The GTA: The Trilogy is a compilation of the three main GTA games and their expansions, packaged together in one complete package. 99% off sale until 9/9/18!
One of the most popular video game franchises in history, GTA has been a cultural phenomenon since its first release back in 1997. The franchise continues to grow and evolve thanks to constant innovation, but what does it take for games like GTA to reach new audiences?
GTA: The Trilogy is a collection of the three popular GTA games. It was released on October 4th, 2018.
GTA: The Trilogy is far from definitive (pic: Rockstar Games)
The controversial GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas remaster trilogy delivers GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas to current platforms, but at a significant expense…
‘We’ve celebrated our enthusiasm for fantastic games and shown the value of maintaining our heritage for future generations of gamers,’ Microsoft said yesterday as they announced the end of its backwards compatibility program. They’ve clearly contributed, but unfortunately, they’re the exception rather than the norm. Most corporations only care about their back catalogue when they need to make quick money or cover a vacuum in their release schedules, with the desire to preserve a treasured classic being a distant second.
In the last few weeks, we’ve seen yet another shameless rehash of Skyrim that fails to fix a litany of 10-year-old bugs, as well as the Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack, which offers a slew of poorly emulated N64 games for an exorbitant fee, and it’s a wonder social services didn’t get involved.
Which takes us to GTA: The Trilogy and a magnificent own goal that belongs in the hall of fame of sport. Nobody anticipated or requested for all three PlayStation 2 titles to be re-released at the same time, only weeks after they were initially announced, yet here we are with the Definitive Edition: a clumsy, unprofessional collection of three of the most famous video games ever produced.
It’s critical to emphasize right away that this isn’t a Cyberpunk 2077 scenario. Although all three games have flaws, just a handful of them have an influence on how you play, and we only encountered a number of crashes — and they were all in San Andreas.
It’s normal to witness vehicles and people vanish into the ground or pass through barriers, as well as random things float through the air or vanish, although you’ll almost never fail a task because of them. Instead, the bulk of the problems are superficial, such as the stupidly broken way rain works, when it penetrates solid things and then vanishes as it crosses the water.
One of the contributing issues is that Rockstar has never done a decent remaster of any of the games previously, for reasons best known to themselves. Only San Andreas’ mobile version was published on consoles, despite the fact that GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas all had mobile versions (which is strange in in of itself, given how ill-suited the games’ controls are to a touchscreen). As a result, many individuals will have not played the games since they were initially published, which might provide a cultural shock as memories fade.
The Definitive Editions are annoying for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important is that few games need a full remaster more than these. The originals all featured horrible frame rates and draw distance, as well as almost broken controls for both fighting and driving, making them nearly difficult to enjoy in their original state.
The new controls are better, but they’re still not as excellent as GTA 5, which is still a work in progress in terms of third-person combat and racing, with sloppy melee combat and a lack of tactility in the gunplay that makes it difficult to discern whether you’ve even shot half the time, much alone hit someone.
These are the better-looking characters from GTA: The Trilogy (pic: Rockstar Games)
In principle, the higher frame rate is a great improvement, but all of the games suffer from inexplicable freezes and glitches, which were first attributed to the switch to Unreal Engine. The greater draw distance is a double-edged sword in that there’s no effort to create any atmospheric haze or fog while you’re flying, and it looks terribly artificial — as if you’ve mistakenly put on debug mode.
These and a slew of other flaws will undoubtedly be addressed in due course, but another problem is the unappealing new graphic style selected for human figures. Originally, the games sought a lifelike aesthetic, notably by the time of San Andreas, in which intricate textures were slapped onto even minor characters’ faces. All of them have been replaced with more complex character models and shading choices. However, most of the time, this results in an oddly cartoonish aspect, homogenizing the characters’ appearance in terms of age and race.
Other modifications, such as the contemporary mini-map and waypoint system, as well as the weapon choice wheel, are unquestionably for the better. It’s also quite useful to be able to retry a failed mission right away. However, there are fewer camera choices than in the originals, including the classic top-down angle, which is unusual.
It’s also worth noting that fan-made modifications have done all of these things, especially the upgraded visuals, much better than Rockstar, and yet, inevitably, they’ve all received removal orders as a result of their efforts.
The last, unsolvable issue is how the games have aged over time, and the answer is not very good. Some individuals may be so overcome by nostalgia that they will be able to overlook, consciously or unconsciously, how basic and repetitive the gameplay and plot are, but it will be clear in the cold light of day. The protagonist in GTA 3 is completely deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly deafening
That isn’t meant to be a criticism on the original game, since GTA 3 was the first to introduce the idea of current open world games, but it doesn’t make it any less outdated now. Vice City isn’t any better, since despite having a vocal protagonist (Ray Liotta, no less), it’s just as preoccupied with ripping off sequences and settings from renowned gangster movies as the previous game was with producing something unique.
GTA: The Trilogy — a good remake of Grand Theft Auto 3 would have sufficed (pic: Rockstar Games)
However, as the series develops, the voice acting and writing improves, with San Andreas boasting a really star-studded ensemble that includes everyone from Samuel L. Jackson and Peter Fonda to Danny Dyer and Shaun Ryder. The series’ finest writing has always been in the commercials, not the characters, and the game’s critique of American consumer society is as keen as ever. Given how restricted internet culture and commerce were in the early 2000s, it’s astonishingly predictive.
However, it is only with San Andreas, the greatest of the three games, that the plot starts to take shape, with something like a more contemporary approach. Although the lack of important female characters in all three games borders on the ominous, a problem that has yet to be addressed in GTA 5.
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If the three games were sold individually, the obvious solution would be to purchase San Andreas now and wait for the other two to be fixed later, but that isn’t an option. Your only option is to pay £55 for three shoddy restored masterpieces that should have been handled with considerably more reverence.
The whole issue is perplexing. It would have made considerably more sense to focus all efforts on GTA 3’s 20th anniversary, which occurred in October. The remaining games might then be released at a later date, either on their own 20th anniversaries or at a lesser interval. Unless Rockstar is suffering financial difficulties right now – which they plainly aren’t – there’s no other explanation for the path they’ve chosen except sheer selfishness.
Rockstar evidently believes that their fans would purchase everything they put out without hesitation, which is logical given their outstanding reputation to far. A reputation that has been severely damaged for no other reason than to make a fast cash. On a meta level, considering the themes of GTA, that emotion makes sense, but many fans may find it difficult to forgive.
Summary of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition
In a nutshell, you wouldn’t expect a Rockstar game to be lazy, incompetent, or half-finished, yet this completely avoidable catastrophe portrays three iconic titles in the most unflattering light conceivable.
Pros: All three games are true classics, and the upgraded controls and frame rate make them even more enjoyable to play. Especially in San Andreas, there is some clever speech and voice acting.
Cons: Technically, it’s a wreck, with some strange artistic decisions. In terms of narrative and basic action and mission design, the first two games are showing their age.
5 out of 10
PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC are the formats available. Cost: £54.99 Rockstar Games is the publisher of this game. Grove Street Games and Rockstar North are the developers. Date of Release: November 11th, 2021 Age Rating: 18
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MORE: The sex mini-game Hot Coffee reappears in GTA: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition, which has a Metacritic score of 0.9.
MORE: GTA: Vice City is a bad game, and I’m sorry I thought that — Readers’ Favorite
MORE: Reader’s Feature: GTA: The Trilogy Definitive Edition is the worst thing Rockstar has ever done
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The “grand theft auto trilogy steam” is a compilation of the three GTA games. The game was released on January 2nd, 2019 and can be bought for $24.99.
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