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Heists have been a long time coming - the promised land of GTA Online, no less, the missions that would bring the Heat vibe to Los Santos with style. They are two-to-four player scores consisting of multiple missions and a finale, where players assume different roles on the team - one committing to be a rooftop lookout, for example, while another goes inside a building. Such scenarios have always been common in GTA single-player missions, where Rockstar can control all of the other participants, but got a little lost in the transformation to multiplayer. It's not hard to see why: giving players defined roles works easily in a single-player game, because the set-up will be the same every time with only one variable. In multiplayer, with up to four players responsible for their own part in each job, there are simply many more variations to run through - especially when you want to keep each player occupied, as is the driving force here. The Heists abound with minigames to be played by those in the passenger seat, small crises that flare up for one or two of the team while others are isolated, and ambient chatter.
Unfortunately it is worth stating at the outset that the Heists in GTA Online suffer from the same issues that plague the vanilla mode - the loading times can be extraordinarily long, and checkpoints are often set before unskippable cutscenes or waiting periods. The first of these can be just about excused: that GTA Online works at all is a magnificent technical achievement, so it's hard to grouch about the fact it takes time to set up. The second is just bad design, and disappointing in such a flagship Rockstar product.
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