It’s pretty staggering to think that GTA Online will be celebrating its ninth anniversary later this year. In that time, it’s jumped across three console generations and been bolstered by nearly 40 updates. As such, it’s a very different experience to when it launched, back when the term ‘games as a service’ was still a relatively new idea and Skrillex reigned supreme. Fundamentally, though, GTA Online is still the same game you will have played all those years ago. The shooting is clunky, the characters still control like small shipping frigates, and there’s a general toxicity to its online community that harkens back to the dark days of Modern Warfare 2 lobbies (my mother is a saint, I’ll have you know).
GTA Online in 2022 is a particularly strange thing then, and it’s also much unlike anything else in gaming. Its foundations are old, ancient even, but with the sheer barrage of constant updates from Rockstar, it manages to straddle new and dated ideas simultaneously, to predictably mixed results. The sheer breadth of things to do is where it thrives, however. Whether you want to run drugs around the city, roleplay as a business executive, or simply tune-up your cars and take them along to meets, there really is always something to keep you busy.
Perhaps the most pressing question surrounding GTA Online is how friendly it is to new players. There’s good news on this front, in that Rockstar recently streamlined the onboarding process, with a set of flashy new menus serving as a gentle guiding hand, shepherding the player through the opening hours.
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