Grand Theft Auto 5 releases on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 today, bringing Rockstar's expansive open world game to the new generation of consoles. Digital Foundry will be assessing the technical differences throughout the week, and we'll be bringing you more on what's new and how the original stands up nearly a year on from its release. To start, though, here's our original review, first published in September 2013.

If there was one criticism of Grand Theft Auto 4 that evidently stung Rockstar, it was the complaint that it lacked an endgame. Liberty City was an incredible place, cramming as much character into one city block as most open worlds manage in a thousand, but once Niko settled his last score, there wasn't much to do but cruise aroundtargets and perhaps GTA has little to add to the discussion, but the way the writers and designers crystallise what's absurd about them is still rare and welcome in a mainstream video game, and it feeds into what I love most about GTA: cruising around, glorying in the details and watching and listening as the game holds mirrors up to things we see every day - and then breaks them over someone's head. There's an intoxicating richness to that experience when you first arrive in Los Santos that I've missed in the five long years since GTA 4, and the game bites just as sharply after 30 hours.

The main thoroughfare through the game, though, is Rockstar's latest narrative hike up the criminal mountain, except this time it's delivered