Grand Theft Auto

Predictably, GTA 5 remains a masterpiece of a game. Surprisingly, the PC version is technically excellent.

GTA V remains a benchmark game, and its graphical improvements are hugely impressive, but it's the addition of a first-person mode that transforms it into a very different beast.

A sandbox of extraordinary scope created with a masterful attention to detail. A patchy campaign doesn't spoil this wonderful, evocative city.

GTA 5 feels like an infrastructural flavor in gaming at this point, delivering that same action driving and shooting, showing up to comfort you wherever you might want to play it. When novelty appears, like when I was driving through the night and Burial’s “Hiders” played on the in-game radio, apparently added back in 2017, it really stands out. But playing GTA 5 today is not generally an exercise in a new experience for millions of us. It is a return to the familiar, a known entity, and these new-gen versions of the game offer us repetition with slight differences. If that is what you’re angling to get out of your time in 2022, GTA 5 is there for you.

This is how you do a next-gen remaster. Rockstar has pulled out all the stops to bring GTA V up to speed on PS4 and Xbox One. Beautiful, immersive, essential - it begs to be played all over again.

Playing the game again from the first-person perspective is a blast. It's also become my perspective of choice for Grand Theft Auto Online

Stunning landscapes with dizzying visual detail, and a tool that lets you record and edit in-game footage and upload it to YouTube, puts this open-world game lightyears ahead of its competitors

The structure of the game helps, but GTAV's singleplayer is not simply a case of making the best of a bad situation. I've been surprised over the past week how much I've enjoyed revisiting these storylines and missions, after first playing them on XBox 360 at release.

An improvement to the GTA formula set on the densest, most interesting, best-loooking piece of terrain Rockstar has ever crafted.

GTA 5 is beginning to show its age, but it's a testament to Rockstar's original vision that Los Santos still stacks up. The improvements to image quality and framerate give this sunny sandbox a new lease of life, and while some of the single player gags may not hit as hard as they did in 2013, there are still plenty of memorable missions across the release's 30 or so hour running-time. Meanwhile, GTA Online's freeroaming multiplayer lobbies remain unmatched, and while newcomers may find the learning curve borderline impenetrable, if you can overcome its idiosyncrasies there's nothing quite like the crime caper on offer here.