IT took the world by storm, ruthlessly hijacking entertainment sales records, indiscriminately beating the snot out of its opponents, and robbing hours of people’s leisure time. Although its violent and crass nature may be the point of controversy, there’s no doubting that Grand Theft Auto V is an unbridled masterpiece – one which has got bigger and better with the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online.

A player’s first task is to create an online persona by entering the appearance of their grandparents.

The software then creates a character which most of the time looks nothing like them. It’s a system that’s clever in theory, wasteful in time, and terrible in practicality.

When in the world of Los Santos online, things are more relaxing than in GTA V.

There are fewer disturbances from storyline, which helps the player to sit back and take in the fantastic scenery. Although detail is a little more sparse, presumably to cope with the online play.

Players need to be on their guard. If other players kill them, they can take all the money they’ve accumulated up until they last banked at an ATM.

Money is important, as GTA Online is all about taking your character from rags to riches, playing through co-op missions, deathmatches, team deathmatches and races, in a bid to bolster the wallet and level-up.

There have been many problems with connections, and disappearing stats, but things are already getting better.

It’s only been just over a week and many problems have been ironed out.

Grand Theft Auto Online is already massive, with a huge amount of interesting, absurd, crazy, fun, and criminally insane things to do, and with Rockstars planned free DLC, it’s only likely to get bigger.

SCORE: 8 / 10