When Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Version launched final yr, it was a catastrophe. Three of essentially the most beloved video video games of all time had been formally re-released on fashionable {hardware} and never solely seemed like shit, however ran prefer it too. Issues had been so unhealthy, the truth is, that Rockstar needed to provide followers some free video games simply to make up for it.
Some subsequent patches have tried to handle a few of these points, however as this exhaustive re-examination of the video games by Digital Foundry present, there’s nonetheless a lot of labor left to do right here.
The excellent news first: rain is now principally regular, because it needs to be after 15 bug fixes, and a layer of haze added post-launch offers the sport world a correct sense of scale whilst you’re flying round. There have additionally been edits made to a number of the most egregious spelling errors on signage, and main points plaguing mission construction and collisions have additionally been principally corrected. Most significantly, the video games now merely run rather more easily, particularly in Efficiency Mode, which retains issues just about locked at 60fps.
Now for the unhealthy information. A number of the stuff that appears unhealthy in these video games will by no means be mounted, as a result of these are ports of telephone video games, and there’s solely a lot polish you’ll be able to add when bringing a recreation designed to run on an iPhone over to a system just like the PS5 or a contemporary PC. That is stuff like the general look of the characters—which had been completely suited to the low-res CRT TVs of the time however look weirdly misplaced in a HD setting—in addition to the environmental lighting results (like murky, golden sunsets) customized to Vice Metropolis and San Andreas which were eliminated.
And whereas some indicators have been mounted, loads of others with spelling errors stay, both on account of Rockstar skimping on localisation work or handing a lot of the work over to AI upscaling (which additionally has unaddressed points with wall textures and constructing indicators). You possibly can see examples of all this in motion in Digital Foundry’s video under:
