Our favourite GTA pieces from over the years

It’s happening. After some chonky leaks and release dates hints, we now know Grand Theft Auto 6 will be officially unveiled in December.

Even though it’s an announcement of an announcement, it’s still a seismic moment in the world of video games, because that’s the level of influence GTA has, and I’ve no doubt it will be a talking point for many weeks, months, and years to come. GTA 5 managed to straddle three generations of console hardware, after all.

Few gaming series are as famous, or as rich with material, which is why we’ve written so much about Grand Theft Auto over the years. We’ve looked at it from every angle we can think of, from the scorching Hot Coffee scandal to interviews with the people who created the very first GTA, to people who role-play as cops in GTA Online.

To mark this milestone moment, then, we’ve pulled a few of our favourite GTA pieces from the archive for you to read. I don’t want you getting all dusty digging around in the vaults yourself. All you need to do is sit back, peruse, and enjoy.

Grand Theft Auto 5

It’s just Ian being Ian, and doing silly things in GTA 5 VR.

To appreciate the level of interest in a new Grand Theft Auto game, you need look no further than the account of how fans managed to accurately map GTA 5 after seeing only one screenshot.
But GTA 5 was released 10 years ago now, so it can be easy to dismiss it as cynical and juvenile when we look back, and leave it at that. But Chris argues GTA 5 is more than its misanthropy, as he digs through it to find the kernel of magic that lies at the series’ heart.
I find that it’s always interesting going back to the original moment the game was released, too, so here’s our original Grand Theft Auto 5 review.
One of the major things GTA 5 brought us was GTA Online, of course – an advent that has changed the series irrevocably. Millions of people play GTA Online now, and it’s the engine that has kept the game pumping for so long. It’s one of the reasons we named GTA Online one of our games of the decade.
Some of the most exciting things to do with friends in GTA Online are the Heists. Perhaps the most exhilarating is The Diamond Casino Heist, although, as The Cayo Perico Heist showed us, they’re not without their problems too.
There are many other activities to keep you busy in GTA Online. One that particularly fascinated Christian Donlan was racing because of the spectacularly absurd tracks the game spirals through the sky.
GTA Online has inspired a lot of imaginative play, too, one of my favourite examples being a player who took it on themselves to role-play as a cop in the game. Imagine that! Rather you than me.
Other players, meanwhile, have resisted the game’s temptations towards violence entirely and decided to play GTA Online as pacifists. Quite how they manage it, I don’t know.
But GTA can also be about the simpler things, the off-beat pursuits you find while kicking around an open-world playground. Here, Tony Coles writes about the joy of pedalling around GTA 5 on a BMX.
Enjoying GTA can even be just watching the sandbox react in strange and unexpected ways – seeing the cogs in motion, if you like.
Oh, and if you’re after any help playing the game, we’ve written a pile of guides for it. We’ve got GTA 5 cheats (shh don’t tell anyone), GTA 5 mod guides, get rich quick guides, and many more.

Grand Theft Auto 4

Remember this? Digital Foundry went to extraordinary lengths to highlight the impressive day and night cycle across GTA 4.

It’s hard to remember a time before GTA 5, but yes, it really did exist. I even remember Rockstar sending Eurogamer a baseball bat in the post to celebrate the launch of GTA 4, and that not being a bad thing. In this piece, Dan Whitehead takes a look back at GTA 4 and what made it special.
To the time and place it was released in, here’s our original Grand Theft Auto 4 review. GTA 4 would also get two expansion packs, so here are our reviews for The Lost and the Damned, and for The Ballad of Gay Tony.
One of the things GTA 4 did, which it was lauded for at the time, was map New York with a level of detail that few games have. This fastidious realism is something Rockstar games have become known for, both in GTA and in Red Dead Redemption. But what do Rockstar games tell us about the American history they’re based on?
Here’s another question: who are the best characters in GTA 4? I barely even remember Roman Bellic, Niko’s cousin, but Dan Whitehead makes a compelling argument for him.
Though, if you were to ask Kirk Mckeand what mades GTA 4 so special, he’d say something else – something you might not expect: physics. As far as he’s concerned, few games react to you in the way GTA does. Here is the story of how those GTA physics were made.
And shh, we’ve also got all the cheat codes you need to breeze through GTA 4.