTO V, SEE MY REVIEW. THIS IS A REVIEW OF GTA: ONLINE]
Disaster. That's the word millions of players would use to describe the humble beginnings of Rockstar's hugely ambitious GTA: Online. The much-coveted launch proved very divisive for many, with constant loading, server issues, freezes, in-game bugs, character deletions and rank/cash losses. These were the widely-reported problems that people, including myself, experienced during the first very painful week of GTA's multiplayer offering. However, during the final days of its launch week, it was nearing playability. Rockstar ironed out the major issues with regards to inability to join a server. Many began to play online, others were still out in the cold. They told us to remain patient, for our perseverance would surely be rewarded. I mean, look at it this way: a multi-million dollar studio, owned by a mega-successful publishing house, having finished development on a project five years in the making, and using £137million in the process, have implemented a vast, open online world for up to 16 players, with many players joining in at one time. Of course there were going to be issues. With millions of fans worldwide (many of them as old-school as their beginnings with GTA in 1996), Rockstar knew that they would remain so and have finally delivered a fully playable, mostly solid version of their original vision. However, while it is more of GTA and packs dozens of races, missions and activities for you and your friends, the long wait is not to the game's merit.
Firstly, I'll head back to what I mentioned before, about the fact that issues were to be expected. I don't want it sound like I am defending Rockstar because I'm not. In the hands of any other developer, this component would surely be lambasted to the moon. A developer normally reliable with delivering on their promises, what they have implemented here is woefully short of my expectations, leading to the possibility of "name precedes game" in this regard. I cannot continue with the review without mentioning the past issues that plagued the game for over a week. The game had severe cloud server issues, where the character creation was temporary and would subsequently be deleted upon exiting a session. This meant having to create a character over five times, losing a level 7 rank twice, and constantly having to create a character is annoying. This is due to the tutorial section, which I loathe. It starts off with an unskippable introduction, a bland race against Lamar and a few small missions before being allowed to roam free. The tutorial only gets more dull if you keep doing it because of the deletion of your character.
The presentation isn't as polished as single player, as there are more glitches, such as framerate drops, pop-in and other bugs. Cars disappear before you can get in them, invisible people shoot at you, characters fall through the ground (exclusive to the first week) and traffic inexplicably vanishes from trace. These issues can become more and more noticeable the more you play, and it can be distracting at times. There are too many text pop-ups, people call you way too often, and the waypoint can be unintuitive (though not always). Having said that, the visuals are just as solid as they are in single player, and character models are good.
Character creation fuels the bulk of the online experience. It's an ambitious system, one involving the genetics of grandparents' codes that rewrite your facial structure depending on the choices. These are relative to different hairstyles, colours and faces, and your granddad can range from collector's edition exclusives Claude/Misty from Grand Theft Auto III and, for the majority of us, John Marston. It's a feature that doesn't make much of an impact in the long run, and the customization is pretty basic and lacks any notable qualities. You choose different sections of a "lifestyle", which ranges from working out, hanging out with friends, partying and undergoing illegal work. You place a set amount of points between each category, and presumably build them up from there. However, these lifestyle sections are never seen again in the online game. You can't edit faces, change body structure and there are only around 8 or so hairstyles and beards (way less than something like Saints Row).
GTA: Online focuses on building yourself up from a poor "nobody" to a rich "somebody", by way of small missions and robberies to, ultimately, penthouse suites and heists. This definitely sells the appeal of a somewhat realistic crime life, but it can be excruciatingly slow in its tendency to reward players. Cash is normally scarce outside of missions, with only $1-2k per store (of which there are 20 - these can be replayed at any time once completed, though), and a couple of hundred per every player killed. If you make cash, you have to visit an ATM machine or use the internet and deposit your cash before somebody kills you and steals it. While this sounds like a cool and tense feature, its more annoying. Every time I finished a store or mission, I had to bring up the phone and bank it, which can get tiring after a while.
There are a lot of annoyances with the economical side of GTA: Online. Like I said, money takes forever, which is unfair because the most expensive apartments and garages run at $300-400,000 and $30-100,000 respectively, which will take ages to acquire. It's annoying that, if you are killed, you lose a segment of that cash to pay towards medical bills. It's a really harsh inclusion because it discourages common mayhem. Driving around without risking killing anybody and just robbing stores is dull, and that's what makes up the online game for the most part. The absolute biggest offender, though, is the appearance of microtransactions. We all know what they are, and they are a money-making machine, which is a major irritation. While Rockstar have claimed that it isn't a "win" feature, the fact that the apartments, weapons and cars will be easily gained due to real cash, it definitely feels like it. Some players, like myself, will want to progress naturally and fairly, but there will be many people who may compromise that fun with their expensive weapons and vehicles. Even weapons and attachments cost too much ($12,500 for a silencer? Yeah, right).
In terms of vehicles, you have the option to choose one for free at the start. After that, you must purchase a tracker from Los Santos Customs, as well as insurance. This means you will have that car in your name forever, unless you insure a new one (it will overwrite your previous vehicle, unless you own a 2+ car garage). This is actually a pretty inventive feature, because it forces you to choose the best vehicles and subsequently phone up the insurance company if the car is destroyed (it is also impounded upon being killed or busted). You can also set who can access your vehicle. Crew means only members of your group can access, Friends refers to anybody on your friends list, and Everyone is, well, everybody in the session. You can also lock it to yourself, meaning nobody can get in the car, which is pretty cool. There are races strewn throughout the world, and some of them can be decent fun (dirt bike races and sea races are highlights) but the rest are standard races that won't entertain you beyond a couple of times.
The "meat and potatoes" of GTA: Online is with regards to missions. These are "jobs" that range from interrupting drug deals, stealing cars, killing gang members for supplies and repossessing different vehicles around the city. These are decent to begin with, but you'll soon realize that the "500 missions" claim was overblown in terms of content and variety. What you see is what you get with those four mission types. I've played prolonged sessions of GTA: Online and, though some people may gain access to more missions later on in their ranking ladder, at the moment there isn't a whole lot of content that will have you returning for more.
The ranking system ties your unlocks together with your points tally. Earning rep points for missions, races, stores and cop evasions leads to levelling up, which provides the availability of new weapons, store outfits and hairstyles. However, just to be clear: you still have to pay for them when they have unlocked. Considering that attachments cost between $3,000 and $15,000, its annoying having to buy the weapon AND attachments. The encouragement of obtaining apartments and garages is compromised when dealing with weapon purchases.
Yes, apartments and garages. How potentially exciting. We heard lots of reports before release ranging from hanging around with friends watching TV, showering, meeting up to arrange missions and more. While these are somewhat true, their execution is pretty uninteresting. Yes, you can sit down in someone's apartment and spectate a friend who is in a cop chase, you can shower (with a "singing" meter... don't ask) as well as access your own showroom of vehicles, but it isn't exciting in any meaningful way. You can't access weapons when in the apartment, you can't attack anybody and you can't do any activities (poker, video games etc). It's disappointing too, because those possibilities would have made the experience far more interesting and fun, but it's just tacked-on and bland features.
The activities themselves aren't all that interesting, mimicking single player. Parachuting is probably the only activity worth undertaking, and even then that cannot hold together the content singlehandedly. You can do "impromptu races" with friends, which are on-the-spot races. There are lots of pretentious blue icons on the map, but these are just mission/race indicators. Once you complete a mission, you can then decide to vote on a new mission or race, but they are quite repetitive and surprisingly limited. Also, if you are in a crew session and finish a mission or race, you are taken to a public session and having to be invited back in, in order to do another mission. That is bad design.
Rockstar is rewarding gamers with $500,000 in GTAO cash as compensation for the laundry list of issues throughout the month (even with characters continuing to be deleted). It will be split into two $250k segments, with players (who have to play in October to qualify) given the opportunity to buy an apartments or vehicles for their troubles. Some might appreciate this, but I think it's a pretty mediocre effort on Rockstar's part. The cash sum will completely void any interest in doing missions and stores, and then once an expensive apartment has been purchased (with a 10-car garage), what is there to do? There are STILL no heists (which is extremely disappointing) and the mission reward sum has been halved for every restart (which makes them less exciting). Medical bills have also seen the same change, which is the one good thing about the online mode.
The most disappointing thing about the online component? The reveal. It was a contradictive reveal, back in August, showcasing features and content that haven't been implemented into the game yet. I have no idea why Rockstar would delay such content, as they had years (and two weeks) to design them. We saw content creator - a mode where people could create their own deathmatches and races (of which I'm sceptical), heists (a big initial draw to GTA) and more, which simply hasn't been delivered. This is a big shame.
In summary, GTA: Online is full of promising ideas that Rockstar's has failed to capitalize on. For every "that's interesting" moment, it is dug into the ground by mediocre execution and bland mission design. The content presented here is pretty boring, by way of a massive world that, with 16 players, feels lifeless, and missions that cannot sustain interest beyond a single completion. That said, I'm sure lots of players will continue playing this mode, and they will be able to (eventually) perform heists with friends but, for the rest of us, play something else instead. GTA: Online disappoints in nearly every way.
SUMMARY
Presentation 5.0
Gameplay 4.0
Replayability 4.0
Overall - 4/10