Synyster Graves

7 Reasons Which Nearly Spoil GTA Online

by on Nov.18, 2013, under GTAOnline, The Top 7 of Everything

Right before you all seem to think I’m hating on this game, I don’t. I love it. But with the expectation which has come from GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption, coupled with the awesomeness of the competition in the Saints Row series, Grand Theft Auto V really needed to pull out the stops for this one. And they very nearly did, but not quite. You can argue that my expectations are huge and that I’m picking holes, so maybe I am, but this is my opinion, of which if you don’t agree, then we shall agree to differ. I’m not talking about the hundreds upon thousands of wankers I’ve met on this game, this is about the game itself, not the bad losers who populate it.

7. There should be a “select mission” option

After a while, you notice that you will get the same mission over and over again. Now normally that’s not a problem unless you really start getting bored with farming the same crap over and over again. Especially when it’s a mission that requires 4 people, and if you like me and can’t stand playing with all the bad loser random players, but don’t have enough friends online at the same time to give it a go. Plus online random players are liabilities. So why can’t there be an option which you can choose what mission you can play? Since they’ve decided to make the missions a total grind, you could at least grind on your favourite missions instead of getting lumped with stupid missions which aren’t worth your while.  Also you don’t seem to level with the missions, i.e. there’s not enough for higher level players.

6. The gravity is like being on the moon

GTA5 really has a penchant for making absolutely everything into a stunt jump. I don’t know if that’s from watching too many John Woo films, but it certainly gets very irritating when every single innocuous pebble causes your car to go spiraling off  into the stratosphere like Team Rocket in Pokemon. What’s even worse is trying to pilot a boat. Sure the effects of the tides is very impressive and graphically pleasing, but ragging it around in the sea, when about 60% of the time you’re above the water is rather problematic especially if you’re trying to brake or steer. What you do get is a nearly impossible to control speedboat, tearing around like riding a a German V2 like a mechanical bull. Even more frustrating is driving around hilly areas in a fast car, hitting all the roadside paraphernalia like a minesweeper as the lack of contact with the road inhibits any kind of control.

5. Armoured vests are pointless

Seriously I do not see the point or forking out $500 for a vest in this game. Two bullets and it’s gone. What are they made of? Wafers and sellotape? Even more so bloody frustrating is the way it vanishes for no real reason whatsoever, like in the event of a car accident. Now I can understand how your health would deteriorate in the event of a vehicular collision, but why does the armour vanish? Similarly speaking when switching from a mission back to the free roam makes it disappear and considering you’ve spent your in game dollars on it, it seems a bit shit to have your money’s worth get flushed through stupid programming.

4. Enemy NPCs cheat too much

If you thought the NPCs in Just Cause 2 were cheats, then GTA5 had to out do them in a bigger way; missions with ENDLESS waves of enemies gets tiresome after you’ve killed the first 20 SUVs of gun toting mercenaries, but it gets old really really fast. Not only do they know where you are at all times, but they can shoot you with a pistol from further away than you are in range to use a sniper rifle. Not only that but they all seem to have the ridiculous ability of being able to shoot through walls. The amount of times I’ve been killed while completely in cover I’ve lost count now, but what is even worse is when they spawn behind you, and I’m talking a matter of feet. They can spawn and shoot, even before you’ve visually registered they’re even there. It doesn’t seem fair to me, when the challenge to the player is to preempt that a hostile character is behind them when you’ve cleared an entire room out of enemies and one just appears like the shop keeper from Mr Ben right behind. Plpus if they know where you are, the stealth statistic and spending over $12,000 on a suppressor is completely redundant. What is the point of planning tactics with your friends to pull off a co-ordinate attack when you are spotted immediately by an NPC with predator skills through a wall.

3. Impounding is total bollocks

While I can see why this was implemented in the Online mode, it still is a complete pile of bollocks. If you get gunned down by the police, your personal vehicle gets impounded. The problem I have with this is that half the time your vehicle could be the other side of the map, and doesn’t seem anything to do with you, yet it ends up in the impound yard. Worse yet is that you could be in the most Northern portion of the map, yet it miraculously gets transported Star Trek style into the the yard in the far South. You could at least get given the chance to intercept the tow truck perhaps? But no, you have to jump the fence all the way back in South Los Santos and steal your car back off the cops.

2. “The Rockstar Cloud servers are unavailable” and the $500,000 bribe

Anyone who wanted to play online had to wait a whole two weeks after the release date to play. Now when I first got the game, the first thing I was looking for was the online mode. So I waited two weeks as it seemed that there was a delay on the online part being released. Not only was this weird that you’d buy a game and 50% of it was unavailable initially, but the problem was the same for everyone. It didn’t work. Why hype something which you’re not going to deliver on. One of the updates for this game in the first month of release (I think it was 1.04) came along and while all of us started checking our online accounts for the money drop, the only update seemed to be that now all the payouts from the missions now were at 50% of what they were. So no half a million, just half the money you could actually earn instead. This saga dragged on and on and forced Rockstar into giving all players  $500,000 (or “stimulus package” as they called it, of in game currency to shut everyone up, or “compensation” if you will. We all received our payment, only for the same problem to keep happening time and time again way after our payout. Especially on weekends, when I actually DO have time to play. Could you imagine a Call of Duty or a FIFA game devoid of online mode on release? Or even a server which is about as unreliable as using tea bags to plug a dam.

1. The Cops are completely inconsistent

If you thought the cops were total bullshit in GTA4, then they’re even worse now. The single player version they’re not too bad, but in online, they’re beyond a hindrance. The one star mode of alert is rarer than rocking horse shit, as two stars seems to be the staple now. But how do you get two stars? It used to be gunning down a police officer which warranted that level of heat. Now simply driving a car that’s not yours will cause about four police cars to materialise, all using mortal force, which if you ask me, is a complete overreaction. But this is the thing, every single one of them are like some kind of hybrid-fuckedup-supercop. They all seem to appear instantaneously when you’ve got the heat like Agent Smith in the Matrix, and before you know it, you’re dead. Remember how in all the previous GTA games you could use a fast car and cunning steering to escape? Well those days have gone. Police cruisers can catch up and batter any car except for maybe the Bugatti Veyron copy, but driving away from the cops won’t lose them, because they will just spawn more in front of you.But if you drive one of their cars, can you outrun them? No. Because when you drive it it’s half the speed that they can drive. How can that be? It’s the same fucking car! Plus it’s supposed to that you break their line of sight so you can hide, yet often your radar is red and there’s no one around. The cops will converge on your position when in hiding. So how do they know you’re there? It’s bullshit. They should in theory go to where the crime was committed, not pool all their resources where they *think* you are.

The only real way to lose them is to hide. Now personally I’d prefer to use the Fast & Furious  technique to lose heat, rather than the Anne Frank one. I don’t buy into this bullshit that this makes the game a challenge, it’s just a huge frustration that within a blink of an eye, three helicopters have all appeared and you’re dead within seconds. How can a helicopter just appear out of thin air? You need some form of delay in the response if you do manage to shoot one down, but then again it’s not that easy, especially since you don’t have the police’s James McAvoy-bullet-bending-skill-from-Wanted like they do, let alone shooting vertically up from helicopters yet managing to not blast their rotor blades off. The cops also get involved when you’re engaging in PvP fun in freemode, which is completely unwelcome. For a start if a turf war kicked off would the police get involved in real life? Nope.

It’s very sad to say but despite being able to overlook the previous points made here, the police do ruin the GTA Online experience by being over sensitive and inconsistent.

:, , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

*