Grand Theft Auto Online

Grand Theft Auto Online is the one game on this list I play almost entirely solo, dropped into a public lobby with strangers instead of a coordinated squad. That is unusual for me, since most of my multiplayer time goes to friends over a headset, not randoms. Even alone, though, Los Santos carries you. It remains the most content-dense open city on Xbox, heists, businesses, and races stacked on a decade of updates, so there is always another job to try. Rockstar's public lobbies get chaotic fast. Random players will wreck your delivery run for no reason beyond boredom. Bring an actual crew and the heists turn into some of the best structured co-op on this entire list.

GTA Online has been running since 2013 and somehow still pulls serious numbers. Part of that is inertia, but most of it is that the heist structure is genuinely excellent when you have a crew that communicates. The Cayo Perico heist in particular is one of the best designed co-op missions in the game, tight enough to feel planned and loose enough for things to go entertainingly wrong. The onboarding is notoriously rough for new players, and the grind to meaningful content is long unless you are willing to spend real money or accept help from a higher-level friend. Worth the friction if you have patient friends to play with. Not worth it solo.

Los Santos is still one of the best multiplayer sandboxes ever made, and I say that as someone who has been playing GTA since the PS2 era. The sheer density of what you can do in this city, heists, businesses, races, random encounters, just driving around causing problems with friends, is hard to match. The PS5 upgrade gives it a sharper look and faster load times, which matters more than it sounds when you are jumping between jobs. The honest caveat is that the grind has only deepened over the years. Earning serious money without spending real money takes patience. If you can get past that, there is more content here than most games ship with in their entire lifecycle.

GTA Online on PS5 is a different thing from most multiplayer games on this list. There's no single loop, you might spend one session running a heist with friends, another just causing chaos in free roam, another competing in races. Up to 30 players share a lobby, and what happens is never entirely predictable. The PS5 version added visual and performance improvements that make it feel current. The honest trade-off is the Shark Card system, which sells in-game currency for real money. You can earn everything through play, but the grind to expensive content is long. No crossplay with PC or Xbox, PS5 players only.