GTA Online Review

   

As we all know by now, Grand Theft Auto 5 is an amazing game full of things to do and places to explore. The world Rockstar has created is a masterpiece but can Grand Theft Auto 5’s multiplayer portion hold its own?

Grand Theft Auto Online takes place about a month before the happenings of Grand Theft Auto 5. This means all your favorite people from Grand Theft Auto 5 will be available to meet and do jobs for.

When you first start Grand Theft Auto Online your brought to a character creation screen with a few different options. To make your character you get to choose how your grand parents and your parents look. That combination will create what you look like.

It’s an interesting system for creating a character but it has problems. It seems like Rockstar have chosen about 40 different NPCs from the single player game to use as your parents and grand parents, unfortunately of the 40 NPCs 30 of them look like addicts making it tough to create a decent looking character.

After you’ve made who you want to be you get to mess with their stats. You get a total of 24 hours to spend on things like hanging with family, doing illegal work, doing legal work and sleeping to name a few. Each option increases or decreases specific stats giving you some control on how you want your character to play.

Following that you get to choose your clothes, hair style and facial hair. Your initial options are limited but a much larger variety will open up to you after you play for a little bit.

Before I go any further Rockstar has had a literal ton of issues with Grand Theft Auto Online in its opening days, some of which still persist. So here’s a few quick tips to keep you safe.

Any time after you make your character if you receive a message saying that the Rockstar servers are down DO NOT HIT RETRY. Doing so will most likely erase your created character. Simply go back to single player and wait, I know its hard but it’s worth it if you have spent any time in Grand Theft Auto Online already. Trust me I know from experience.

If you have made a character and now it is suddenly gone exit back to single player and re-enter through the start menu. With some luck your character could re-appear. If they don’t check your Rockstar Social Club page to see if the character is there. If not don’t make another character in the same space. Rockstar is looking into restoring lost characters but whether they will be able to get them back is anyone’s guess at this point.

If you have got into Grand Theft Auto Online and want to be as safe as possible always enter through the initial loading screen and always exit back to single player through the start menu. This will force the game into a save and is your safest option.

Rockstar is aware of these issues and is working on a permanent fix for them. In the near future these issues should be corrected but until then be smart and safe. Now back to the game.

Once you’ve made your character your treated to an intro video then off to your first mission. After a few forced missions that help explain how things work online the world opens up to you and you are free to do whatever you like.

You will periodically receive phone calls offering you jobs. These are the main missions that are offered to you. Aside from the main missions you will also have things like team deathmatch, survival and parachuting along with a bunch of objective based games like the mission hippie hunting where 2 teams fight for control of a weed stash. First team to return it to their base wins.

Everything you can do isn’t initially open. Different activities and missions open up as your rank increases giving you more reason to play and unlock more activities and harder missions. As you rank up you will also gain some abilities like being able to have a bounty put on someones head or having ammo air dropped to you. There are a bunch of different abilities to unlock and play with as you progress through Grand Theft Auto Online.

For doing these activities and missions you receive RP (Rank Points) JP (Job Points) and cash. The RP is what will be increasing your rank and the JP I believe currently doesn’t do anything aside from showing who in the room has been completing the most missions. They will be useful in later updates I believe but exactly what they will do only Rockstar knows for now.

The cash you get for missions and activities are significantly more then you would get in the single player mode. That’s because non of your money transfers over to the online mode. Making money isn’t hard but if you are having trouble check out our Grand Theft Auto Online money farming guide. You will also have the option to buy cash via microtransactions once Rockstar gets the game more stable.

Currently there are exploits to gain crazy amounts of money rather fast. Personally I disagree with using exploits like this in online games but when your rank 18 character disappears I think your entitled to use it to get yourself back to where you were like I did. Don’t expect this to last long however as Rockstar recently cut off one exploit, luckily another was found. Shortly there wont be any exploits as Rockstar would like to make money off microtransactions so if you are going to do it be fast.

In free roam mode you and 15 other people have all of San Andreas to play in. You can challenge other people to impromptu races and 1 on 1 death matches or group up to go handle a mission.

Free roam is also a very dangerous place with others always looking to make a quick buck by killing you and taking your hard earned cash. If you see another player in your area you should probably pull a gun out just in case.

Not everyone is out to get you though, I’ve meet a lot nice people while playing. The best advise I have to give about meeting cool people is to get a headset. Not only will you be able to talk and plan things with people but it will help you figure out other people’s intentions whether their good or bad.

Rockstar has stated that they will be constantly updating and adding new missions. There will be many updates rolling out new features in the coming months including the ability to plan and execute heists and make your own team deathmatches.

Overall, Grand Theft Auto Online is really fun to play. There’s always something to do and someone to do it with. While currently Grand Theft Auto Online does have a few issues if you play smart and stick to the tips I gave earlier you shouldn’t be affected too much by them.

Giving a proper score to Grand Theft Auto Online at this time wouldn’t reflect how good the game really is so I’ll leave you with this: If you already have Grand Theft Auto 5 you should be checking out the online portion, and if you are one of the few who hasn’t picked it up yet I highly suggest you read our review of Grand Theft Auto 5 after this and decide for yourself if you think it’s worth it.