Have You Played… Grand Theft Auto Online?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

My friends and I have three matching tattoos. One for each heist we pulled. The shooting, driving, rocket-launching and knife-criming sandbox of Grand Theft Auto Online is a jolly lark. But even the four player co-op heists have created fewer memories for me than the silliness of my friends when there’s no murdering to be done.

That’s the dirty soul of GTA Online. It is a game of dicking about. Once, we all got into tiny swim shorts and went to the beach for a day out. Driving jetskis, diving off the pier, riding the rollercoaster. More recently we’ve been stuffing our faces with free snacks from the receptionist’s desk in a pal’s underground hideout. Rockstar have always been good at making a detailed city and, unlike the single player, the online mode lets me enjoy that city with people I don’t actually despise from the bottom of my spleen.