Right, well I figured it was time for another new review of sorts and this one will be on the recently released GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition, which sees remastered version of GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas.
So, given all the hype that has been surrounding the definitive edition leading it up to its release, how does the new edition fair??? Well, let's take a look and find out...
Now, the format of this review will be a bit different from my usual ones for games given that this is a trilogy we are looking at, so I figured I would try and lump in the features of the games into the one post, which might be a bit tricky but I will give it a go!
I will first say a bit about the plot of each game just for a start.
GTA III
GTA III's story focuses on a silent criminal named Claude, who is betrayed by his girlfriend, Catalina, who leaves him for dead after a robbery. Claude is arrested but enroute to jail he is busted out and helped along by fellow criminal, Eightball, who manages to get Claude some work with the Mafia capo, Luigi. From here Claude gets more jobs to do and makes plenty of business contacts as he establishes himself in Liberty City but ultimately he also works his way toward getting revenge over Catalina...
GTA Vice City
GTA Vice City story centers on Tommy Vercetti, a made guy from the Forelli crime family, who in 1986 has just been released from prison. The family boss, Sonny Forelli orders Tommy to attend a drug deal in Vice City but it soon goes badly wrong as the dealers are ambushed the mob's money is stolen. Sonny is outraged when he learns of the incident and warns Tommy he better return the money and from Tommy starts to work the local sleazy lawyer, Ken Rosenberg to retrieve it. Along the way, Tommy also makes plenty of other business contacts that include Lance Vance, who's brother was killed during the botched drug deal and together they soon plot to take revenge and take over the city...
GTA San Andreas
GTA San Andreas plot focuses on Carl Johnson or "CJ" as he is better known to his friends, a member of the Grove Street gang based in Los Santos. CJ returns home after living on the East Coast for 5 years on learning that his mother has been killed. However, as soon as CJ returns, two corrupt police officers arrest him, Frank Tenpenny and Edward Pulaski and pin a police officer's murder on him and dump him in a rival gang's neighborhood. On returning home, CJ is soon reunited with his other gang members that include his brother and gang leader, Sweet, Big Smoke and Ryder. Their gang however has split into factions and is struggling to maintain any kind of power as their rival gang, the Ballas own most of the territories in the city. So, its from here CJ must try and help Sweet and the other members to build up the Grove Street gang's power and reputation again while also having to deal with the corrupt police officers in Tenpenny and Pulaski...
THOUGHTS
Well this trilogy was released on somewhat short notice as its announcement was only two or three weeks prior to its release date of 11 November, so this left a few question marks as to how the trilogy would actually turn out. And unfortunately it really has to be said that GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition is far from definitive and it is more defective than anything else! Yep, the trilogy as it stands is a real mess and suffers from various graphical glitches, poor character models, terrible rain effects as well as even some game breaking bugs that require multiple restarts of missions!
So, I would have to say that this really was a very frustrating attempt at remastering a classic trilogy that should have been a lot easier and more efficient to do than this! However it does appear that Rockstar Games were keen to get this released in time for Christmas as it would definitely serve as a big cash grab for them. However, as a result the games were released in a state that was far from complete and left many gamers angry and frustrated at the buggy mess these games have turned out to be. And it is definitely clear from what we've seen that these games shouldn't have been released yet as they were nowhere near ready for public consumption just like it was with Cyberpunk 2077 last year.
GAMEPLAY
As for the gameplay, the game's largely remain unchanged with the trilogy but there are still some new changes to be found. The controls for all three games also remain very similar to as before although this time round there are some tweaks such as Tommy and CJ can no longer fall off motorbikes so easily anymore, which is a welcome change as it was very annoying flaw in the original games.
The targeting system has also changed too making things a bit more efficient when locking on rather than in the original games where locking on to enemies could be a bit flaky. Further to this there is now the inclusion of a weapon wheel where your character can select their weapon of choice from a menu wheel.
Another neat inclusion is a checkpoint save system during missions, so you no longer need to go and manually save after each mission at the nearest safe house, which is really handy and it also saves your progress automatically after you complete a mission.
RADIO STATIONS
As for the radio stations, things are pretty much the same as they were in the original games with only some tracks missing from the original releases and this is mainly due to the expiration of the licenses of certain songs and Rockstar not renewing them. This however it still a disappointment though as it would have good if Rockstar had actually tried to restore the original soundtracks for both GTA Vice City and San Andreas although GTA III's soundtrack hasn't been affected by this.
GRAPHICS
As for the graphics well this is where things are a bit of a mixed bag as the game's visuals have definitely been improved from an environmental standpoint however its not all good here. But I will start with the good stuff first, which is that the game's environments have definitely been improved and for the most part look great as there is much more detail on display in the visuals from the city streets of Liberty City to the desert of Las Venturas, the game definitely looks very impressive. There are still some problems with the visuals for the environments but I can mention more about them in the flaws section, which could be quite big!
However this is where things start to take a bit of a nose dive because then we get onto the character models, which are definitely a mixed bag as some are better than others! But to be entirely fair, I think they did fairly good job with the character models for the three main protagonists Claude, Tommy and CJ with Claude I think looking the best of the three in his redesign, CJ in the middle and Tommy being the worst simply because his expressions don't always look right. Most of the supporting character models aren't too bad either although there are still the odd looking ones such as CJ's sister, Kendl, who looks a bit more like Serena Williams!
But unfortunately as for the rest of the games models they are definitely mixed in quality as they range from decent to bloody awful as there are some real casualties here such as CJ's girlfriend, Denise who has been redesigned to look like she's from the Middle East! Other character models also don't look quite right such as Ken Rosenberg in Vice City, Tommy's sleazy lawyer, Avery, who looks pretty weird and Mike Toreno from San Andreas looks weird as he has been given a strangely long looking neck (as which is noticeable in one of the desert flight missions). So, yeah I think its safe to say that Rockstar has put in questionable effort into upgrading all the characters here!
FLAWS (Warning: there will be plenty ahead!)
As for flaws...well, where to begin with this one! Yes the GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition has its fair share!
And to start off, I think the overall main criticism that can be leveled at the trilogy here is that it simply wasn't ready for release as there are too many bugs, glitches and other issues in the games that makes them at times unplayable. And its actually shameful to think that Rockstar could get away with releasing the trilogy in this state with some platforms suffering more than others when its comes to the games glitches and problems. I myself have been playing the games on the Xbox Series X console and while I haven't encountered major problems with the game itself, I still have quite a few gripes all the same.
To go into more details of the glitches in the trilogy, as a few examples, there was a mission in GTA III where you had to wire up a car with a bomb at a garage but I repeatedly kept trying to get the car to go into the garage but it simply wouldn't do it! So, I had drive away and come back to it before the game would let me go into the garage but I was at least after that able to complete the mission.
Another glitch I encountered was in San Andreas in the mission "Madd Dogg" where CJ attempts to save the troubled rapper, Madd Dogg from jumping off a rooftop after his rap career is ruined and in the mission you are supposed to be see Madd Dogg up on the roof drunkenly stagger around and you line up a pick-up truck below to catch him. However when I played this mission, Madd Dogg simply wouldn't move and was rooted to the spot and in the cutscene where we are supposed to see him jump. we don't see him jump at all and he ends up dying as a result! And I had this problem happen repeatedly even reloading the game in and I eventually had to restart the mission all over again and it eventually worked.
And one last example is another San Andreas missions "A home in the hills" where CJ helps Madd Dogg take his mansion back from a bunch of drug dealers. And I had gotten to the checkpoint save at the mansion just before you chase the Big Poppa, the drug dealer, who has taken the mansion and before that my controller had frozen with CJ rooted to the spot and he couldn't move! So, I tried to reload the mission from the save and it was the same problem, so again I will have to restart the mission all over again! So yeah, this is just only a few examples of known bugs in the game but there are plenty more that I have seen online and it really is just not acceptable that the missions are like this.
Another really annoying issue with the trilogy are the game's rain effects, which on the game's initial release were simply horrendous as they totally drowned out the picture! In fact this is particularly bad in GTA III and there were several missions I played where the rain was so dense I could barely make out what was going on and I even failed a mission as a result! I think since then though, Rockstar has patched the rain effects to reduce them somewhat, so hopefully that will help things out more whenever a rain shower is on in the games.
Another issue relating to the graphics is the somewhat inconsistent amount of detail in the environments in certain areas where we are really seeing just the original textures here and there such as outside Diaz's mansion in Vice City, the arch to the entrance still has the low detail of the original while the surrounding area may have more upscaled details. So it is a pretty inconsistent mixture of detail that we are seeing in the games overall.
And this brings me onto the issues of the trilogy's frame rate performance, which is definitely underwhelming because there are frequent dips to be found throughout. And the game has two modes, performance for frame rate and fidelity for improved visuals but the performance mode isn't even that smooth and there is plenty of frame rate stuttering to be found here as the games really do take a hit when it comes to heavy action with lots going on in the picture. And the fidelity mode also suffers from frame pacing issues where you also again get some jittering in the image that makes for a less than satisfying experience. Hopefully in the future, Rockstar will patch the trilogy to improve its frame rate performance.
I also had encountered some issues with non responsiveness from the controls at times where I had to press "Y" twice on my Xbox controller for CJ to open a car door and even had to double tap the arrows buttons to change radio stations. I'm not sure this might have been to do with an issue with my controller but personally I don't think so, its most likely just another glitch and an annoying one too.
And last of all another issue I have had with the game is the increase in the HP damage you take from gunfire as it has DEFINITELY been increased if not in all of the games than certainly in GTA San Andreas. And I say because there are several missions in the original San Andreas were I was able to complete the same mission only dying maybe once tops but in the "definitive edition" I had died about 12 times in the one mission, which was Green Goo where CJ steals a container off a military train. And in that mission, the soldier gunfire cut me to pieces whereas in the original, the damage was more manageable but not here.
Its also very much the same in the final mission, End of the Line, as I go shot to hell trying to work my way through Big Smoke's crack warehouse and this is a mission I can usually do in one or two attempts but here it must have taken me about 20 or 30 goes! So, the increased HP damage to gunfire is definitely one of the most frustrating aspects of the remaster.
Anyway that's it for the flaws but I will certainly add in more when I think about them! ;-)
SUM UP
So, to sum up, GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition is a big disappointment, which is a great pity because it promised to deliver so much but in the end we got a glitch ridden, buggy mess of a trilogy that fell way short of our expectations. The visuals to be fair have been improved somewhat in terms of their environments but the character models are a real mixed bag with some a lot worse than others even if the three main character models aren't too bad.
However in the end the trilogy has too many issues that require to be fixed, even as Rockstar has began to patch these games and resolve the glitches, they simply should never have released these games in this condition and I can only imagine that they wanted to put them out as a cash grab for Christmas season. So, with its game breaking bugs, weird glitches, jittery frame rates, bizarre mix of character models and its awful rain effects, it is hard to recommend the Definitive Edition and in the end it is anything but and the rest of us really should wait for them to patch the games before buying them. The games are still fun to play though and they remain great in their own right but they still deserved something way better than this.
So, I will give GTA Trilogy: The Defective Edition:
4.5 out of 10
So, that's it for now and I will be back next month for more posts.
Until then its bye for now!
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