GTA Online is the most frustrating game I've ever played
- Unscripted Monarch
- Aug 13, 2022
- 4 min read
I've been playing GTA since it became free to PS5 owners, which was around March. I got off to a very slow start, as the game isn't all that forgiving to newcomers. While most other players are flying around in cars and bikes armed with missiles or helos with miniguns, you're stuck stealing cars from NPCs. When a random player decides to pop up with a minigun and destroy you, you have no way to defend yourself. Even if you do, it won't stand a chance against the massive arsenal most players already have built up. When you finally start to build up your businesses you have to supply and sell in fear knowing that a random player flying by on an Oppressor could suddenly shoot on missile and end a few days' worths of work.
Those are the main obstacles you face when you begin GTA Online, but they don't go away as you get more experience and money. With the Criminal Enterprises update, you can do most missions, including sell and resupply missions, solo in private invite-only sessions. The only downside is that now you won't get any bonuses when selling, but you won't have to risk enemy players targeting you in a single moment. However, this doesn't solve the main gripe of the game.
One of the main aspects of GTA Online is shooting. During most missions, you'll have enemy NPCs that you'll either have to take out and/or outrun, sometimes within a time limit. Gunplay can be extremely difficult, even with an aim assist. I have it set so that as soon as I aim my weapon will snap to an enemy. However, there are two main problems with this. On one hand, sometimes the snap doesn't work or it snaps to an enemy in cover. Other times, it will snap to an enemy farther away rather than closer to you. In a few cases, my character would be turned around completely.
But this isn't even my main problem with GTA Online. One problem has persisted ever since I started playing in March; the reload. If my character is shot by any enemy, NPC or otherwise, they will stop shooting and begin reloading. This basically kills your character if you have something like an LMG, which takes particularly longer to reload, or if a shotgun is shooting you. There were plenty of times when someone with a shotgun would round a corner and begin shooting, and instead of my character obeying my controls, it decides to reload. This is especially frustrating with a revolver, which has 1-2 shot kill for any enemy. Enemies that require two shots are major threats because my character will shoot, get shot, and decide to reload while still being shot.
This is not all that bad if you're playing a mission where there isn't a time limit or you have lives. As soon as either of those is the case, the game falls apart. For example, one of the Operation: Paper Trail missions have enemies with miniguns. This took me about 2 hours to complete because I couldn't shoot any of the enemies with any of the weapons on me. When I would aim at them from behind cover they would start shooting me and my character refused to shoot back. Instead, they would go back into cover and reload a full clip of ammo they didn't even use. I had to use a minigun I had picked up from some inactive enemies. This doesn't; seem all that bad, until you realize you can't hide behind cover or sprint with the minigun. There were a lot of hoops to jump through to complete it, but knowing that all my weapons were useless throughout the missions was extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, even knowing that my gunplay problems can be solved with one gun, leads to even more problems. You can't access the minigun until you're at least rank 120 and even then you still have to it and ammo for it, which can be pretty expensive. I recently refilled all my ammo for every weapon and it cost me around $200,000, and that's without the minigun. Obviously, a minigun is going to use up ammo very quickly, which means you'll be spending a lot of money reloading it. Additionally, some weapons drop some of your ammo when you die. For example, if I have an SMG equipped and I die, most of my ammo is lost. Instead of respawning with 26 bullets, I respawn with 10-16 bullets. So on top of running out of ammo while shooting, you can run out by dying too much.
Of course, this can be seen as being more realistic, but I don't care about a video game being realistic, I care about it being fun. GTA Online can be a far cry from fun, especially in the beginning. It feels like a grindy mess filled with toxic and racist players who would rather mess with everyone else using their massive inventory of helos, missiles, and orbital cannons than help you. While GTA online gives the option to join other people as part of their club or as their bodyguards, very few players use it. Instead, it's more like a free for all where a slither of boredom from some guy in their facility can lead to your goods being destroyed in a second.
My advice? Don't play unless you're ready for a major amount of grind. So much so that it feels like you're playing a second job simulator rather than a video game. Can it be fun? Absolutely. But not unless you have money. Money runs the world it definitely runs this game's world (which is realistic in its own way, but still pisses me off, so no pass on that one). If you're willing to endure a couple of months of grind and you have no problems screwing up someone's day, then by god this is definitely a game for you. Meanwhile, I'm gonna lean away a bit, and get back into some story-driven games, which is more of my jam anyways. Maybe I'll check out Red Dead Online, but that's not getting any more updates anytime soon so my expectations aren't relatively as high.
Anyways, I hope this rant gave some good insight into the hell that is GTA Online. Don't forget to mute your voice chat or you'll have 8-year-olds screaming whatever profanities their dad lets them say and grown men saying the n-word like it's the only word they were taught to say in school.
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