The "Retro Game Reviews" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
It's fair to say that Rockstar could have launched their fifth entry into the Grand Theft Auto franchise as a standalone, single-player component and that would unquestionably have kept us glued to our consoles for the foreseeable future in of itself. However, never one to rest on their laurels, the indefatigable developers married with it a staggeringly ambitious multiplayer component, one which was finally unveiled to gamers on October 1st (sort of).
Unsurprisingly, GTA Online's launch was, to be kind, a mess. Servers crashed constantly, characters were continually wiped, and "The Cloud" seemed to be running for only a few minutes every hour. Many impatient GTA nuts were quick to brand the game a disaster, even an abject failure, yet Rockstar were quick to remind us that these teething problems are to be expected with online games (remember Diablo 3 and SimCity?). Furthermore, if estimates are to be believed, 15 million players attempted to connect to GTA Online in its first 24 hours, a record for any video game in history.
Almost a week later, Rockstar appears to have ironed out most of the big issues, and having spent a good deal of time getting to grips with it, I feel that it mostly lives up to the hype. Mostly. Granted, the game's opening gambit - a gaudy character creation menu - is wildly clunky and poorly thought-out, but once you land in Los Santos and meet up with Lamar for your first race, things get off to a running start.
Once you've been put through a few tutorials, you're dropped into an online version of the GTA V world, with 15 other players to team up or face off against. The modes are numerous; you can simply roam around the world, murdering other players (though you'll get pernicious rep as a "Bad Sport" if you repeatedly do so), though the key to leveling up fast and earning cash is by taking part in races, deathmatches, missions and other activities (such as parachuting) alongside other players.
Selecting any of these options - either by a waypoint on the map, hosting one from your menu or being invited by a friend/other player - will create an "instance" with the respective players, whereby once your first game is finished, all players can then vote on which mission/deathmatch/race etc to play next. Continue this way and you'll soon enough rack up RP (the game's equivalent of XP) and a hefty sum of cash, also.
A game as chaotic as GTA Online, of course, needs some balance, and there's plenty of that here. Given the enormous potential for griefers, players can pay $100 to enter Passive Mode, whereby they cannot be shot if they are walking around on foot. Furthermore, to stop players simply grinding cash, you are only able to sell a car to one of the city's mod shops once per game day (which equates to about 48 minutes in real life), though frankly, this feels more like a way to encourage players to indulge in some of the divisive micro-transactions that are being rolled out (in which you can purchase in-game cash for real cash).
Also, the fact that the game charges players an indeterminate amount of cash (which appears to be a % of your total kitty) does sort of undermine the entire point of the game, which is to cause as much wanton mayhem as possible, free of consequence. If you die in an awesome chase with police, you have to weigh up its worth in terms of fun against how many thousands of dollars it's cost you while saving up for that expensive mansion in the hills.
Still, there's so much to be said for the scale and ambition of the undertaking that it's easy to see past the missteps and the rickety launch. It could do with another patch to fix a few minor technical issues - such as being unable to force quit a menu if the game is trying to find you a server - but the time I've spent in Los Santos online (especially over the last few days) has for the most part been extremely satisfying. Whether robbing a liquor store with a four-strong gang, stealing evidence from a police lock-up or racing against my buddies on BMXs, this is a rich, mind-blowingly epic game that'll give Call of Duty a run for its money (and its audience) in the coming weeks. And what's more, the world's going to change and evolve just as our characters do.
You owe it to yourself to play this game.
Score: 9 out of 10
Pros:
+An enormous, evolving, interactive world
+Superb visuals
+Enough content to keep players busy for hundreds of hours
Cons:
-Absolutely horrible launch problems
-Restrictions push players towards micro-transactions
-Technical hiccups do occasionally occur
Thanks for reading!
Unsurprisingly, GTA Online's launch was, to be kind, a mess. Servers crashed constantly, characters were continually wiped, and "The Cloud" seemed to be running for only a few minutes every hour. Many impatient GTA nuts were quick to brand the game a disaster, even an abject failure, yet Rockstar were quick to remind us that these teething problems are to be expected with online games (remember Diablo 3 and SimCity?). Furthermore, if estimates are to be believed, 15 million players attempted to connect to GTA Online in its first 24 hours, a record for any video game in history.
Almost a week later, Rockstar appears to have ironed out most of the big issues, and having spent a good deal of time getting to grips with it, I feel that it mostly lives up to the hype. Mostly. Granted, the game's opening gambit - a gaudy character creation menu - is wildly clunky and poorly thought-out, but once you land in Los Santos and meet up with Lamar for your first race, things get off to a running start.
Once you've been put through a few tutorials, you're dropped into an online version of the GTA V world, with 15 other players to team up or face off against. The modes are numerous; you can simply roam around the world, murdering other players (though you'll get pernicious rep as a "Bad Sport" if you repeatedly do so), though the key to leveling up fast and earning cash is by taking part in races, deathmatches, missions and other activities (such as parachuting) alongside other players.
Selecting any of these options - either by a waypoint on the map, hosting one from your menu or being invited by a friend/other player - will create an "instance" with the respective players, whereby once your first game is finished, all players can then vote on which mission/deathmatch/race etc to play next. Continue this way and you'll soon enough rack up RP (the game's equivalent of XP) and a hefty sum of cash, also.
A game as chaotic as GTA Online, of course, needs some balance, and there's plenty of that here. Given the enormous potential for griefers, players can pay $100 to enter Passive Mode, whereby they cannot be shot if they are walking around on foot. Furthermore, to stop players simply grinding cash, you are only able to sell a car to one of the city's mod shops once per game day (which equates to about 48 minutes in real life), though frankly, this feels more like a way to encourage players to indulge in some of the divisive micro-transactions that are being rolled out (in which you can purchase in-game cash for real cash).
Also, the fact that the game charges players an indeterminate amount of cash (which appears to be a % of your total kitty) does sort of undermine the entire point of the game, which is to cause as much wanton mayhem as possible, free of consequence. If you die in an awesome chase with police, you have to weigh up its worth in terms of fun against how many thousands of dollars it's cost you while saving up for that expensive mansion in the hills.
Still, there's so much to be said for the scale and ambition of the undertaking that it's easy to see past the missteps and the rickety launch. It could do with another patch to fix a few minor technical issues - such as being unable to force quit a menu if the game is trying to find you a server - but the time I've spent in Los Santos online (especially over the last few days) has for the most part been extremely satisfying. Whether robbing a liquor store with a four-strong gang, stealing evidence from a police lock-up or racing against my buddies on BMXs, this is a rich, mind-blowingly epic game that'll give Call of Duty a run for its money (and its audience) in the coming weeks. And what's more, the world's going to change and evolve just as our characters do.
You owe it to yourself to play this game.
Score: 9 out of 10
Pros:
+An enormous, evolving, interactive world
+Superb visuals
+Enough content to keep players busy for hundreds of hours
Cons:
-Absolutely horrible launch problems
-Restrictions push players towards micro-transactions
-Technical hiccups do occasionally occur
Thanks for reading!
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
It's fair to say that Rockstar could have launched their fifth entry into the Grand Theft Auto franchise as a standalone, single-player component and that would unquestionably have kept us glued to our consoles for the foreseeable future in of itself. However, never one to rest on their laurels, the indefatigable developers married with it a staggeringly ambitious multiplayer component, one which was finally unveiled to gamers on October 1st (sort of).
Unsurprisingly, GTA Online's launch was, to be kind, a mess. Servers crashed constantly, characters were continually wiped, and "The Cloud" seemed to be running for only a few minutes every hour. Many impatient GTA nuts were quick to brand the game a disaster, even an abject failure, yet Rockstar were quick to remind us that these teething problems are to be expected with online games (remember Diablo 3 and SimCity?). Furthermore, if estimates are to be believed, 15 million players attempted to connect to GTA Online in its first 24 hours, a record for any video game in history.
Almost a week later, Rockstar appears to have ironed out most of the big issues, and having spent a good deal of time getting to grips with it, I feel that it mostly lives up to the hype. Mostly. Granted, the game's opening gambit - a gaudy character creation menu - is wildly clunky and poorly thought-out, but once you land in Los Santos and meet up with Lamar for your first race, things get off to a running start.
Once you've been put through a few tutorials, you're dropped into an online version of the GTA V world, with 15 other players to team up or face off against. The modes are numerous; you can simply roam around the world, murdering other players (though you'll get pernicious rep as a "Bad Sport" if you repeatedly do so), though the key to leveling up fast and earning cash is by taking part in races, deathmatches, missions and other activities (such as parachuting) alongside other players.
Selecting any of these options - either by a waypoint on the map, hosting one from your menu or being invited by a friend/other player - will create an "instance" with the respective players, whereby once your first game is finished, all players can then vote on which mission/deathmatch/race etc to play next. Continue this way and you'll soon enough rack up RP (the game's equivalent of XP) and a hefty sum of cash, also.
A game as chaotic as GTA Online, of course, needs some balance, and there's plenty of that here. Given the enormous potential for griefers, players can pay $100 to enter Passive Mode, whereby they cannot be shot if they are walking around on foot. Furthermore, to stop players simply grinding cash, you are only able to sell a car to one of the city's mod shops once per game day (which equates to about 48 minutes in real life), though frankly, this feels more like a way to encourage players to indulge in some of the divisive micro-transactions that are being rolled out (in which you can purchase in-game cash for real cash).
Also, the fact that the game charges players an indeterminate amount of cash (which appears to be a % of your total kitty) does sort of undermine the entire point of the game, which is to cause as much wanton mayhem as possible, free of consequence. If you die in an awesome chase with police, you have to weigh up its worth in terms of fun against how many thousands of dollars it's cost you while saving up for that expensive mansion in the hills.
Still, there's so much to be said for the scale and ambition of the undertaking that it's easy to see past the missteps and the rickety launch. It could do with another patch to fix a few minor technical issues - such as being unable to force quit a menu if the game is trying to find you a server - but the time I've spent in Los Santos online (especially over the last few days) has for the most part been extremely satisfying. Whether robbing a liquor store with a four-strong gang, stealing evidence from a police lock-up or racing against my buddies on BMXs, this is a rich, mind-blowingly epic game that'll give Call of Duty a run for its money (and its audience) in the coming weeks. And what's more, the world's going to change and evolve just as our characters do.
You owe it to yourself to play this game.
Score: 9 out of 10
Pros:
+An enormous, evolving, interactive world
+Superb visuals
+Enough content to keep players busy for hundreds of hours
Cons:
-Absolutely horrible launch problems
-Restrictions push players towards micro-transactions
-Technical hiccups do occasionally occur
Thanks for reading!
Unsurprisingly, GTA Online's launch was, to be kind, a mess. Servers crashed constantly, characters were continually wiped, and "The Cloud" seemed to be running for only a few minutes every hour. Many impatient GTA nuts were quick to brand the game a disaster, even an abject failure, yet Rockstar were quick to remind us that these teething problems are to be expected with online games (remember Diablo 3 and SimCity?). Furthermore, if estimates are to be believed, 15 million players attempted to connect to GTA Online in its first 24 hours, a record for any video game in history.
Almost a week later, Rockstar appears to have ironed out most of the big issues, and having spent a good deal of time getting to grips with it, I feel that it mostly lives up to the hype. Mostly. Granted, the game's opening gambit - a gaudy character creation menu - is wildly clunky and poorly thought-out, but once you land in Los Santos and meet up with Lamar for your first race, things get off to a running start.
Once you've been put through a few tutorials, you're dropped into an online version of the GTA V world, with 15 other players to team up or face off against. The modes are numerous; you can simply roam around the world, murdering other players (though you'll get pernicious rep as a "Bad Sport" if you repeatedly do so), though the key to leveling up fast and earning cash is by taking part in races, deathmatches, missions and other activities (such as parachuting) alongside other players.
Selecting any of these options - either by a waypoint on the map, hosting one from your menu or being invited by a friend/other player - will create an "instance" with the respective players, whereby once your first game is finished, all players can then vote on which mission/deathmatch/race etc to play next. Continue this way and you'll soon enough rack up RP (the game's equivalent of XP) and a hefty sum of cash, also.
A game as chaotic as GTA Online, of course, needs some balance, and there's plenty of that here. Given the enormous potential for griefers, players can pay $100 to enter Passive Mode, whereby they cannot be shot if they are walking around on foot. Furthermore, to stop players simply grinding cash, you are only able to sell a car to one of the city's mod shops once per game day (which equates to about 48 minutes in real life), though frankly, this feels more like a way to encourage players to indulge in some of the divisive micro-transactions that are being rolled out (in which you can purchase in-game cash for real cash).
Also, the fact that the game charges players an indeterminate amount of cash (which appears to be a % of your total kitty) does sort of undermine the entire point of the game, which is to cause as much wanton mayhem as possible, free of consequence. If you die in an awesome chase with police, you have to weigh up its worth in terms of fun against how many thousands of dollars it's cost you while saving up for that expensive mansion in the hills.
Still, there's so much to be said for the scale and ambition of the undertaking that it's easy to see past the missteps and the rickety launch. It could do with another patch to fix a few minor technical issues - such as being unable to force quit a menu if the game is trying to find you a server - but the time I've spent in Los Santos online (especially over the last few days) has for the most part been extremely satisfying. Whether robbing a liquor store with a four-strong gang, stealing evidence from a police lock-up or racing against my buddies on BMXs, this is a rich, mind-blowingly epic game that'll give Call of Duty a run for its money (and its audience) in the coming weeks. And what's more, the world's going to change and evolve just as our characters do.
You owe it to yourself to play this game.
Score: 9 out of 10
Pros:
+An enormous, evolving, interactive world
+Superb visuals
+Enough content to keep players busy for hundreds of hours
Cons:
-Absolutely horrible launch problems
-Restrictions push players towards micro-transactions
-Technical hiccups do occasionally occur
Thanks for reading!