UPDATED 10/5/2013
Can this even be considered a review? I think it’s just musings at this point. The multiplayer aspect of GTA “launched” two days ago, and though Rockstar expected and warned server issues, the game was largely unplayable the first day and incredibly glitchy the second with many of its bugs yet to be ironed out.
So, without griping too much about connectivity (you can find plenty of those reports….everywhere) what is the online experience like?
The character creator is an odd bird indeed, rather than get your typical sliders for eyes, mouth, nose etc. it’s “heredity” based. You pick your maternal and paternal grandmammy and grandpappy from 14 preset models, use a series of sliders to determine how much your mom and dad looked like their moms and dads and one last slider to figure out how much you look like your mom and dad. Still following? A’ight cool, it’s not the most detailed character creator on the planet, nor is it the worst. It’s different and takes getting used to.
Here we take in the view of the city before being disconnected.
Next are your stats. The game’s trifecta comes with a few presets, Franklin’s a top notch driver due to a history boosting cars, Trevor can fly because he trained for the AirForce, and Michael is good with a gun because…they needed someone who is good with a gun. Also he likes movies, and if the news has taught us anything it’s that movies and video games train you to be a cold blooded killer, so ya’ll better look out for me ’cause we don’t play. Your stats, similarly, are affected by the hours of the day you put into your hobbies and activities.
It’s essentially a point dump that both adds and subtracts from your starting stats, Party animal? Your shooting and driving skill go up while stamina goes down, into sports? That’s an increase in strength and stamina. Your hobbies also seem to impact your appearance slightly, and doing more illegal work will cause mommy and daddy’s little girl to look like a cracked out addict. It’s a system, like heredity, that makes you consider your stats carefully however it’s ultimately irrelevant. For starters certain scores such as Shooting can’t be broken above 20 percent (probably to prevent early griefing), and your character will be able to build up all their stats without penalty similar to the game’s three leads.
All of this also seems to play into the reality angle the HD era of GTA likes to play. In the “real world” the way we look is based on our genetics and our abilities, or lack thereof, depend on our hobbies and professions. While it’s an interesting take, it requires a bit more work on the part of the player to figure out what in the heredity and lifestyle will get them what they want starting out.
So. I spent a lot of time going over stats and appearance. Maybe because that’s all anyone was able to do during the first 36 hours of this launch…. Right, not gonna gripe.
You’re given a brief intro cutscene, meeting your BFF from the Facebook-like website Lifeinvader, Lamar, who has rather amusing dialogue made a bit more amusing for female avatars. Then he takes you to a street race. The race seems like it’s supposed to line you up against other players, but after waiting in a lobby where no one else showed up the game was just me and Lamar. A few more introductory missions set you up with some new clothing, a car “assigned” to you (like the default vehicles the three protagonists receive) and an introduction to mission “modes”, more player dependent setups such as deathmatches and capture the flag type quests.
Flying into Los Santos to wreak some havoc.
I won’t say the first two hours I spent online weren’t fun, the few moments of griefing I received were met with harsh punishment… That’s not me bragging, I told you we keep it trill on this website, ice cold. For the most part players were just messing around and trying to tool with the new mechanics and bizarre UI’s the online mode introduces. The online mode is really player driven, and unless you have a crew or a few friends online you may find yourself kicking around dust. Sure you can rob a convenience store by yourself or buy some fancy clothing, but a good portion of the mission modes require other players. This seems like a no-brainer, a multiplayer game requires multiple players? True, however GTAIV allowed you to run around like an idiot completely alone without other players, while this game seems to take the course “You’re shit out of luck” if you can’t find anyone else.
Luckily I had a buddy online with me to try out some of the races and mission modes, many of which required two teams… And yes I gunned my bro down each time as it’s what operator’s with frost-for-veins like myself do… At first glance it seemed most of the minigames available online were head to head only, however as you rank up and progress a few co-op modes become available. Co-op unfortunately also needs some work, a lot of the missions feel a tad needlessly difficult, nearly requiring a full room of players to complete them in a timely matter. For example one mission required we retrieve two stolen cars, there were three of us, and two vehicles we had to chase down. Not only did the cars spawn far across the map, but the AI seemed to predict our movements, it felt as though the game was begging for a full and coordinated team, and the less players there were the more it felt like a wild goose chase. I wish I could say this were an exclusive problem but other co-op missions felt like you really needed a full team behind your back in order to achieve anything close to “fun.”
Making money is hard, and things are very expensive. For the first several ranks all you’re able to really do is rob convenience stores and occasionally boost a car. You can try and make some more money by playing missions or betting against other players, but as illustrated earlier, that’s a bit more trouble than it’s worth. Rockstar advertised heists and microtransactions, however those have been put on hold while they fix their server issues… Probably for the better, not worth pulling off a heist or better yet, paying 20 real world monies and losing everything digitially for your investment.
There have also been reports on corrupted save files on the main game due to some of the connection issues. This happened to our very own Jared, who luckily had enough quick save backups he was able to jump to another file and pick up his progress. The issue seems to be related to people who haven’t finished the game, and having completed GTAV last week I (knock on wood) haven’t had any problems. Either way, make sure you have a few quick save file backups if you’re going to attempt it.
Haircuts work as advertised.
Shortly after exhausting everything we could find with a quick jaunt into the game, my friend left, and I was approached by another player named Nacho. Whom I gunned down. Like the arctic. Nacho respawned and re-approached me in passive mode, which charges a $100 in-game fee to keep players like me from killing you on sight, and we began hanging out, racing monster trucks (unguided by the game) across San Andreas’ mountain ranges and blue water beaches. Fun, cooperative, not game guided, in the end this felt like what the online was about.
So there’s my “review” or rather my insights, I don’t think any number grading can be added to this. There’s a pretty complete, and pretty awesome game in GTAV while online is a relatively basic add-on that they unfortunately advertised as less an add-on and more a quasi-MMO experience. Unfortunately Rockstar also applied a bit of an old school design to their online world, where it seems heavily dependent on having lots of well coordinated and cooperative players, and those games tended to be fun in spite of, not because of said design approach. I would suggest maybe waiting awhile for them to stabilize their connectivity issues, add in some better rounded content, find yourself a good crew and in the mean time knock yourself out with the psychotic rampages of Michael, Franklin and Trevor.
And hey, Nacho? Sorry I killed you buddy. You’re an okay dude.
UPDATE: The problem with online experiences is they’re not fluid. They’re also shifting, and they can change for the better or they can change for the worst. GTAOnline had a little more than a rocky start, there’s relative stability now, but they still have a few literally game ending bugs.
Now that I’ve gotten to chew on the experience a bit I can honestly say, it’s a game that’s bogged down by old school game design mixed with new school real cash shop minded decisions. Let’s be frank, making money your first several levels in GTAOnline is hard. Missions give out paltry rewards, you can knock over a convenience store which gives you an instant wanted level and eventually, hires security, and every hour of real world time you can boost a car to add to your pocket. That would be fine if money weren’t also so gosh darn easy to lose, everything costs a hospital fee, a mechanic not unfamiliar to any GTA player, but when you pay a hospital bill for everything from failing a mission, or because another player killed you, it tends to make you a lot more… Guarded with how you treat your online avatar. These are things that other online games simply don’t do, if a game normally has some kind of “penalty” for dying the game will at least treat you fairly and not charge it if you die in say, a PvP circumstance.
Then there’s the cost of everything. From cosmetic options to weapons to car mod, everything cost significantly more than it does in their core game. You could argue “balance”, however items are level-locked to begin with, you can’t just start with a rocket launcher or sticky bomb, you have to work to higher and higher ranks in order to earn the right to buy them. When you consider how difficult money is to make, how much easier it is to lose, and how absurdly high things cost in the online economy you can’t help but feel it was all done for the sake of encouraging microtransactions. That might sound a bit conspiracy theorist, but have you considered this? If you try to buy an item you can’t afford, Rockstar casually suggest you check their real money to digital currency conversion shop. This is a further insult from a game whose story decries a struggling economy and pokes fun at how hollow games like Call of Duty are.
Missions themselves, even when marked as “1 – 4 players” really mean “You need at least 3 or 4 players if you expect this to be even remotely easy.” It’s an idea that was abandoned in the days of games such as Final fantasy XI because these kinds of games weren’t fun, because games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty appeared on the scene and made multiplayer a lot more fluid and fun and most of all, offered either a 1. Quick satisfying experience or 2. Content progression where you didn’t feel “stuck” without other players. The game doesn’t just ignore the advancements of the industry, it ignores the advancements of its own series, using old archaic missions structures they were using in GTA2 and 3, forgetting they released a good half dozen GTA titles after those.
And for all my hardwork, for grinding and boosting cars every hour on the hour, for making sure I dodged griefers while banking my hard earned money (did I mention you can drop your money, and if that weren’t enough incentive to player kill, the game can and will put bounties on your head?), for finally earning my apartment and getting myself a motorcycle as a “treat”, scrapping and shooting my way to rank 14, here’s what happened.
A cloud server crashed and permanently deleted my character.
All that work gone. The time wasted.
GTAV, the core game, still gets a 5/5.
GTA Online gets a 1/5, easy. Just don’t waste your time with it. It’s not worth risking your saves or the time investment. Can they fix it with some stability and some major patches and nerfs? Maybe, but for the forseeable future don’t even bother turning it on.
