<img src="https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p/?c1=2&amp;c2=10055482&amp;cv=4.4.0&amp;cj=1"> Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Community guidelines
    • links
    • Meet the team
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
View
Popular
  • Memorial Day Deals
  • Computex 2025
  • TES4: Oblivion
  • Elden Ring: Nightreign
  • GTA 6

Recommended reading

Internet Roadtrip
Hardware Grab 900 of your closest internet strangers and hit the road, online
four GTA characters standing together
Grand Theft Auto GTA RP: How to play on GTA 5 roleplaying servers
Protagonists Jason and Lucia in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Grand Theft Auto Rockstar just dropped a ton of new GTA 6 details
Protagonists Jason and Lucia in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Grand Theft Auto I'm already totally enamored with Grand Theft Auto 6's Jason and Lucia, and I've had them for less than 5 minutes
Key art of Leonida Keys.
Grand Theft Auto The details and takeaways you might've missed in the new GTA 6 trailer
Key art of Mount Kalaga National Park in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Grand Theft Auto The GTA 6 map will include a 'lush' national park in the mountains featuring 'hillbilly mystics and paranoid radicals'
Protagonist Lucia Caminos in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Action GTA 6's second trailer is here to help numb the pain of it being delayed
  1. Games
  2. Action
  3. Grand Theft Auto
  4. Grand Theft Auto 5

A hitchhiking adventure in GTA 5 Online

Features
By Christopher Livingston published 23 April 2015

A stranger is just a friend you haven't met.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an commission. Here’s how it works.

Thumbing a ride

Thumbing a ride

My GTA 5 Online garage, like yours, is filled with fancy cars. This week, I decided to leave them parked and spend my time getting around the map in a different way: by hitchhiking. In every session I ed, I stood by the side of the road, flagged down other players, and asked if they could give me a ride to the beach. Here's how it went.

Page 1 of 18
Page 1 of 18
Carjack

Carjack

I step out of my ritzy apartment to find a woman face-down on the sidewalk. Across the street, a player is yanking an NPC out of his car. Perfect! "Can you drive me to the beach?" I yell, waving. He speeds off without a word. Paramedics arrive, examine the dead woman, then depart, leaving her there. No one else drives by for a while, so I start walking.

Page 2 of 18
Page 2 of 18
Hopes dashed

Hopes dashed

Near an auto-body shop, a sharply dressed player pulls up in a souped-up jalopy and waits. I cross the street, waving and inquiring about a ride. He doesn't respond, but just as I get to the enger door, he pulls away. Psyche! At least he didn't run me over. Other people do.

Page 3 of 18
Page 3 of 18
 on the right

on the right

This player is roaring along the road toward me. I wave and yell my request, and he sharply veers across four lanes of traffic. It seems promising except for the fact that he's not slowing down, even a little bit. He sideswipes me and I tumble to the ground, climb back to my feet, and then get knocked down again by a falling light pole. I guess that's a "No."

Page 4 of 18
Page 4 of 18
Ramrod

Ramrod

While standing on another corner, I spy a dot on my minimap headed right toward me at an alarming speed. I turn around just in time to get completely mashed by the driver. I get a brief flicker of something unusual about his wild, angry eyes, so I take a look at them in the editor.

Page 5 of 18
Page 5 of 18
Don't worry, be happy

Don't worry, be happy

He's wearing smiley-face lenses. Combine those with his furious expression, his history professor sweater vest, and the grim fact that he's just mowed me over without stopping, and it's a bit chilling.

Hitchhiking

Page 6 of 18
Page 6 of 18
Excuse me

Excuse me

Players aren't the only drivers running me down. Spend enough time on a street corner and you'll observe NPCs driving like jerks, too. This one was startled by something down the block, so she sped onto the sidewalk and knocked me into the street, then proceeded to knock me down three or four more times, screaming in alarm with each collision.

Page 7 of 18
Page 7 of 18
Honk

Honk

Another time, while trying to get the attention of a player parked at a curb, I heard someone honk. I turned and saw an NPC driver trying to squeeze by to my right. Then she simply floored it and ran me over, looking calmly into my eyes the entire time. At least she wasn't wearing freaky lenses.

Page 8 of 18
Page 8 of 18
Liberated

Liberated

A ride! I got a ride! A pleasantly understated player-driven vehicle screeches to a halt, turns around, smashes through a few cars, and then stops for me, honking the horn. I climb in and thank the driver. "Kill yourself," he responds. Okay. At least it's a ride! We roar off.

Page 9 of 18
Page 9 of 18
Suggestion noted

Suggestion noted

It becomes clear the driver is not taking me to the beach, because when I ask "Can you take me to the beach?" he says "Can you kill yourself?" "I placed a waypoint on the map," I continue. "Kill yourself." I decide to just sit silently for a while as he careens through the streets, terrifying pedestrians.

Hitchhiking

Page 10 of 18
Page 10 of 18
This is my stop

This is my stop

After five minutes of ramming, flipping, rolling, speeding, and repeated suggestions that I end my own life, it becomes clear this guy is never going to take me to the beach. I decide to let myself out at a random corner. Turns out I'm roughly two blocks from where he picked me up.

Page 11 of 18
Page 11 of 18
Targeted

Targeted

Naturally, I've been killed by players on foot. I've been shot, blown up, and beaten countless times. Not everyone I run into on foot shoots me, though. This masked fellow charges me from across the street, then walks around me cautiously pointing a rifle at my head. I wave, and he runs off without firing. Maybe it was the similarity in wardrobe that stayed his trigger finger.

Page 12 of 18
Page 12 of 18
Jazz hands

Jazz hands

Then there's this guy. He walks over wiggling both hands in the air, stopping six inches in front of me. I wave. He continues to stand there wiggling his hands. When I cross the street to stand an another corner, he follows, then gets right in my grill again, always with his jazz hands.

Page 13 of 18
Page 13 of 18
Standoff

Standoff

I know he's trying to test my patience, but he doesn't know I'm the guy who spent ten weeks walking across Skyrim. Some chump waving his hands in my face? It's like a vacation to me. I decide to take him to school. Long minutes as we stand inches apart. Shadows lengthen. The sun sets. The only movement is from his hands. Finally, he quits the session. I thought so. Rookie.

Page 14 of 18
Page 14 of 18
Using Chrome

Using Chrome

Later that night, a woman responds to my request for a ride, screeching up in a chrome-covered sports car and fixing me in its single working headlight. I climb in, and without much hope, set a waypoint at the coast. Wordlessly, she skids into a u-turn and speeds toward the beach.

Page 15 of 18
Page 15 of 18
Time and space

Time and space

She drives so fast we begin outpacing the textures of the city, and we speed across gray nothingness for a while. Several times we actually outpace her car, floating in the air in front of it. We're breaking all natural laws, but we're making great time. She pulls up at the waypoint and I hop out, thank her, and clamber over the wall next to the highway.

Page 16 of 18
Page 16 of 18
Shoot the moon

Shoot the moon

I did it! I hitchhiked to the beach in GTA 5 Online. While I gaze at the moon and look at the waves, wondering why I hitchhiked to the beach in GTA 5 Online, there's a hiss next to my ear as several bullets zip past me. I turn and see that the driver who brought me here has climbed over the wall and is now shooting at me with a pink rifle.

Page 17 of 18
Page 17 of 18
Goodbye

Goodbye

I turn and run back up the beach toward her, figuring at least I can make myself an easier target. She sees me running, climbs back over the wall, hops into her car, and speeds away.

Thanks for the ride, stranger.

Hitchhiking

Page 18 of 18
Page 18 of 18
TOPICS
Best of
Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Social Links Navigation
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Read more
Internet Roadtrip
Grab 900 of your closest internet strangers and hit the road, online
four GTA characters standing together
GTA RP: How to play on GTA 5 roleplaying servers
Protagonists Jason and Lucia in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Rockstar just dropped a ton of new GTA 6 details
Protagonists Jason and Lucia in Grand Theft Auto 6.
I'm already totally enamored with Grand Theft Auto 6's Jason and Lucia, and I've had them for less than 5 minutes
Key art of Leonida Keys.
The details and takeaways you might've missed in the new GTA 6 trailer
Key art of Mount Kalaga National Park in Grand Theft Auto 6.
The GTA 6 map will include a 'lush' national park in the mountains featuring 'hillbilly mystics and paranoid radicals'
Latest in Grand Theft Auto
GTA would have been considered a roguelike
If the original Grand Theft Auto came out today, we’d call it a roguelike
Cal Hampton in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Take-Two CEO gets all philosophical yet again about GTA 6, says its delay is to his team's 'search for perfection'
Exclusive screenshots from NaturalVision Enhanced
GTA 5 Enhanced may have 'Mixed' reviews on Steam, but the update has opened new doors for modders pushing the boundaries of reality in a sandbox now over 10 years old: 'We have an amazing opportunity to take things further'
Exclusive screenshots from NaturalVision Enhanced
The best-looking GTA 5 visual overhaul mod of all time lands today—these exclusive screens are so lifelike they'll make you question what is real
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced screen - Trevor setting fire to somebody&#039;s big dumb truck
While we're in the GTA 6 waiting room, the Epic Games Mega Sale has the next best one on discount
Brian Heder in Grand Theft Auto 6.
Charting the GTA 6 map: Vice City, Ambrosia, and everything in between
Latest in Features
Oblivion Umbra NPC close up
The best videogame RPGs are really tabletop RPGs in disguise—and that might just be their secret sauce
A screenshot from Two Strikes showing two sword-bearing men in combat
Five new Steam games you probably missed (May 26, 2025)
the finals and Splitgate 2
Stop messing with team deathmatch
Leif Johnson smiling at the camera
ing Leif Johnson, the gaming industry's one and only cowboy poet
The famous YOU&#039;RE WINNER screen.
One of the worst games of all time got a Steam release, but is it even that bad compared to our current hell of asset-flips and Steam shovelware?
A sun that is about to explode
Nubby's Number Factory is like Balatro if it were a plinko roguelike and instead of Jokers had items like Squirmy, Pedro, and A Ton of Feathers
  1. Annapro carrying case, GameSir Nova Lite controller, SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds, and Asus ROG Falchion RX Low Profile keyboard on a blue background with PC Gamer Recommended logo
    1
    Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads
  2. 2
    Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop
  3. 3
    Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most
  4. 4
    Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands
  5. 5
    Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested
  1. NZXT H3 Flow
    1
    NZXT H3 Flow case review
  2. 2
    Hisense C2 Ultra projector review
  3. 3
    JDM: Japanese Drift Master review – The most ambitious driving game in years, but that ambition sometimes gets the better of it
  4. 4
    Monster Train 2 review: Roguelike deckbuilder heaven, and a worthy challenger to Slay the Spire and Balatro
  5. 5
    Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny review: Dulled with age

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • Future's experts
  • and conditions
  • Cookies policy
  • with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please or to comment

Please wait...