I'm replaying Grand Theft Auto 4, and GTA 6 has a lot to learn from Liberty City

Nico Bellic is a stranger in a strange land. Grand Theft Auto 4 begins with our morally-flexible protagonist taking his first steps in America, where he's fled to escape a troubled past in Europe. Liberty City, a stand-in for New York City, is nothing like the American dream his cousin Roman has sold to him through letters. To the player as much as Nico, its streets are sprawling and alien – but your only option is to step into this vast machine and hope its cogs don't churn you into smog-stained paste.

Unlike Grand Theft Auto 4's predecessor San Andreas and follow-up Grand Theft Auto 5, Bellic is the only protagonist to begin his story without a sense of place. Fresh off the boat, he owns nothing and knows nobody but Roman, who lives under the thumb of an unpredictable loan shark. But hey, fancy a few rounds of bowling? 

Land of opportunity

Truth be told, I wasn't sure how well GTA 4 would hold up. It turned 16 this April, and I last played a decade ago – somewhat bitterly, as I was waiting for GTA 5 to launch on PC at the time. But with GTA 6 still over a year away from launch, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to reacquaint myself with Liberty City.

At first, Rockstar keeps a careful lid on the series' chaotic sandbox shenanigans. You're locked into a fairly small portion of the map to begin with, and it takes awhile for Nico to find a gun, let alone get into any major shootout. After sinking hundreds of hours into GTA: Online, where miniguns and flying bikes are readily available for just about anyone, the restraint feels wonderful. 

Nico's story also makes me realize how much I've missed the series' grit and grime, which GTA 5 traded for a sunnier tone. My first hours are spent working odd jobs for Roman's ramshackle taxi company and getting into brawls with petty thugs, and there's a surprising sense of vulnerability. Nico is a small fish in shark-infested waters, and even Vlad – the brute who's always threatening to break Roman's kneecaps – feels intimidating despite being a street-level loan shark. 

I eventually get my hands on a cheap pistol, given to me for watching over one of charismatic drug dealer Little Jacob's business ventures, but the power hierarchy still feels skewed. When Nico finally stands up for Roman and kills Vlad, using that same gun to execute him, all it does is draw the ire of Liberty City's dangerous upper-echelon of criminals. He trades living under one thumb for another, and when even that spirals out of control and they burn Roman's home and business, he falls even further into the gutter. For Nico, it's a miserable and claustrophobic situation with seemingly no way out. For us, though, it's brilliant. How long has it been since you felt truly threatened in GTA?

The pursuit of bowling

Though GTA 4 doesn't quite reach life sim levels of immersion, it gets surprisingly close. Some of this works in small ways – like Liberty City's grimy yet functional subway system, or healing by buying fast food – but other systems are larger. You can work for pals like Little Jacob and Roman to make money, and they're usually more than willing to kick back and relax if you'd like to sample the night life. The relentlessness of Roman's "hey cousin, let's go bowling" phone calls have been mocked (somewhat rightly) for years, but these spirited social elements are still mostly unmatched after 16 years.

Pool, stand-up comedy, theater, and darts are just a few of the social activities available, which means you can feasibly spend hours in Liberty City without touching the main quest. Most of these side activities made it across to GTA 5, but since you're juggling three protagonists, they lack the personal touch charm of Bellic and company. Yes, the bowling minigame is fairly straightforward – Nico can inexplicably move the ball after rolling it  – but the real draw is in watching his relationships flourish along the way. 

Beyond magic bowling balls, everything broadly feels much weightier. Cars have more momentum to the point where they're slightly tricky to drive (that's my excuse – sorry Mr. Hot Dog Vendor), and it's often more productive to drive semi-sensibly rather than careen between lanes. If there's anything more fun than half-heartedly obeying traffic laws, I'm yet to discover it. Combat is another thing, though, as there's an odd lock-on system that drags your reticle to their center of mass. On one hand, it's clunky and unwieldy. But on the other hand, I strangely like the way this makes landing headshots tricky. It makes shootouts feel scrappy, and I love the way missed shots tear chunks out of cover. It's a little too easy to beam baddies between the eyes on GTA 5, and although this may not be the perfect solution, I'd love to see GTA 6 steer combat back to bristlier territory.

While I was expecting to revisit GTA 4 and see how far the series has come since 2008,  I've actually come away from it feeling like we've lost a little something along the way, That's not to take away from the massive triumph of GTA 5 –  blasting Vinewood Boulevard Radio during a sunset drive down the San Andreas coast is an experience in itself – but as the series' massive scope has only increased, I worry that we'll lose more of the granularity that has kept Nico's journey so fresh for 16 years. So before we set out on next year's Vice City road trip, spare a thought for the little things that made GTA 4 magical: whether that's its gritty rags-to-riches story, the litany of small touches that brought Liberty City to life, or guns that feel like they'll genuinely take someone's head off if you can just aim them. And Lucia – let's go bowling some time, yeah?

To get the full picture, here are the best GTA games in order