I had a great time online tonight. There are a ton of things wrong about the online but I will focus on the positives.
So I have been playing for a while but today I sort of started to play consistantly with some gaf crew members and we had a blast. There were some epic races by air, sea and land. Some awesome missions where we had to take down a gang, steal drugs and escape. With a group of four you can split up and take the enemies on multiple sides totally messing them up. GTA online is hard as hell, enemies are way harder than in the game, they are brutal so you have to play very save, plus you have limited lives. This creates some crazy tense moments and some heroic moments if you are the final person alive.
On the free map I actually had some fun encounters, there is a bounty system in place where someone can place a bounty on another player, he gets marked red on the map and everyone tries to collect. I chased one dude all around the city, he went into a 711 and I went in and he knifed me to death, I got stuck in some knife fight and couldnt pull my gun. He then steals my awesome car and escapes with it. I respawn and chase him again only to find he drove my car into the water and died, I lost my car and the bounty.
Later I was just wandering around and noticed a red dot coming at me very fast. I see a guy with a bountry coming right at me, I am and shoot and headshot him while he was going super fast, it was awesome. Then I got a hit put on me but I was in the country far away from everyone. For a while I was safe but eventually everyone closed in on me. I killed me first two would be killers but then some guy showed up in a helicopter with a gun, lol, I died.
Another time I was just wandering the street and some a hole ran me over, but I survived. I took out my shotgun and blew his head off while he was in the car. Then he challenged me to a 1 on 1 deathmatch duel, so I accepted. Right there in the middle of the city you enter a first to five kills deathmatch. There was a nearby garage that we used to get the highground. It was an epic game of cat and mouse, really fun stuff.
When you are in missions with a good team this online mode is fantastic. There are still loads of issues most of all with how invites work and how missions start you miles away from the objective. Also its very much a huge grind to make money and level up, like an MMO almost. But there is crazy amounts of fun to be had. It just takes a while to unlock it.
I don't think I'll ever bother to try online as after beating the campaign and most of the side missions I'm satisfied with my GTA intake for another year. I hope they are going to do side stories and not just have the online mode be the "DLC" for V.
Another fun night with a few cool moments, the best was when I got a helicopter and noticed a guy with a bounty, so I figured I could reach him quick on my chopper. I fly to him and he is with someone, a buddy who is protecting him, they are in a car together. This chopper has a hook which can latch onto cars and pick them up and I thought it would be awesome to raise the car up with them inside but they stopped the car and got out. So I saw the bounty dude run out and start shooting at me and I simply landed the helicopter on him killing him instantly, I left his friend to mourn as I flew off.
I had an interesting moment where I had a guy with a bounty on my sniper sights but he was paused (it said so above his head). Should I kill a guy that has his game paused... I did not, he simply logged off and disappeared.
Lester missions are really good requiring some quality teamwork to pull off.
I have been focusing on the good stuff about GTA Online so now to talk about all the bad:
- Matchmaking is garbage. You'd think with so many people online it would be easy to find players to play with but it becomes a waiting game in lobbies. It only invites like 20 people at a time and if those people do not respond to the invite it locks up an invite slot meaning you cant refresh that invite, it is possible to be stuck in a lobby with no new invites being sent. Horrible system.
- Terrible missions at the start. At first you will have a rotation of about 10 missions that are all alike, simple go there and kill them. They are so boring it will lead people to either ignore missions or quit online.
- Everything is locked behind leveling up and money. Want good guns, play for about 5-6 hours then maybe you have a shot at actually battling enemies. Want a good car you have to pay for it. Want cool services like bounties, mercs, getting a helicopter you have to level up first. It takes till level 20 to reach the good missions.
- No fast travel. Nothing worse than starting a mission and realizing you have to travel to the other side of the map to reach the first objective.
- Free mode is major disappointment. Most missions you get on your phone and then you can choose modes from a menu screen meaning there is no real reason to be in free mode. It only has 16 people at most, everyone is just doing their own thing, and if you kill each other for no reason you get a penalty. Oh and if you die in free mode it costs money to respawn. There is good stuff like bounties and some world events where there is something to collect so the everyone tries to reach it first but most of the time its just an empty game world.
GTA online can quickly leave a bad impression but I have found it to be addicting and I have had many great moments, more than the I hate this moments. It could use a bunch of work though.
Of all the stupid things about this game of which there are many the money situation is by far the worst. Not only do you not make money during the story but after when you do have money what is there to buy? All the buisnesses dont make you much of any money and they cost insane amounts to buy. Some have minor side missions but those are best played with the story. There are no properties to buy, no garages. Every character has one garage at the bottom of the map, what if you want to be at the top of the map with your vehicles, WTF then, it takes like 10 minutes to get up there without a cab. Seriously these design decisions are moronic.