GTA Online: Review Delay

As I’m sure most of you know GTA Online has been plagued with issues ever since its release last week. My plan was to review this section of the game separately, but these issues have caused me to hit a slight snag.

Rockstar appear to be ironing out the problems but – in short – their advice is that they have no guarantee that character progress will be successful.

To reiterate the advice given: playing GTA Online right now involves an eye-watering level of risk. Do not play this game right now unless you're okay with the possibility of losing everything you've done because of an accident with the cloud servers. It really stings I promise you.

Unfortunately - and I fully expect fanboy backlash for this - the worst part of this is that Rockstar know better than this. These sort of ‘massive’ issues are what your public beta’s are for and this release feels like alpha code still being validated as a gameplay option.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this was always due to have a few snags considering the sales figures and the game is ‘potentially’ going to be incredible. The vision of the project is definitely something to be admired but a launch in this state completely undermines their trailers and fancy words.

For the sharp-eyed and expectant readers you will have noticed that this is now 10 days after the release of GTA: Online. Sadly it took me some 7 days to get passed the first ‘tutorial’ race and this is exactly why I didn’t review anything for you. In fact even since my first run, and like most of the gaming population, my relationship with Rockstar's servers has not been amicable. The general wisdom at the moment is that your chances of successfully getting into a session are vastly increased once you're past the bottleneck of the tutorial missions, which are currently glitch-ridden and hugely oversubscribed. I mean I tried this maybe three, four or five times a day using various Online options and character creations without any luck.

Other ‘bugs’ I have experienced include: my character inexplicably changing his appearance, clothes, gender and high top shoes, or disappearing altogether; cash disappearing from my bank accounts; or just straight-up visual craziness (like those cannabis side quests from the main game without the guns, clowns or aliens).

Despite all that, and the risks involved with playing, GTA Online is a blast to play. Raiding shops, pulling off heists and general mischief has never been so much fun. Remember to deposit your cash though or you’ll likely lose everything you’ve worked so hard to get in the first place.

I’ll get a full review up shortly – with some tips on how to play the game once I’ve tucked some more time into this section of the game.