Rockstar’s second attempt at an online mode for the Grand Theft Auto series comes with a multitude of half baked ideas that left me wanting a fully realized MMO experience set its universe.

Two weeks after release, Grand Theft Auto V makes the transition into multiplayer complete custom characters, races, deathmatches, missions and a host of other activities 16 players can partake in, however, Rockstar seems to have overpromised and underdelivered on the experience.

When entering the online mode, you are presented to create your character with one of the worst creators I have ever seen. Rather than getting full control over physical features, you get to pick your character’s ancestors. While this is an interesting take on character creation, it leads to some incredibly ugly avatars and limited control of the resulting abomination.

Although many users were unable to progress past the opening mission in GTA:O due to various server issues, I managed to escape the parking lot queue and enter the full world without too much difficulty. Look, we know launch day issues are frustrating but we should learn to expect them at this point. It’s not as though it will remain unplayable forever.

At first GTA:O presents itself with a narrative and mission structure similar to the single player experience complete with cutscenes with main story character cameos. Your custom character remains mute during cutscenes, which leads to some humorous moments and one sided conversations. I appreciate the addition of a multiplayer narrative. It makes Grand Theft Auto Online feel like a single player experience of true Rockstar caliber, however, it fails to reach that level of polish they are known for.

The city of Los Santos becomes a hub for multiplayer activities, and events can be accessed via your ingame phone or in world map markers. I found the city to serve as a hub for other activities instead of a fully realized online world since most of the activities you participate in are instanced off from other players simply cruising the world. It’s less of an MMO styled world and more of something you’d expect from typical online games complete with lobbies and map voting.

You can drive around in your own upgradable vehicle, rob liquor stores for easy cash, and if you save enough, eventually purchase your own apartment where your online friends can hang out although I have no accumulated enough money to experience this yet. Activities like darts and tennis are also present, but after trying each once aren’t worth repeating.

Basic mission structure revolves around driving a car to a location (or getting in the passenger seat and letting another player do the driving for you), shooting some bad guys for a package, and driving to another location to drop said package off end the mission. Occasionally missions will pit two teams against each other, but the goal is ultimately the same.

Sometimes there won’t even be a package to deliver, and rather the mission devolves into a team deathmatch that due to the inclusion of autoaim makes any skill redundant as it amounts to who sees who first. Since your character is so fragile, you end up dying incredibly quickly and because some missions have a team life count, you can end up dead and spectating as your team fumbles the rest of the mission. Sitting back and watching this unfold is unfortunate since it turns out spectating is not terribly enjoyable.

This general mission structure is repeated frequently and gets old quickly and hopefully Rockstar will add more diverse missions in the future. How they stand now, they are worth checking out, but not the most interesting of the present content

Races and parachuting missions also make an appearance and provide a nice diversion from missions and death matches. I found both to be the most competitive as well since they rely the most of player skill. There’s also a race mode that emulates the Mario Kart series by providing power ups! The arcadey nature of the car handling makes the races some of the most fun content currently available.

It’s worth noting that there are some incredibly long load times online. It seems as though everything takes forever to load, and then you are left waiting for timers to count down for the mission to start, people to join your lobby, people to ready up, the map to load, etc. You will grow to hate the ‘Joining session’ screen quickly. I’m not sure if some of these issues are due to the current server issues, or if it just aging hardware. Regardless, you will spend a lot of time staring at loading screens.

Outside of instanced activities, the online world feels rather empty. The 16 player limit is too small for such a large map and there isn’t much to do besides the jobs. I found that free roam mode turned into a giant grief fest with people doing their best to find you and kill you without much of a purpose. It’s also unfortunate that the jobs don’t seamlessly integrate into the world. It would be awesome if you could interrupt a player’s race by firing a well played RPG, or even side with the cops to take a player down after a heist.

Grand Theft Auto Online is an interesting experiment in an online GTA experience, but due to it’s half put together nature, it left me wanting a fully fledged MMO with more than 16 players. I enjoyed the time I spent with it so far but only as a distraction from the main story. The whole thing seems weird right now. Rockstar made it so there is a lot to do, yet nothing to do at the same time and I’m honestly left wondering what the longevity of this mode will be. Deathmatches aren’t that fun due to poor shooting mechanics, the missions are repetitive and boring, and the open world outside of jobs is incredibly empty without much to do. The races and parachuting jobs are fun but do not make up for the rest of the package. GTA:O is worth checking out, but I doubt it will have people sticking around. Rockstar has promised to frequently add new content, but unless there is a total revamp of current systems it may not be enough to keep people interested.

Finally, the move to delay this mode two weeks is an interesting one and I’m not sure if it was just to avoid criticism in reviews or if it really needed more work done to it before release. Billing it is a free add on instead of just GTA:V’s multiplayer mode seems strategic in order to avoid criticism of the main product as whole, almost as if they knew it did not often the same polished feel of a Rockstar product.