GTA Online’s new heist is more Metal Gear Solid 5 than a beach party

The latest Grand Theft Auto Online update, The Cayo Perico Heist, arrived with a splash on December 15, with a whole new island for players to explore. But if a player boots the game expecting to go to a big nightclub party, as the update was announced, he will be disappointed. Instead, Cayo Perico is a structured mission space that feels more like it Metal Gear Solid 5 or a Ghost Recon game than a cocaine island owned by a wealthy party boy.

There are pros and cons to Rockstar’s approach to the new content. A big improvement is that the Cayo Perico Heist has learned from its predecessor, the Diamond Casino Heist. If a player were to explore the town’s sewers, he could find a special entrance that made the diamond heist much easier. It was a nice little addition that made the protagonists of GTA Online feel like real criminals. Cayo Perico has this in spades. Players must sneak around, looking for extra wealth to steal, and ways to get in and out of the base. And since the island is owned by a drug lord, there are guards everywhere.

The stealth isn’t always great, especially when the player is swimming around a dock – for some reason, the guards on this island can see me from tens of yards away as I swim through the shallows. Other times there are legitimate tense missions, like crouching with a friend and having to coordinate with them to take down four guards in three seconds before they can raise the alarm.

Image: Rockstar Games

Unlike most missions in Grand Theft Auto Online, players caught on this island are not immediately wasted and sent back to the checkpoint. Instead, the guards go ahead and kick you off the island, and you have to head back to Los Santos with shame. You not to have to discover; you can jump early for a nice, easy robbery. But you miss out on extra opportunities and walk on a more dangerous route with much less money.

Since this is not an open world space, players don’t have much of an opportunity to just wander around like on the main map. It’s not a free-roam space, which is disappointing for players hoping for new real estate after years of navigating the same routes in Los Santos. It’s possible Cayo Perico will return in future updates, but for now it’s not a true extension of GTA Online’s open world.

But this does mean you can complete the entire heist from start to finish in invitation-only lobbies. That’s a huge improvement as it means you won’t be thrown into a world with tons of other players. No one can stalk you with a flying Oppressor Mk II and blow you up right in the middle of your setup, and you won’t come across a new account that has hacked the server so they can lock your character in a cage for fun.

There is still time to party, and in the new nightclub you can dance to lively tunes with your friends. Players can pick up a cool million or two from each raid, which comes in handy when the new submarine costs about GTA $ 10 million to unlock and fully upgrade, and it’s nice to have the option to do the raid solo. But despite the trailers, Cayo Perico is less of a non-stop hedonistic thrill ride and more of a solitary trek through hostile territory.