In response to the headline: honestly, no. As is so often the case when there’s an online backlash, the reality isn’t quite as bad as the memes would lead you to believe – but make no mistake, the GTA Trilogy deserves better, and Rockstar has its work cut out rectifying this sorry state of affairs. This is a developer that’s renowned for its attention to detail, so how these classics launched with spelling errors is beyond us.
We’ve played all three titles in the compilation, although the bulk of our time has been spent with GTA San Andreas, which we’re going to focus on for the purposes of this article. GTA 3 is the most inconsistent port of the three: it’s choppy – even in Performance mode, running on a PlayStation 5 – and its sandbox feels the most dated by far. GTA Vice City is a lot steadier, although it’s also susceptible to framerate dips on Sony’s new-gen console.
GTA San Andreas is easily the smoothest of the trio, and it’s also the best looking. This was an incredibly detailed game already on the PS2, so seeing the assets with such clarity is a treat. Despite the game originally launching in 2004, this classic rivals contemporary open worlds in terms of the density of its sandbox and sheer variety of things to see and do. Stealing a sound system by performing an impromptu breakdance is a real highlight in the early stages of the campaign.
The artstyle in this remaster is inconsistent and odd, though. The hazy, bloomy look of the original has been lost in favour of more generic visuals, and while it’s glossy and sharp, it doesn’t have quite the same 90s mystique as it did on the PS2. The character models, as has already been reported, also look a little bizarre in this high-resolution format; no one expected Grove Street Games to add performance capture and re-rig the release, but when it’s bad it’s real bad.
There are a number of quality of life improvements that modernise the release in meaningful ways, though. An early motorcycle chase with OG Loc was aggressively annoying on the PS2, but mid-mission checkpoints make it much more tolerable here on Sony’s new system. While the gameplay remains largely unchanged – and thus shows its age – the new aiming and driving controls feel a lot tighter, although they’re naturally not as nuanced as contemporary releases.
It’s worth remembering that these are still the games you remember as well, meaning they’re quick-witted and laugh out loud funny at times. Some of the gags have aged badly, but personally we’d have been disappointed if Rockstar tried to tamper with the original dialogue, so from that perspective we’re glad they’re presented intact. Many have tried to capture the spirit that makes Grand Theft Auto so iconic, but nothing comes close to the real thing.
All that said, Rockstar does have its work cut out here. While the bugs and glitches are nowhere near as frequent as the backlash may suggest, there’s simply no excuse for these PS2 titles running at an inconsistent framerate on a PS5. We’ve crashed numerous times when driving around Los Santos as a direct consequence of the performance issues, and that’s simply unacceptable. Seeing gags like ‘Guitarwank’ butchered by an AI upscaler is also sloppy beyond belief.
So, no, the GTA Trilogy isn’t as bad as the social media furore may suggest – but it is slapdash at best, and these classics deserve better than that. Rockstar is getting heat because it removed the original PS2 versions from the PS Store and threatened legal action against modders in order to deliver this – a messy compilation with an inconsistent art style and choppy performance. The saving grace is that Grand Theft Auto is still Grand Theft Auto – and, frankly, there’s nothing else quite like it.
Have you tried the GTA Trilogy yet? What are your early impressions on the compilation? Will you be waiting for patches and updates before picking this up? Plug your ears from one of OG Loc’s gangster raps in the comments section below, and be sure to take a look at our GTA Trilogy guide.
Comments 48
The characters do look odd at times but the the cars, buildings and other small details, look much better than the originals
Short answer : no its not that bad at all. I've only played 6 hrs of GTA 3 and it's still great fun. People need to remember it's a 20 Yr old PS2 game !! As usual, everyone jumps on the mock outrage Internet bandwagon
Will play GTA 3 on PS Now next month and wait for a price drop and patches before I purchase Vice City and San Andreas.
I tried San Andreas on Xbox and deleted it straight away. I can't believe the cheek of having a resolution and a performance mode on this. Are you telling me they can't run this at 4K 60fps? It looked awful.
I've been playing GTA 3 on the Series X and I haven't noticed any framerate issues, but I typically don't notice until it gets REALLY bad so if it's just 1 or 2 frames it won't stand out.
What kills me though is the darkness at night. I have had to turn my contrast WAY down in the game and even then it can still be difficult. ESPECIALLY if it also starts to rain. Which in GTA 3 it rains A LOT.
Its definitely not as bad as the internet is making it out to be, but it could definitely have used extra time and polish for sure.
"not as bad as the backlash suggests" is about as glowing as the praise gets though. The game is £55.
£55 for a "not bad" but incredibly buggy remaster of a trio of 20 year old games.
It'd have been acceptable, even understandable at a lower price point or if there'd been more clarity as to exactly what fans were buying ahead of time (e.g. there was talk of overhauling the gameplay systems to be more in line with GTA5 whereas all this really boiled down to was some re-mapped controls). The issue isn't that it looks like an absolutely terrible game, it's just massively overpriced for what's actually been done to "overhaul" the games
So slapdash at best means it’s a max 6/10 because 7 is pretty good
@get2sammyb do these games feature free aim like GTA V, or is the shooting still lock-on only? Are there any GTA V alternate control schemes (such as run with R1 and jump with X)?
Thanks
@clvr There is free aim, although it's hard to describe because the mechanics haven't really changed. The control mapping is the same as GTA 5, so you can pull L2 to either aim or lock-on, and you shoot with R2.
But obviously the animations and programming is still the same as the originals, so while mechanically it feels more modern, it's still rooted in that original system from the PS2.
(It does feel better than the originals, though, no question!)
@Gamer_Girl_ Who said the opposite?
@torne Yeah, I've also noticed the contrast is messed up. The blacks are way too dark for some reason and the games lose a lot of detail as a result.
Will need to be patched.
Rockstar couldn't find a way to add shark cards to the old games so they didn't see a point in putting too much effort into it. I've been playing my PS2 collection again lately and man...even if the games didn't have the technology...they had the heart. Microtransactions and people willing to settle for less and less have really ruined gaming.
It's actually not difficult to figure out why there are spelling mistakes. It's believed they used an AI upscaler for a lot of the asset remastering. So when it comes to assets with blurry letter textures, the AI couldn't figure out the original letters and ended up screwing with the spelling in the name of making the original asset smoother/clearer.
@MFTWrecks Yup, mentioned this in a previous article. It makes sense, but also the assets should have been checked and proofread.
They're nowhere near as bad as people are making out and i went back on og gta 3 last night, to make sure i wasn't going mad and i am right! Anyone saying these look the same or worse haven't played the og's in a very long time. They are shocking. Grove street have done a good job (framerate aside) and it will take more than a few karens on here to change my mind.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to buy this at some point, and I'm sure I'll have a great time. But I can't help wonder why they didn't just throw money at Bluepoint. They'd have made it back tenfold.
Worth 40 bucks at most at its current state.
@Gremio108 or did it themselves
Another cash grab! Rockstar are a joke these days I’m afraid.
For the people that will say they are still having fun, well yeah at the end of the day they are still GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas. You would still be having fun with the versions that were removed from the store, you're not having fun because of the great talents of Grove street but despite them.
Sooooo...is Grove Street Games a offshoot of CD Projekt Red?
@KingPev Look at the remaster of Final Fantasy 10 on PS4 a remaster done right so yeah its really dissapointing. Whats the use of a remaster if its do e this poorly its a pity and a waste. A 20 year old game has no excuse for running this bad.
@ATaco CD Project Red really ***** us royally people will except everything now.
@Juanalf this is true. i mean these games were always fun to play. i've only played sa so far , i might eventually play the other games if this goes on sale. but i can say there are some parts of the game that's like wow this looks really good for an older game. i feel like if they can smooth out the issues , and fix some things up , it would make it worth it to revisit for sure. its like if you are cooking dinner and you take it out too soon and its not finished cooking.
@MatthewJP Yep fair shout. But I'd rather they focus their efforts on GTA VI and get the best remakers in the business on the case.
Of course, I seem to be living in dreamland....
They can't even launch a basic remaster of a 17 yr old game without it being broken and needing major patches? This idea that AAA studios can release games in broken conditions is getting completely out of hand and needs to be addressed by the industry. They are basically sending out betas and making their full paying customers work through the issues so that they can eventually (sometimes) patch later.
Let's do a 180 and move with the wind.. Obvious!
Man, now I'm not so sure about a max payne hd trilogy. How about they just rerelease those games, instead of a definitive edition.
Switch port is even crap as well. Shame cause it's competition Saints Row 3 and 4 on the switch run well. And rockstar is a bigger company than Violition.
Been playing SA on Xbox series x with gamepass and wow. It needs work too. Game is so dark. Couldn't even see the officers faces.
Waiting on GTA 3 to hit psnow. So glad I didn't buy this trilogy tho. Such a shame. Hope if the rumor Red Dead redemption remaster is true that Grove Street Games isn't working on it.
@Jbuggydroid red dead redemption doesn't need as much work as ps2 games do though. even as a 360/ps3 game , it looked pretty good back then.
I agree with the article and that is the internet for you. They zoom in impossibly close to random npc’s on the street as if anybody playing these games will do that to try to dunk on the game because in the fake world of the internet that’s the cool thing to do right now. I haven’t tried performance mode yet I’ve just stuck to fidelity but I have already beat gta 3 and didn’t have one problem besides it crashing twice. Im now in Vice City which is my favorite and it’s amazing IMO. The neon pops,it reflects off the road and everything is just so clean and pretty. Oh and the soundtrack is still the best out of any gta game.
@Juanalf uh I don’t think that’s true. I bought all three when they first went up on ps4 and gta 3 was absolute trash,vice city was barely better and SA I only lasted like two hours.
@Jbuggydroid Grove Street Games was named after..Grove Street families. So, what can we expect from A2TMFK & BDup?
I loved these games first time round but I tried S.A on gamepass and it was pretty poor. I would have been quite upset if I'd paid good money for it. Its a shoddy cash grab of a remaster and the games deserve better.
I showed some images from the definitive edition and friends thought they were a joke.
Checked out all 3 with SA being the main one i'm playing and yeah character models aside i think its the best they have ever looked, the main issue is the pretty bad framerate what's all over the place right now. I feel those complaining are those expecting GTA V visuals and those what haven't even played the collection yet.
I don't know. I play on PC!
@Gamer_Girl_ “ It's pretty lame to post this article 24 hours after one that said the opposite.” You must be new here. What they usually do is post articles criticising a game, then articles saying it’s not so bad, then some guides, then a redemption story etc. Gotta maximise that SEO click rate on new big title with as many articles as we can muster right?… yes it’s pretty disingenuous and lame.
Personally having actually played it, unlike many of the haters, the games not as bad as all the memes make out. There absolutely are issues but most of them existed in the originals, or has been magnified going from 480p to 4K, a 24x bump. There are still a few new ones but it’s not the dumpster fire that interwebz are making out and dog piling on. That’s lame too.
@Victor_Meldrew “it's 'not that bad' because we've all lowered our standards and accept that games now almost always get shipped with at least a few bugs all the way through to completely broken and or unfinished”
This is both true and false. Our standards in many ways have increased not decreased. It used to be that games like GTA would play at frame rates between 15-30 FPS with frame pacing issues, and almost never a stable frame rate. That WAS acceptable, it isn’t now.
Ocarina of Time used to run at 20fps (17fps on PAL) and no one batted an eyelid. Now if a game dares to drop a few frames or is an unstable 25-30 or 50-60 it is unacceptable.
Games have ALWAYS shipped with bugs, always, we used to just accept that. It’s standards that have changed. Games have also become far more complex making bugs more likely.
But I agree patches and other post launch additions have meant that devs are perhaps more willing to let a game out of the door, knowing they can patch later. But i’m just not sure if it was the chicken or the egg that came first.
EDIT: I think it’s the Internet that is mostly to blame, previously one player might have noticed one or two minor bugs and got on with it, now they are all highlighted in a YouTube video or blog post and people judge and become outraged without even experiencing those bugs themselves.
Back in the days of those games you just used to play games and talk about them with your pals and that was it. Nobody would listen to you or give importance to your outraged tone for the rain being like this or the contrast being like that. On the contrary acting like that would have make you appear as a mad guy. Poor times we’re living now.
From what little I've seen I would have to agree.
I'm deciding to wait for a $30 sale next year, hopefully the game will be mostly patched by then.
It's always great to come here and hear people whine about the good old days when people sold you junk and you could only tell your friends that something sucked. It reminds me not everyone has or needs a brain to function.
@Ghostngoblins, Rain and other weather/atmosphere effects are ok in video games if....If those effects are done well, not overdone, and certainly do not unnecessarily make a game annoying to impossible to play.
I could really go on a long rant about annoying weather and atmosphere effects in video game.. Some GTA games, RDR2, and Fallout 4 would be good examples. Thankfully GTA games provide built in weather codes . GTA4 is one GTA game that allows trophies if weather codes are used.
RDR2 online has been fun, but has annoying weather effects . Clear weather only about 15% of the time at most as clear and sunny turns to haze, fog, or sand storms in 3 minutes. Unfortunately there is no code to imput to clear the weather so i can actually see and then be able to actually play the game.
I will buy this but for 20/25 bucks, not $100AUD that they are asking for loll. Not for this bs and bugs
Only played 3 so far on 2nd island (Staunton). Crashed twice, on the mission gta where you have to steal 3 cars in 5 an half Mins the garage doors wouldn't open to deliver them, this happened 3 times! My son played San Andreas and got an error preventing him from playing for 24 hours, for £55 this shouldn't happen, the big wigs in the gaming industry need to stop rushing to throw games out, this has happened too many times like destiny 2 with Activision! On gta 3 in hospital car park on Staunton invisible barrier! Quite annoying. The game it looks great for me! A decent Polish up and I'm enjoying my time playing through it all again! I think they deserve the backlash in all honesty as no games should release like this but a patch I'm sure will fix those issues when this will be I don't know? But like I said a very good Polish up and it runs smoothly so I'm gonna carry on playing and losing myself in this great open city.
@KingPev I totally agree, I'm having a blast so far. I feel like they could have paid more attention to 3 and VC (it feels like SA got all the love), but it's still awesome getting to play these classics again in a prettier engine!
@lordzand What's brainless about despising cancel culture? People will literally get behind hating a product they haven't even tried for themselves, that's far more ridiculous than reminiscing about a time when you could comment about liking something without a flock of morons attacking you for having 'bad taste', over something that is entirely subjective in the first place.
@Setzer90 your comment speaks for itself. It's brainless because it's become mainstream. That's right you're a sheeple now.
People can have opinions. You should support that since you want to express yours. It seems to me like you're the one pushing cancel culture and also authoritarianism.
You don't get to decide what people say.
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