GTA Online for Grand Theft Auto V launched yesterday, and it was a mess at the beginning. The first mandatory race randomly froze, preventing players from being able to actually start.
The cloud servers were constantly down which prevented saving, so there was no point in playing. Rockstar was hard at work to fix the issues though, and the major issues my friends and I had were fixed. After that, my brother, my friend and I took to the streets of Los Santos in our crew and it was a blast.
Co-op Jobs
Probably my favorite part of GTA Online is doing jobs with friends. As you rank up, characters such as, Lamar, Simeon, and Gerald will call or text you with a job. The job will show how many players can take part in it. So far we’ve gotten jobs for 1-2 players and 1-4 players. I expect the difficulty and number of players for each job to increase as you rank up.
The first job we had, was a simple mission where we had to take two cars back to Simeon. I should say it was supposed to be simple, but what we saw was anything but that. The two cars we had to steal were being driven and we had to catch up to them. We could not set exact waypoints because they were constantly moving.
They were fast cars, so catching them proved a little difficult. It also did not help that they started driving like maniacs when they noticed we were after them. One time, one of the guys even drove into the water, destroying the car and failing the mission for us. We eventually caught both of them and took them to Simeon to complete the mission.
Cruise the streets of Los Santos with your crew
The free roam mode of GTA Online is also wonderful. You don’t have a lot at first, but over time you unlock mostly everything you can do in the story mode and more. You can play tennis, golf, darts, arm wrestle, race, you name it. You can buy garages and apartments, customize cars, clothes, guns, you name it. The only catch is that you have to rank up to unlock more options, but that is no problem.
The only thing that is annoying is that each time you do a job, race, mission, or death match, it takes you to a lobby to invite people. After you finish, if you choose to go back to free roam, it places you in a random session that may not be with the people you were with. Maybe I just missed it, but I didn’t see a way to make a “party” to stay with your friends and we had to keep joining each other’s games.
There are plenty of races like these all over Los Santos.
Overall, there is just as much stuff to do in GTA Online as in the story mode, if not more. Plus, you can do this all with friends and work your way up to the top. For anyone looking for the ultimate Grand Theft Auto experience, just play GTA Online.
Does anyone have any great stories they would like to share about GTA Online? Were you able to get past the initial frustration and play? Let me know in the comments.
Published: Oct 2, 2013 08:53 am