Before GTA Online, GTA 4 Free Mode Was The Best Playground

We explored the crevices of Liberty City, experimenting with viral glitches like the infamous swing set. We grew familiar with all of the notable weapon and vehicle spawns, especially the rocket launchers and helicopters. And it took little time for GTA 4 nights to devolve into pandemonium, often blowing each other up (and ourselves) just for laughs.

Eventually, our sessions became escalating self-imposed “what if?” missions. What if we could stage a drive-by shooting with an ambulance or bus? What if we teamed up to orchestrate a massive highway pile-up by causing a chain reaction with grenades and rockets? What if we nabbed the helicopter and took down that one annoying random player using its propellers?

Yes, those other players were pesky, but interacting with these anonymous participants eventually became the basis for fun in every Free Mode session. Those other usernames quickly became familiar, and as I went back and forth with other players, griefing each other, those encounters would escalate too. Eventually, I would find myself racing them to the airport to steal the most prolific helicopter on the map, and whether I successfully riddled them with bullets from the air or crashed spectacularly in a futile attempt to off them, any outcome was exciting and hilarious.

It was troll or be trolled (or both, in most cases) in GTA 4 Free Mode. After sucker-punching another player, you’ll probably end up getting flattened by a different random player recklessly driving a truck on the sidewalk. Then, you’ll respawn in a random street–only to be sniped by the guy you had just sucker-punched minutes before.

Today, GTA Online is synonymous with role-playing, and the systems and components behind GTA RP are far more elaborate than anything GTA 4 offered. Despite lacking the tools and structure, GTA 4’s Free Mode still managed to let players craft their own narratives, even just in their own minds. There may have been no real story behind my interactions with these players, but I still felt a drive. I had created my own narratives, with rivalries and goals, and hopefully, a fitting conclusion before I had to shut my 360 off for the night.

GTA Online also allows players to freely roam the map, and while I’m sure Los Santos provides very similar opportunities for wreaking havoc, I don’t have as strong an affinity for GTA’s current online offerings. A large part of that is for personal reasons–my old GTA 4 “gang” has long been defunct, so I found very few excuses to play GTA 5 online. I think another component for me is that GTA Online has so much complexity and far too many options for me, though I hope that open-ended modes remain in style for the game’s massive playerbase.

There’s no official word on what an online mode for GTA 6 could include, and I imagine that such a mode would try to carry on what GTA Online has successfully continued for over a decade. But looking back, I yearn for the sheer, unstructured simplicity that GTA 4 Free Mode provided. Rockstar Games is creating some of the most elaborate sandboxes in video gaming ever–so let’s play in the sand.