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Grand Theft Auto 4 has aged rather well, you know. Load it up today, five years later, and the streets of Liberty City still look and feel incredible. There's so much life in that city. A lot of games possess character, but GTA 4 is one of the few where each neighbourhood and borough can lay claim to its own; it's a world with an attention to detail that has become completely alien to gamers brought up in the shadow of the 18-month development cycle.GTA 4 may not have aged in that sense, then, but the passage of time has had another impact: it's starting to feel like a period piece. Released during the final throes of prosperity before the global economic crisis really kicked off, it skewered the post-9/11 world of 24-hour rolling fear and terror alert levels, knocking it all sideways and exposing it to the ridicule it deserved. Those things still exist, of course, but so much of the world we now live in was still taking shape when Niko Bellic was busy being pressed onto discs. (The Lost and Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony expansions, which came later, may have elaborated on the GTA 4 world, but they still only told more stories within the periodic framework their host game established.)
That's why I'm so happy to see that GTA 5 finally has a release date. September 17th may seem a long way away - especially considering we all half-expected it in April or May - but despite the delay a new Grand Theft Auto game is still incredibly timely.
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