CriticalHit Given Early Access to GTA VI: We Like What We’ve Played…

We’ve played Grand Theft Auto VI, and we liked it. That is the news from CriticalHit’s early hands-on preview. There will be a proper review nearer release, but our first response is a good one.

It’s quite a game to preview. Everyone brings something to it: memories of an old GTA, a favourite character, a ridiculous afternoon spent ignoring the missions. Then there’s the sheer weight of the wait. No early session was ever going to answer everything people want to know.

So here is our early take, with the confirmed background alongside it. We enjoyed what we played. The wider picture Rockstar has put out gives us plenty of reasons to want more.

Back to Vice City, with unfinished business

Rockstar’s release page currently has GTA VI down for 19 November 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. At the centre of it are Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, caught in a criminal conspiracy after a job goes wrong.

A crime story about a couple has an appealing built-in problem. You might trust someone with your life and still disagree with them about absolutely everything else. Put money, ambition and the prospect of prison into that relationship and the arguments rather write themselves.

That’s our reading of the premise, anyway. The full story will have to earn its emotional moments. We don’t want two leads who exist solely to hand objectives to each other.

Their backgrounds offer a decent start. Rockstar describes Jason as an Army veteran working around local drug runners in the Keys. Lucia has left prison and wants a better life. Neither sounds like someone with much patience for waiting politely for an opportunity.

The interesting bit is what happens when their plans stop lining up. That’s one of the questions we want the full campaign to explore.

A familiar name isn’t the whole attraction

Vice City has the advantage of being a name that already means something. You don’t need to explain why GTA fans are interested in going back.

But another trip down memory lane would only get Rockstar so far. Leonida broadens the setting beyond the city, with officially named areas including the Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga.

There is room for a change of pace in that geography. City streets, quieter stretches and unfamiliar places can give a long adventure a rhythm. That’s what we want from a GTA world: somewhere worth spending time, including when there isn’t a mission telling us where to go.

Size alone doesn’t do that job. Plenty of open worlds have taught us how exhausting a full map can become. A place needs a reason to be there beyond providing somewhere else to put an icon.

The public material gives Leonida an identity to discuss, rather than simply a bigger boundary. Whether it keeps rewarding curiosity throughout the game is something for our full review.

What you can check for yourself

Readers don’t have to rely entirely on impressions. Rockstar has released an extended look, which the official PlayStation page identifies as footage captured in-game on PlayStation 5.

It is worth watching the official presentation if you’ve mostly followed scattered clips. You get the material in its intended context and can form your own view of what Rockstar is showing.

The same PlayStation page lists DualSense haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support. Those are confirmed features. They shouldn’t be mistaken for a complete performance report, and we aren’t putting unmeasured frame-rate claims into this preview.

Before launch, it’s easy for a passing observation to become a supposed fact after enough reposts. We would rather keep the information useful. Confirmed release details, official footage and our early overall impression each have their place.

Good news, with a review still to come

Our experience so far has been enjoyable. We are keen to get back to GTA VI and spend the time a full review needs.

There’s still plenty to assess: the campaign’s pace, variety between missions, optional activities and performance over longer sessions. Those questions aren’t a reason to dampen the excitement. They are the work of reviewing the finished game.

For now, CriticalHit’s early preview has left us feeling positive. GTA VI is a game we want to play more of, and that is about the best starting point a preview can give us.

The date to keep in mind is 19 November. We’ll be back with a fuller verdict.