In case you haven?t heard there?s a new GTA out and aliens have abducted the president of the United Saints?. Wait I might be thinking of something else.
GTA online is rockstars first attempt at an MMO, a lot of the game can be compared to its PC counterparts
Before I could do anything I needed to create the sexy beast to roam the city as, expecting the standard slide bars to create I was instead given a choice of grandparents which affected my character?s face, which is an interesting concept. My dad was John Marston, which is a little disappointing as I like to really customize my character and try to make them unique, whereas this just means there?s a limited number of characters and somewhere out in Los Santos you have a twin brother or sister.
After this I picked my character?s personality such as how long he sleeps and what kind of activities he takes part in, which increases and decreases the stats, so of course I went for the most close to me.. hardly any sleep, non stop parties and illegal jobs, well not me personally but my sim. So its best to move some up and down and see what?s effected to make your character what you want, I made mine real so 9 hours sleep, 8 hours legal job and rest couch potato, that?s how I roll!
Once done you arrive in the game your met by Lemar who if you?re a girl try's it on, but the silent sibling of GTA 3 has none of it! You go girl.
After a short introduction to the game including a race, quick murder and collecting some drugs by force you do the more legal activities such as insure a car? which is stolen? anyway the insure feature is a nice touch, if your personal vehicle is destroyed you can call and claim for a new car with a small excess no questions asked, just like real life.
The missions from each contact are basically the same with varying levels of difficulty which can become slightly boring after doing the same mission three or four times.
The death matches have some decent maps, no two are similar. My only tip would be roll, roll again and use cover. I didn't find the death matches repetitive like Call Of Duty where they take place on a one level battleground you can hide behind pretty much anything and climbing to gain a good vantage can benefit your kill:death ratio greatly.
I am looking forward to the content creator and being able to create our own matches, using Halo as an example there are some brilliant maps created and I look forward to dying on them.
The game still has a few issues, I purchased an apartment which is valued at $400,000 twice within the first week and lost it and upon my third purchase the flat remains mine to use but I have now lost four cars and two motorbikes, three of which were fully upgraded and all tickets to rockstar?s customer services are closed with an automatic response with a link to an update thread which is rarely updated, great game, customer services could improve.
[img=50%]http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc391/stevehayes85/GP4.jpg[/img]
Roaming around the city with friends is some of the most random fun you could plan. Anything is possible. For example my friend was robbing a store and I thought it would be funny to park a Humvee style car at the entrance so he couldn't get out, needless to say, I was right! Two minutes later he had four stars, two helicopters, many police and NOOSE vans and multiple police offers gunning at the small door he was hiding behind, saying not so nice things about my laughing.
But my favorite part of freeroam is the bounties, hunting down and destroying the scum and villainy. Which reminds me of one of my favorite MMORPG games of the past SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) where you could hunt down other players and kill them for money. The only problem I?ve seen are bounties hiding in their apartments as soon as it is placed on their faces. Having a bounty and out driving and out shooting players definitely increases e-peen size.
I also created my own crew "The Hayes Mafia" it has the standard features, I created the name and logo, and when then crew leader boards come out it will be awesome to get some crew rivalries, at the moment I didn't see any real benefit to being in a crew besides an apparent increase in experience points when playing with other crew members but this increase is minimal.
[img=50x25]http://i1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc391/stevehayes85/HAZE.jpg[/img]
Dude, where?s my car? How many of you have blown up someone?s car in a fire fight? Well stop it! That?s naughty. I got banned from playing with my friends for two days, forced to wear a Dunce hat due to blowing up a few cars, which is a terrible mechanic, any game feature that makes people not play needs to be adjusted, when I was a ?Bad Sport? I didn't log into the game due to being unable to play with friends, I can understand punishing bad players but blowing up cars should be part of the game, anyway I ranted about this else where.
GTA online is definitely one of the most enjoyable games available on Xbox/ PS3 to play online, offering various different activities to keep the majority of us entertained and with new modes and add on's planned to come out in the future will secure this titles legacy. On a generation of consoles about to be laid to rest to go out with such a powerful bang is something to be admired. If you haven?t logged in to it yet, I assume you have just awoken from a coma, when you discharge yourself head to your nearest game store and become a potato again.
