Re-enact car chase legend in GTA Online's new mode
No discount Michael Caine, though
Grand Theft Auto Online's spring season of race-centric updates continues with off-brand Mini Coopers trying to outfox the fuzz. As absurdly aggressive as GTA's police AI is notorious for being, nothing can quite compare with another human player out for blood, as you'll see in The Vespucci Job, a three-on-one competitive car chase mode shamelessly inspired by The Italian Job.
For some reason, Rockstar have opted not to accompany this update to the game with an official gameplay video. Fortunately, the YouTube channel GTA Series Videos went and captured a match, without commentary, and with multiple picture-in-picture perspectives. It should give you a good idea of what to expect from the new playmode. More of this kind of thing, please! Fewer angry shouting heads, more split-screen goodness.
The player in the Not-Mini is effectively tasked with completing a scattered urban checkpoint race, with at least five Vespucci Job tracks being available at the moment. Up to three other players in police cruisers have to intercept and cut off the diminutive menace to life and limb, and while the cop-cars are significantly faster in a straight line, their vehicles are significantly less agile, and far more likely to get snagged on something racing down narrow alleys and side-paths, and are absolutely unable to follow through some obstacles, like between traffic-blocking bollards.
It's GTA driving at its best, really, turning a pre-set chunk of map into an obstacle course for a game of cat and mouse with minimal effort. I'm still hoping we'll see another high-budget update in the vein of the Doomsday Heist before Rockstar eventually tire of expanding GTA Online, but an eternity of the studio experimenting with fun new combinations of vehicles, guns and complex environments wouldn't be so bad either.
The Vespucci Job update is accompanied by a trio of new purchasable vehicles. The Not-Mini itself, a fancy rally car with an oversized spoiler, and an amphibious light helicopter that starts out in civilian configuration, but can be upgraded with machineguns and missiles if you have the money for it. As always, there's a new set of vehicles being discounted accompanying the update, and you can check out the details on that on the official Vespucci Job page here.