A year ago Grand Theft Auto V was released for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. For many, it was the pinnacle of that generation of consoles and a new gold standard in open world games. Fans eagerly awaited five years for the chance to explore a new world created by the fabled Rockstar North in Edinburgh.

For some the long wait was too much. For others, their expectations grew to monstrous proportions during those five long years and they were subsequently disappointed. But the vast majority of players fell madly in love with the game, spending upwards of 200 hours in the sun-soaked environments of Los Santos and the San Andreas countryside.

It was an almost scarily accurate depiction of modern Los Angeles with it’s yoga teachers and gangs. The game had an incredible range of activities and moods to participate in and experience, from the chaotic to the serene. The ocean was pretty much the best in gaming yet, and the lighting engine was sublime.

There was some critique though, mainly about the depiction of women and the lack of content in the multiplayer portion. The first issue still exists, since the storyline is the same. The Online experience has definitely been improved since the beginning, now sporting numerous new user-created jobs and missions.

When Rockstar announced the release of new-gen versions, it was met with bitter feedback from the diehard fans: the developer was accused of cashing in, releasing an incomplete “beta test” as a full-price product, watering down the potential of the game and several other conscious swindles. I think the reality was a bit more practical than that. The last-gen consoles had been in stores for 8 years so the install base was huge.

From a financial standpoint it would’ve been insane NOT to release V for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Even though Grand Theft Auto V was a huge success, critically and commercially, its vision was clearly clouded by the limitations of the old hardware. For all its audiovisual splendor, at times the game was severely hindered by jaggies, low-resolution textures and noticeable dips in frame rate.

Too often it felt like the RAGE engine was banging its head on a ceiling.

Now, things have fortunately changed. Both the PS4 and the Xbox One have 16 times the vital memory of their predecessors, and Rockstar has definitely put the new resources to ample use. This is certainly the kind of game developer that doesn’t believe in half-stepping.

They’ve taken their crown jewel, and pushed more processing power or memory to basically everything. And it really shows.

On both new consoles, the game runs at 1080p and 30 frames per second. I know that a lot of people out there – myself included – would’ve wanted a 60fps experience. I also have a hunch that with an open world this large and complex it would’ve been a tricky thing to pull off. The PC version, which is out in January will achieve a whopping 4K resolution (and higher frame rates) if you have the hardware to match.

To the people who were expecting the worst, I can tell you that the PS4-version runs very smoothly. A lot smoother than on the PS3. You really have to cause some serious chained explosions or the such to notice a dip in frame rate. Because of this crucial improvement, the game is now a lot more responsive and as a result, more fun to play.

Overall, you get the impression that the game engine finally has some room to breathe. It doesn’t strain under the limitations: instead it flows onto the screen in a much more stable fashion. You can also get the sense that having console hardware resemble PCs more closely has had a very positive effect.

The new weather effects are stunning, especially rain during nighttime and the new reflections are a sight to behold. The already impressive draw distance has doubled, the game has three times the light sources of the previous version and the shadows are sharper. So essentially one of the best lighting engines in the world has gotten even better, which is a fairly amazing feat. Light pollution over the city, the way raindrops shimmer if backlit, the moonlight in the countryside – it all makes the game even more lively and impressive. Rockstar has also implemented a classy depth of field effect that isn’t too aggressive.

The foliage system has received a massive overhaul, with the forests really feeling like forests this time around. The new foliage does a very good job of eliminating straight lines in the topography, which makes the map feel more natural. Although it’s not all praise: one strange quirk of the new version is that the trees don’t move in the wind, an animation which curiously was present in the PS3/PS4 comparison video.

But of course we are talking about the same game a lot of you have already played, so at times it will look familiar. But there are constantly moments when the new textures, new weather effects, particle effects, improved lighting and smoother frame rate just hit you ferociously and all you can do is marvel.

The increase in memory has also brought much-needed solutions to a few of immersion-breaking issues GTA games have been wrestling with for a long time now: the repetition of cars and pedestrians. Every fan of the series has encountered this: you find a hot sports car, and a moment later you see the same vehicle everywhere you look.

On the new consoles, this problem has been greatly reduced. Rolling around the city, you can see several different models of sedans, SUVs, buses, motorcycles, trucks and sports cars at the same time. The traffic density and variation has definitely seen an upgrade.

The traffic density has also been tailored to different locations: you won’t see a 20 car jam at Sandy Shores. On the freeway though, I’ve caused a 30-40 car pileup multiple times. Driving in the city takes a bit more concentration because of the increase in traffic.

After the initial release of GTA V, Rockstar has added a bunch of cool vehicles to the game, but sadly they were accessible only through the garages. Now, all those additions are in normal rotation in the game world.

This added variation extends to the pedestrians. There are a lot more NPCs around, and I have yet to see a blatant case of twins (or triplets) during my travels.

All this makes it less obvious that the game is spawning stuff just for you, even though of course it’s doing just that. As a result the improvements make the world feel a lot more organic.

And now onto the biggest and most intriguing addition to the game: the possibility to play in first person view for the first time in the history of the franchise. And yeah, I hear you PC dudes, there has been quite a few mods to Grand Theft Auto IV that have modified the game to work in first person view. But those mods have always been only halfway there: having missing animations, clipping and numerous bugs.

For over a decade, thousands of gamers across the world have fantasized about exploring a GTA game in first person view. There are also those who think it’s bordering on sacrilege to use something other than the third person view. The truth is that Rockstar basically created the 3rd person open world game set in a modern city with GTA III back in 2001. But since then, the company has been somewhat increasingly trapped in the genre they helped popularize. This relatively simple addition gives them an edge, a new type of charm.

But why did they get around to it now instead of earlier? And what does playing a GTA game in the first person feel like?

There is most likely a number of reasons why Rockstar decided to do the port. One is clearly the big improvement of the visuals: on last-gen most of the assets wouldn’t have stood up to such close inspection. One big reason is timing. The new consoles were coming out, and they could test development on the new platforms practically risk-free. I’m certain that the next project they do will benefit hugely from this little learning experience.

GTA V certainly is a more impressive tech demo than Table Tennis was..

But still I think one of the biggest reasons was the fact that adding a FP-mode makes the game even more competitive in the fairly saturated store shelf. You want to drive a convertible sports car in the desert into the sunset like in Forza? You can do it in V. You want to hunt animals, explore nature and dive with sea creatures like in the Far Cry series? You can do it in V. You can create competitive matches in Online that have free aim FP-modes locked in for all participants. With the heists that are coming out soon (no, really!) they’ll have the Payday 2 / Battlefield: Hardline style of multiplayer mayhem in there as well. And with the new generation, the player count has been upped to 30 for Online play.

For myself, I have to say that I went in thinking that I would play the game in 3rd person and only occasionally checking out the world in first person. I had the preconceived notion that “of course” I should play GTA in the 3rd person view. Before starting, I estimated that the ratio would be 90/10. After only one night of play, I had to eat my words. The new view is just so immersive and different that I got hooked immediately. When I got to the end of the story, the ratio had turned the other way around.

Playing the game from the new camera angle had some obvious consequences – and some unexpected ones. In short, it fundamentally changed the way I played the game and more importantly the way I treated the NPCs.

Driving in first person definitely is more challenging, since you are lower to the ground and you don’t have the peripheral vision that the 3rd person view allows. You have to be more alert, and delightfully in my case it made the neurotic checking of the minimap a thing of the past. Without my eyes constantly switching between the game world and the map, I was able to concentrate on the details of the game a lot more.

One of the big talking points at the GTA fansites has been the amount of variation in the vehicle interiors and a slight fear that Rockstar would only produce a handful of them. But even here, they are not taking the easy way out. There is a lot of variation amongst the vehicle classes, and it’s nice to see a bunch of the instruments on planes work. If your gas tank gets punctured, you’ll see the fuel gauge dropping down. Of course the interiors are not as exquisite as in some games that concentrate almost solely on cars and tracks, but that’s not a fair comparison to begin with.

There is a welcome disconnect from the character you are playing as, which increases the immersion dramatically.

Naturally, the first person view makes everything you do feel more personal. Situations that you previously laughed at are genuinely raw and harrowing when seen from eye level. You start to avoid driving on the curb, because the horrified look on a pedestrians face just moments before said face hits your windshield is surprisingly gruesome. Thrusting a knife into someones abdomen in first person looks really nasty: so nasty, that there will most definitely be some outcry from the morality groups.

Gunplay feels a tad heavier than in some dedicated FPS franchises. I believe the reason for that is that the game simulates the characters body a lot more diligently than a lot of games in the shooter genre. The player isn’t just a floating gun that can run sideways at an impossible pace. You carelessly move a bit too far onto the street and your virtual body might be hit by a passing car, sending you flying onto the curb. There is a slight heft to the gameplay from first person view, and I don’t mind it at all.

The only big issue is the fairly big right stick deadzone that I hope will be patched.

Suddenly you are not some kind of digital puppet master, controlling from afar a man generally doing questionable stuff. You no longer look at the NPCs from above, but rather from a more “equal” perspective. For me, this simple change humanized the pedestrians a lot. Watch Dogs tried to humanize it’s NPC characters by generating a bunch of names and occupations for them. And yet, without any such information I’ve felt a lot more compassion towards the NPCs in V.

Now if I told you that I didn’t go on any rampages during my playthrough, I’d be lying. But the new perspective surely made me less of a menace to the populace than a year ago.

In a smart move, Rockstar has realized that with the new additions and tweaks to the game, there has to be more than a couple ways to map the controller. In addition to the standard and alternate methods, there is a host of FPS-like control types. For a console game, the new version of GTA V is surprisingly customizable: you can choose between 12 different control schemes, adjust sensitivity for look and aim separately, switch the ragdoll camera effects on or off. You can even adjust the field of view in first person mode, which is incredibly rare in console games. Also, the depth of field effect I mentioned earlier can be switched off if it bothers you.

There are a few subtle additions to the controls as well. For instance you can finally aim before firing out of vehicles, which makes you feel more in control while being chased (or chasing someone else) around the city. A completely new feature is the possibility of ducking down while at the wheel to take cover from bullets or to hide from the police.

The audio in the original release was very well done. But as I’ve stated before, Rockstar doesn’t do half measures. They’ve added a whopping 162 new songs to the radio channels and the hosts have new bits of dialogue. The pedestrians have also received more throwaway lines and phone conversations, ranging from the hilarious to the mysterious and all the way to sinister.

The audio mix in the game is really good. Just how well the game mixes city ambient noises, car sounds, music and pedestrian chatter is incredible. I know a lot of praise goes to the visuals, but I think the audio department has really outdone themselves on V. In the new version, you can hear cats purring and the first time I heard a dolphin while I was underwater it was a truly memorable experience because the sound was done so well.

The same quality continues to come through with the new selection of music. Listening to Danger Zone while flying a fighter jet into the sunset is, well, nearly perfect.

Grand Theft Auto V for the new-gen consoles is a brilliant, technically superior version of the crime epic that came out last year. The Xbox One & PS4 versions are closer to the visual quality that PC users have enjoyed for years. The new first person view adds a lovely touch of unpredictability and humanity to the game. And I have to say that I love the audacity of not adding a “Remastered” or “Definitive Edition” to the title.

It’s also highly noteworthy that after playing the vanilla version of the game for around 60-70 hours…I had only encountered about 5 noticeable bugs.

I guess I do have to find something to complain about, since this has been pretty much just straight praising. The lip-sync outside the cutscenes can be a little wonky, but in a game that has so much dialogue it’s hard to be really pissed off about that. If and when there is going to be a story DLC the size of Ballad of Gay Tony, I would definitely love to see a female protagonist in the series because it’s been long overdue.

And I still want a big, chunky revolver.

It’s also highly noteworthy that after playing the vanilla version of the game for around 60-70 hours (without the almost mandatory day one patches of today) I had only encountered about 5 noticeable bugs. In a game this vast, including so many different AI systems and game mechanics it’s a monumental achievement. This level of polish only accentuates the difficulties that Rockstar’s competitors are having with delivering a game that works right out the box.

The “old” Grand Theft Auto V has a Metacritic score of 97. It has sold roughly 35 million copies, when a lot of developers regard five million sold copies a really big success. Now Rockstar has taken that game, and made it not just slighty better, but improved it in basically every way. This is a Grand Theft Auto game that feels dangerous again.

Other developers really need to up their game.