If you live in the UK, then the GTA Online update will be out very soon indeed, from 12pm – so you can download and start playing pretty much now. We’re going to be reviewing Online separately from GTA 5, but as with any online game, it’s impossible to get a feel for how it’s going to hold up before it’s out and in the hands of everyone, so it will be a while before we give our full verdict. In the meantime, though, I spent a good few hours with the beta over the weekend. Here are some first impressions.

It’s important to point out that a lot of what I’ve experienced so far of GTA Online will change before launch, particularly elements of the interface. The beta was also restricted to a very small number of players, so getting full 4-10-player missions going was nearly impossible. It did give me an idea of the overall experience, though, and so far that impression is overwhelmingly positive.

You start off creating a character, picking a name, a genetic heritage that determines his or her appearance, and a hairstyle before allotting skill points (like the single-player protagonists, GTA Online characters build up skill in driving, shooting, flying and stealth). From then on, your GTA Online avatar appears in the fourth slot in the character-switching wheel alongside Michael, Trevor and Franklin. Select them, and the map zooms out over Los Santos before zooming down again to wherever you last left them. You won’t find them kicking off at a country club, walking out of a seedy motel or passed out in their underpants, though – at least, not in the beta.

One of the cooler things about GTA Online is that the story missions and dialogue actually do change depending on your avatar’s gender. If you’ve ever wanted to play a Grand Theft Auto game as a female protagonist, well, now you can – albeit as a mute avatar as opposed to a fully fleshed-out character. Upon landing in Los Santos as a half-West-Indian badass with a Mohican, I was met at the airport by Lamar holding a rose; his attempts at sweet-talking my character didn’t go down too well.

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The integration of Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player story goes much further than I thought it would.

The integration of Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player characters goes much further than I thought it would. Alongside the hundreds of races, deathmatches, base jumps and other archetypal missions, there’s a storyline that plays out similarly to GTA V’s. You begin by doing jobs for people like Lamar and Simeon, earning introductions to other characters from GTA V – including Trevor. These missions tend to be co-operative and scripted, accompanied by phonecalls and cutscenes, and involve 1-4 players – playing GTA missions co-operatively, so far, is exactly as fun as I hoped it would be.

One of these missions, a fairly simple assault on a meth lab, was transformed by the addition of three other people. One of us was sniping from a distant roof, covering two others who were stealthily sneaking up on enemies to thin out the ranks. The fourth player, meanwhile, drove straight into the building in a truck to create a distraction. Another had one team of players trying to steal an aircraft from a military base whilst the other team was in fighter jets, trying to stop them from escaping. GTA Online has heists, too, apparently as complex as the single-player ones, but I didn’t get to see any of them.

Missions like this make up about 15% of what’s available on the map at any one time. The rest are more conventional deathmatches, races, sudden-death matches, competitive base-jumping and horde-mode-style shootouts; these range from the predictable to the ludicrous. In races you can customise the rules, turning traffic on or off or enabling weapons for a real GTA race where you’re just as likely to be blown up by a rocket as spin out on a corner. Right now, a lot of those missions feel like filler compared to the more adventurous ones, but even the filler is exciting to play.

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In a real GTA race you’re just as likely to be blown up by a rocket as spin out on a corner.

I enjoyed the deathmatches less, though that’s primarily because I could never get a game with more than about three people in it, which turned them into games of cat and mouse over sizeable, multi-layered maps with plenty of places to hide rather than frantic shoot-outs.  I’m also not sure about the way that GTA’s auto-aim affects player-on-player deathmatches; when the reticule leaps straight to another player when you squeeze the left trigger, victory usually comes down to who sees the other player first rather than shooting skill.

The maps themselves are based on areas of Los Santos – I played in the Blaine County desert, in the airport, at the Vinewood studios, all over the place – but they’ve clearly been altered for multiplayer. It’s easier to get onto rooftops, for instance, though if you want a sniper rifle instead of the default pistol you really have to earn it.

Money and unlocks drive your progress in GTA Online. Playing earns you experience, Reputation Points, which increase your rank. As your rank goes up, new guns, cars, hairstyles, tattoos et cetera become available to buy, but you still have to earn the money for them by doing missions (and then depositing your cash at an ATM, lest someone comes along and tries to steal it from you when you’re wandering Los Santos off-mission). Want to be able to start deathmatches with a sub-machine gun rather than a pistol? First you have to reach the appropriate rank, then you have to buy it from AmmuNation.

It takes a while to earn money in GTA Online. In the beta, guns were 10k plus, and I earned about $1500 per mission if I did well. The cheapest garage, meanwhile, was 25k. You’re given one car for free (top tip: be sure to steal a good one, it’s your only chance), but if you want to upgrade it or get a better one, it costs money. I can definitely see how spending actual, real money on GTA dollars via either PSN or Xbox Live could be tempting. You can’t pay to unlock things, however, so paying real money can’t give you a gameplay advantage. It can only shortcut your path to buying something expensive like a boat, plane or house once you’ve reached the required rank.

I barely scratched the surface of GTA Online in six hours with the beta; it’s launching with over 500 missions, of which I could only sample a fraction, and I had to leave the potential for off-mission open-world chaos untapped. The big question right now is whether Rockstar’s online infrastructure is up to the challenge of millions of people trying to play at once. Both the iFruit app and Rockstar Social Club struggled after GTA V’s launch, so some teething problems are to be expected.

I’ll be updating this review in progress regularly over the next week. In the meantime, if you see me on the streets of Los Santos, please don’t shoot me and take all my money.

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