Masks will help during convenience store robberies.

You honk your horn outside of your buddys Vinewood apartment. He walks out and hops in your Aston Martin-ish car. He gets control of your radio. Put it back on WCTR talk radio, dammit, you say. I want to listen to Lazlow. You drive a couple miles, park, and get out. You each equip masks and glasses from the unique-to-GTA Online inventory menu, and walk into a convenience store. One of you points a gun at the clerk behind the counter. You can actually scream at him through your chat headset in order to intimidate him, making the cash grab go faster. You speed away with the police in pursuit, but eventually lose them in a parking garage under some downtown Los Santos skyscrapers. With the heat gone, its up to your friend the one who actually got the cash from the clerk to divvy up the cash as he sees fit. He could give you 10%, but then you could simply stop the car, get out, shoot him in the face, and take all the money for yourself. Or, you know, you could just split it 50-50 like gentlemen.

On a related note, youre able to insure your cars in case other players steal them. You wouldnt want to lose that heavily modified, custom Cheetah you spent thousands of in-game dollars and lots of time tricking out, would you?

Races can be on-road or off.

At any point, you can link up with a friend or 12, drop a pin anywhere on the map, and once everyone agrees, a countdown timer will start. In my race, two Rockstar reps dueled each in a high-performance sports car trading paint and verbal jabs over the headset. It was a tight race until suddenly the four-lane road they were speeding down was blocked by police cars. As they flew through the narrow opening in the middle of the road, I saw that it was two other players causing this carnage, triggering a four-star wanted level and a shootout with the police! This was no doubt staged for my demo, but its clear that, especially in a 16-player game, random insane encounters like this can and absolutely will happen organically. Its like Rockstar took most of Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Most Wanted and shoved them in here, albeit in a world 10 times as large.

Expect air races too.

One amazingly epic GTA Online mission I got to play was a full-on heist the highest caliber mission GTA V offers. Dubbed Titan Steal, my crew of four had to fly into a military base, steal a cargo plane, and get it back to our own airstrip miles away so we could use it towell, probably smuggle drugs or something.

Anyway, we took a helicopter to get there, and had a stunning sunset view of San Andreas from the sky. The draw distance in GTA V/Online is truly breathtaking. I was but a passenger enjoying said view, but the second player in the chopper gets to be the copilot who marks targets.

Upon our arrival, we had a massive shootout with the military at the Titans hangar. My teammates covered for me while I jumped in a semi-truck-and-trailer that was blocking the Titans escape and moved it. I then ran to the Titan, got in, and held RT (I was playing on Xbox 360). After a few moments the planes engines roared to life and the plane began to move. My crew all jumped in and we turned onto the runway and got off the ground before the remaining government cronies could damage the plane too badly.

I flew us north again in awe of the view and couldnt quite line the plane up with the Sandy Shores airfield runway on the first try. Or the second. But on the third, I had it looking good, so I clicked in the left thumbstick to lower the landing gear, backed off the throttle and braked a bit, and somehow managed to land the massive bird safely. Success! Neither me nor any of my cohorts died!

Sure, wear these on the golf course if you really want to...

As was hinted in the trailers, GTA V contains fully playable golf and tennis mini-games. Except theres nothing mini about them. I got to play both, and its like having Tiger Woods PGA Tour and Top Spin hidden inside San Andreas. Several tennis courts dot Los Santos, while the city contains one 18-hole golf course. The mechanics are both familiar and fully functional. Pull the stick back and whip it forward at the right moment on your golf swing, while tennis controls are almost identical to Top Spins. Its surprisingly fun, and tennis can be played in two-player online, while golf can accommodate a foursome in GTA Online. Shooting the breeze with your friends while you hit the links is going to be a huge draw unto itself.

This is one way to "hang out" with your friends.

Yes, really. You can invite your buddies to your apartment bought with persistent in-game cash and they can hang out, sit on your couch, and take hits off of your bong. You can even get high, which will have screen-altering effects. Your pals are also able to look through your telescope it wont look into space, but will instead magnify whats in the distance of the game world (trust me, I asked!) or watch the in-game TV. For instance, a hilarious new episode of Republican Space Rangers. And if other folks in your crew are out causing trouble, you can turn on Weasel News on your apartment TV and actually follow their shenanigans live, as covered by the San Andreas news channel. Or watch them hover creepily near your apartment on your homes closed-circuit security television monitors. Of course, if come home from a hard day of murdering and just want to relax with a shower to wash the dried blood off your body, you can do that too.

[Click to page 2 for five more crazy, awesome things I saw and did in Grand Theft Auto Online!]

We get the feeling this will be a popular mission.

Youll have mission playlists if you choose to enter them (you can, of course, just jump into a Free Roam mode). These will offer choices of missions to take with your crew, with the one receiving the most votes being whats fed to you next. And when you finish one mission, itll send you to the next vote, so that youre constantly doing something. Rockstar says there are hundreds of missions available at launch. More will be added, and if by chance there are some missions that never get voted through and it becomes obvious the community doesnt like them, they can be removed from the game by Rockstar anytime. And by the way, there will be everything from 2-player missions on up to full-blown 16-player quests.

OK so we didn't get any movie theater screenshots, but is this a nod to CJ's street from GTA: San Andreas?

Yes, there are movies to watch in Grand Theft Auto V, and in Online you can watch them with your friends. Maybe youll just laugh together, or perhaps youll go the Rifftrax route and crack jokes at whats happening on the screen. Sadly, I wasnt able to visit a theater during my hands-on time, nor would Rockstar provide any additional details, besides confirming that 16 of you can pack the theater. Looks like this will have to remain something of a surprise, not that thats a bad thing

"Uh, anyone seen an ATM lately?"

While youre out robbing liquor stores, winning races, and completing missions, youll be accruing cash. All of it will go into your wallet. The catch is that, as youve already read, almost anything can happen while youre out and about in San Andreas. If something bad happens and youre killed, your wallet will just be lying there, on your corpse, ripe for anyone to come along and pluck it out of the pool of your blood. Youll need to stop at one of the many ATMs scattered around the city in order to deposit and thus secure your earnings. Fortunately, places like Ammu-Nation and real-estate brokers accept debit cards, so you wont need to extract massive stacks of cash from the ATM in order to make big purchases.

[Editor's Note: Rockstar contacted IGN to add that you can also do your banking from your "iFruit" cell phone as well.]

"Hold me."

You saw this in the trailer, and though I didnt get to see it, Rockstar is releasing the editing tools to allow players to craft their own GTA Online missions. What I did learn, however, was that the first tools to be made available -- which will be at launch on October 1 -- will be for the deathmatch and race editors. More will come later.

Again, no strip club screens, but hypothetically these two GTAO players could be on their way to the strip club...

Because who goes to strip clubs alone? And yes, there is a Make it Rain button to use while your friends look on. Youre also able to touch the girls during private dances, but wait for the bouncer to look away before you do. Get caught being touchy-feely three times and youll be tossed out on the street.