ChrisDorner
Banned
Part one
I’ve played Grand Theft Auto Online, and it rocks.
Okay, where to start on this one.. Rockstar Games kindly flew me out to New York City last week and I got the chance to play GTA Online a week before release, as well have dinner, drink beers and hang with some of the Rockstar crew, but you don’t want to know that, so I’ll just get to the point. The day of Online started off with a brief intro/talk on the game before they let us loose with the game ourselves, but keep in mind, I played on a pretty early build, so it was not the finished thing, and so some things can change from what I write here too when you play it on Tuesday (tomorrow, yes! celebrations). There’s stuff that I can not share with you but you will be able to see it in all it’s glory yourself at some point tomorrow, Oct 1. I was over excited and having fun as well as fighting off jetlag, so I got as much as I could remember out on here, and even this is only a fraction of what Rockstar have in store for GTA Online. Read on below, enjoy.
My hands-on with Grand Theft Auto Online
Intro
I started off right at the very beginning of the game with the Character Creation menu, choosing my race and sex, and then choosing from 4 grandparents, and then mum and dad, which would shape the backbone of what my GTA Online character would look like. I could see a stats menu, similar to that of the single player stats menu, although only some of the skill-stats were present: Driving, Shooting, Flying, among a couple of others, which I thought was great that Rockstar included. You have the chance to alter your stats in the way of, ‘Your character can party for more than 5.5 hrs’, and so a certain skill-stat-bar would raise or decrease depending on what bar you filled up. There was a little text underneath each stat-bar that read, example: ‘Sunday Driver’ underneath your Driving skill, to imply that I needed to get better at driving, and then ‘Wonky Eye’ (just an example, can’t remember the exact titles), underneath my shooting skill to show I need to get my aiming skills higher. I choose my characters head, selecting one few facial features and some caps and shades, and then we got into the game, which started with the Grand Theft Auto Online Introduction, after I landed in Los Santos and completed the Introduction, I was on the streets and ready to make some money.
The World
The free-roam in GTA Online is really well done, allowing you to just cruise around with your friends and other players (16 total) in the world, or you can pull up to markers set around the map and go for jobs/missions or games modes, like Deathmatches and such, as well as being able to launch jobs and game modes via your in-game mobile phone, all well created. There are Ammu-nation stores, Clothes stores, Los Santos Customs and more around the world, all enterable allowing you to buy ammo for your guns, for those that are unlocked at your current level, you can customise your rides at LS Customs, which has some new stuff to purchase exclusive to GTA Online, and you can clothe your character with a wide choice of threads from pants, to jackets, to caps, as well as some new items added in just for Online, which I really gave a thumbs up too, as it’s another great way to spend money in the Online world. Walking into a clothes store and buying my character new jeans, a new jacket and some headphones felt really cool.
You can take part in various sports activities, golf, tennis and more, as well as misc activities including arm wrestling, base jumping etc. For those of you worrying about playing a game of golf and having some lunatic with an RPG firing at you, don’t worry, other players can not come at you while you are playing sports and such, you and your activity buddie(s) are in a different world which makes you untouchable from other players, but you still feel and look in the Online world at the same time, so it works fine.
Safe Houses & Properties Online
There are a lot of Safe Houses in GTA Online, as well as garages, spread right across the map. There was also the ability to choose from different rooms/floors in some properties, say 1 10 floor flat, you can choose whether you want to buy room a, b or c, or a room on floor 2, floor 5, or floor 10 for an example. Another cool feature giving you the player more choice. So, buying apartments in GTA Online, from what I saw, we opened up the internet in-game and navigated to dynasty8realestate.com, which gave us a map of LS & Blaine County, we could look through the list of available properties and then read up the description of the property, as well as set a waypoint to the location. Players in the same game can purchase the same apartment, say you and a friend have bought the same house in Los Santos, when you are both at the door ready to go in, the game knows that you have both bought the same apartment, and will allow you to both separately go to your rooms, or both go into 1 of your’s together. If you choose to go to your own apartment, it’ll work again, like playing a game of golf, you will go into a different world, but still be part of the Online world, allowing you to watch live-feed police chases, (and look out your window and see them happening). After completing some jobs and participating in races and deathmatches, me and the 3 other guys I teamed up with decided that we wanted to buy an apartment, but they’re not cheap, so it takes time to save up, you have to save up and work well if you want to splash out on a nice apartment, which again is great because it makes the money system in GTA Online work well. 1 member of the team I was playing with bought a 1 bedroom apartment down in east LS, which was the cheapest and cost around $80,000, and we all had to buzz at his door in order to come up, we walked about, drunk some whiskey, watched some TV and hung out, and decided it was time to hit the streets again and earn some more money.
Weren't you just shytting on the game in another thread
