With the delay to GTA 6 and the relative disappointment of Mindseye, the open world game lovers' attention has been firmly returned to 12 year-old online behemoth Grand Theft Auto Online, and its latest (free) update this week.
Introduced to a dodgy billionaire called Mr. Faber by the equally dodgy Martin Madrazzo, he encourages you to open up a business (or businesses) in order to launder money for him. The influence of Breaking Bad and Walter White is strong with the Hands On Carwash, which is arguably the main Money Front. The main difference here is that you get told what to do by your new Assistant, Raf, who was sent to help you (and keep an eye on you) by Mr Faber. Extra missions include Money Laundering, which seems to be a series of kill, fetch & carry missions, usually involving simple "go somewhere/have a shootout/collect the stuff/get chased back to base" missions which we've all done thousands of times, but it did reveal a couple of new game mechanics. Mr Faber Work tends to send you on a treasure hunt and missions that end up as ambushes, these play like mini-heists, can be played solo but you'll be opening an online lobby to play these.
The Hands On Carwash will be a familiar location to experienced GTA players, but has rarely been used until now. Car Wash missions are rather silly; you collect customer's vehicles, drive them to the automated car wash and then (hopefully) deliver them back to the customer in good condition. You're almost certainly a multi-miĺionaire by this time and you're collecting cars and driving them through a carwash? I mean, where's the staff? Failing that, how about some sort of interactive mini game when cleaning a car? I mean, what are analogue controllers for if not simulating car washing?
Smoke on the Water Prescription Cannabis is a seedy little store on the beachfront, with the crappiest access of any Los Santos business. The legit work consists of simple delivery missions with a bonus for supplying the requested type of weed. Sadly you can't customise or upgrade the Smoke on the Water van, which is relatively slow and boring to drive, but at least it's better than the crappy, painfully slow Post-Op vans used on past deliveries for MC businesses. There are 10 new daily weed collectibles to find, and let's face it, who doesn't like collectibles! Money Laundering and Mr Faber Work are also available here.
Higgins Helitours offers members of the Los Santos public trips in a helicopter, but is also a front for Money Laundering and Mr Faber Work.
The big change here is that doing "legit" operations (car washing, delivering weed or taking customers on a helitour) pays peanuts but reduces any "heat" the other, less savoury sides of the businesses attract–proving yet again, that in Los Santos, honesty is not the best policy.
There's nothing much wrong with this latest DLC for our favourite game, but Rockstar have learned diddly about pernickety activation/pickup points being intensely annoying. A couple of new game mechanics (including a rather naff lock-picking one that's worryingly similar to Michael's yoga exercises in GTAV) are about the only genuinely "new" things. We still aren't allowed to use our personal, service, military or remote control vehicles when we want–including aircraft. This update feels like it was designed for new or casual players and won't impress veterans, unless they only ever play solo. To be honest, the lack of imagination in this DLC is worrying, let's hope they're saving all the good stuff for GTA 6...
Whatever we think of Money Fronts it's added more to do in an already busy game, including 6 new vehicles, including a Police bike that feels like it's arrived rather late. If you have all the CEO and MC businesses you can easily play GTA online 24/7, and never have a dull moment. Whether that's a good thing or not is debatable.