GTA: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition
 

I'll be trying this out tonight.



So it's not as HUGE of a remaster as I'd prefer, but it looks dramatically better in many ways. People actually having fingers is a big boon.

Hey, that looks pretty neat.

It's coming out on Switch too. Ironic Nintendo is finally getting all the franchises it missed out on back in the day (GTA, Final Fantasy 7 and all the others, Devil May Cry, all the other Resident Evils, Crash 1-3, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, etc)

Yes it's all 20 years late, but better than nothing I suppose.

Any word on how bad the soundtrack is butchered for any/all of the included games? That was one of my favorite things about those older games, and as I understand it, a huge sticking point in why they weren't re-released sooner and/or more often, the music rights being all kinds of complicated.

I guess at the end of the day it's not THE most important thing but a lot of my fondest memories of those games is still the music.

As for the graphical quality, there's only so much you can do without re-animating the entire game. You can add more detail to things on a surface level but the animation is what it is, and there's only so much you can do to improve that without re-doing the entire game(s) from scratch. I don't think that was ever in the cards.

I read a little bit and it seems like they added mission checkpoints. Hopefully lots of them. That's like the BIGGEST thing that keeps me from playing some of the older GTA games again. Especially that final mission in Vice City.

Jeeze... it's been so many years since I played until where I got stuck in all 3 games (different spots in each... definitely I got the furthest into San Andreas) I couldn't even say what the original songs were. I think "Country Roads" was in San Andreas, though. I believe the version I originally played of San Andreas was on X-Box for some reason. I remember back then and only on X-Box there was like a custom music station to where you could upload music to your X-Box and it would play it. Similar to the Smackdown games of the time, you could upload your own entrance music. I think this option fell off, though.

Starting to play the new GTA3 now. I'd already started playing the PS4 updated version of GTA3 that had been available for a few years now... yeah, didn't play for very long. Graphics sharpened to 1080p, but somehow this made everything look and play much worse. But THIS? This is very good. Driving around it kind of feels like the engine itself is a little dated and the AI of pedestrians and other cars is still stupid, but it graphically looks great and handles like GTA5.

Are the graphics as good as most current games at maxed settings 2560x1440? or is it alittle improvement since it says that it is not a full remake? I dont want to be dissapointed to run a game with such bad graphics now!

Missing songs are a huge deal to me, but it's been long enough that I'm excited to go back and play one of these again anyway.

The double-edged sword is the fact that Rockstar's mission design has hardly evolved in two decades, so going back shouldn't be too hard. If you can play through RDR2, you can play these. RDR2 had an utterly great story though.

The final mission in Vice City has always been the main reason I haven't gone back to it in ages. Too long, no checkpoints, and worst of all, random car AI where you could conceivably fail the mission dozens of times in a row due to sudden obstructions in the final race coming out of nowhere, forcing you to play the entire mission over from the beginning until every single thing goes perfectly your way and the game "allows" you to win.

I loved that game and played it to death, but that final mission broke me and once I beat it I never went back to it. Everything else in the game, I could deal with no problem. But THAT sucked. Some time later I read an interview with one of the developers and they admitted that mission was broken. Like "Yeah, sometimes cars will just randomly smash into you during the final racing section and you can't win, it's all pretty random and you can do everything right and still lose. We probably should've fixed that."

If they tightened up THAT whole thing, or at the least added a bunch of checkpoints to that one and some of the other mission, I'd love that.

Apparently the game is riddled with bugs and odd art design choices. Shame.
Rockstar seems to be going down a dark path. The Housers left the company, they've been relying on GTA online for way too long, and now they release these games with a ton of issues and missing songs which they could easily afford to pay for. Time for a new champion.

There are lots of new checkpoints and the ability to immediately resume a mission instead of restarting, so you might be happy.

And man, I HATE racing missions. I really do. I'm terrible at them and they really aggravate me. I was happy that GTA5 made them all perfectly optional but I'm not looking forward to the mandatory ones in these, as I'm sure they still are.

Playing a lot of San Andreas today within this. I'm happy to say it really does provide the same kind of experience as when I did years ago, just updated to not feel SUPER dated. It works. Beyond dumb AI, the only things I find myself missing is tiny things from GTA4 and 5. But it handles like them now, for the most part, and looks fine on my 4K 70" in ways that all of the previously remastered ones for PS4 did not, or were made to look worse in.

I'm not great at racing missions myself, but for some reason find them fun anyway.

My wife always really liked the gameplay of San Andreas, but she can't handle being assaulted with the N-word every two seconds. :lol: We can't remember if she ever finished it; I know I didn't get around to it.

Sure enough, I think I found exactly where I left off the first time. A mandatory racing mission in the countryside, one of Cesar's missions. It's virtually impossible. The car just slips and slides all over the dirt roads and I can barely come in third every time.

I'm seeing tons of negative feedback for this. People are saying it's gonna need to be patched to hell and that everyone should just wait a few months until it's "fixed". Also that the disc release is going to be cheaper than the digital, but that even that release will also need a lot of patches. So basically, anyone Right Now is paying an inflated price to play the worst possible version of this game. Most of the complaints seem to center around San Andreas, specifically, but apparently they all have problems.

And supposedly all the original songs are in the code, but "locked" so they can't be accessed, and people are furious about that as well. Also something about needing to be online to play, which nobody likes or understands since these are single-player games from two decades ago.

Consensus seems to be that the graphics are prettier and the checkpoints make it easier overall, but otherwise it's got tons of bugs and glitches and frame rate issues and other wacky stuff. Like some things like bushes that you could just drive through in the originals are solid objects, now, which actively hurts some of the missions by eliminating a bunch of shortcuts people used to commonly use, just for one example.

I'm actually seeing a LOT of people saying "I don't care this much about the graphics, I'm just gonna hook up my PS2 and play these games properly." Ouch!

I can attest to the glitches. It's kicked me out about 15 times so far at various points and allowed me to send a bug report. However! When you resume the game, it sends you right back to the spot you were in before the glitch/bug. Like a secondary autosave. With load times being virtually 0 on PS5 it's only really a minor inconvenience so far.

Haven't seen any frame rate issues at all.

I think calling it "The Definitive Edition" was a bit of a mistake. There's less content and everything besides the graphics is apparently only marginally better OR actively worse, depending.

We're gonna wait a few months and see what happens with it. My wife's annoyed but glad she didn't rush into buying it in its current state.

For me personally... unlike the PS4 remaster, it enables me to look at it for more than 20 minutes and not revulse away. Maybe a couple of songs are gone... I don't care. I'm having a great time so far.

But again. There is so many little things they could fix or improve but didn't. Like... they couldn't just add the ability to buy ammo and not just guns? Keep the clothes you buy at your house? Slightly better AI, at least? But it's fine.

I've noticed that you seem to be, like, SUPER into graphics, though, just as an observation.

It seems like 99% of the effort went into making it look pretty, then they added a few checkpoints and called it a day. It seems like most people aren't satisfied with that, in and of itself.

More work was needed here, if the general feedback is any indication. I confess, the sheer number of "I'd just rather play this on PS2 again" comments I'm seeing is a bit surprising, but it would appear that a fresh coat of paint - no matter how slick - isn't the main draw for most people. They were hoping it lived up to its title in regard to more than just visuals. At least, that's what they say.

I don't think anyone expected a ground-up do-over, but the lack of more substantial improvements AND some things actually being worse, or removed (like the "cinematic" camera from San Andreas) has a lot of people upset. I think, that Rockstar thought, that just polishing the graphics would be good enough but it seems that's not the case for a lot of people.

Kinda sucks that buying any game on Day One nowadays is basically just you (the player) paying money to beta-test it. This obviously isn't the first time but it's a really lousy industry standard.

Not really. Most of my enjoyment in general in video games can be summed up in "lost in the experience," and it is like on a sliding scale of graphics, SFX, acting (if applicable), and music. Like, the Final Fantasy series for example. Like, the SNES ones. I would be perfectly OK playing into infinity new FF games that look exactly like FF IV-VI (vs. everything after, which largely puts you on a rail and TELLS you what to feel). Maybe bigger, with more worlds to explore, bigger customizations, but that'd be fine. Ultima? I was perfectly happy with VII: The Black Gate. I'd love to see more in that vein forevermore.

I suspect they will address these things one by one. I doubt Rockstar likes being embarrassed in this way. And you're probably right in that early players like me are "beta testing" this in some ways. But that's OK.

Oh, definitely, patches galore will fix a ton of the issues I'm sure. I just wish this weren't the default state of gaming, now. I haven't played a game on launch day in ages, anyway, but more and more it looks like I never will again. Everything ships unfinished! Lame.

I saw a few people say the Switch version is barely playable, with horrible framerate issues, but I don't see why anyone would want to play this on that system, anyway. Still... Nintendo's career-long "streak" of having the worst version of any multi-platform game continues! :lol:

The argument the other way would be that this is awesome. Imagine all the sh***y unfinished (or like... close to decent) games we would buy on cartridge or CD way back. Now any game we buy is possibly redeemable via downloads. Or continues to get breathed into it new life.

Like "Animal Crossing: New Horizons." There was a just a big update after like a year or two. Now my daughter is suddenly sucked back into it as a result.

Though maybe that's a bad example, as that is literal new content. Bug fixes, improvements. That's the name of the game.

As with any Nintendo port of any "big" game that isn't a Nintendo game... I don't know why anyone would make a Nintendo system be their go to for it. Since always. Like a few years back, maybe during the PS3/Wii days. There'd be the PS3 version of a game, an X-Box 360 version of a game... then you'd have the dumbed down Wii version. I just know if I was a kid again and we were living in the PS3/360/Wii era, kids would be laughing at you for playing the Wii version of any game that wasn't like a Nintendo exclusive anything.

*edit: uh oh. They've zeroed in on this, too. Just read this "review":

"In contrast to those confusing changes, Rockstar decided to leave a GTA San Andreas mission where a character tasks you with hunting down an apparent gay man to hide a prior relationship with him, completely intact. It's not a good look for a remastered game in 2021."

No, it's a completely fine look for a remastered game in 2021, or 2584. It is set in the 1990s. But even beyond that... bad people do bad things. Always. In any year. Letting bad people do bad things isn't an endorsement of that behavior. F***ing stop it.

I'm about 20ish missions into the main story of GTA: SA so far. One reason I like these games is it lets you step into the life of a black gangsta gangbanger without dying in real life. So I am "shooting up in the hood" and saving my fellow homies and "popping some fools" on the opposing side like those Ballas.

Also the black cop who is constantly keeping CJ on his toes makes me laugh. These games are even more relevant in 2021 than they were in 2004. And then you have the hispanic spanish guy dating CJ's sister saying, "ese" every other sentence.

God everything I learned about black and hispanic people I learned from playing GTA games. So this is what life is like, "on the other side."

Gotta love the irony that the earliest game in this "Trilogy" collection is the third game in the series, even outright says it's the third one in the title.

GTA3, GTAVC, and GTASA definitely comprise the closest thing to a trilogy GTA has ever known. And nobody cares about GTA1 or 2. They're not even really playable, even when they came out.

iread it has many technical problems . Is it true? shoud i play it now or wait? i still have to finish guardiands of galaxy ans psychonaut 2 which are the games i play now.

Everything I enjoyed about San Andreas the first time around until I stopped playing it is kind of coming back to me now. Yeah, those first 10-15 missions around Grove Street are the best times in the game. As soon as Tenpenny (Samuel L. Jackson's cop character) banishes you to another county the game really seems to flounder. I really wish it would have just stayed on that, the Grove Street stuff, and around that. GTA5 sort of dips its toe into those sort of missions as well, without committing.

When I was originally playing the game, I was just getting out of living with a couple of guys who fancied themselves 74 Hoova Crip gangsters in the greater Seattle area. They talked just like that, carried on just like that, and would fantasize about a lot of the stuff that happens in those earliest missions often. "Menace II Society" was always on the TV on repeat. So it was very much "Hood Simulator" in the best possible way, just coming out of the 90s focusing on a very specific spot in the 90s that was still resonating.

If you can, I guess give it about a month or so. I'm up to the "Woozie" missions now, which now makes me wonder where exactly I left off last time because these seem familiar now as well. But while there IS bugs, nothing is really making me regret playing this at this stage.

It seems games are playable, but not good ports / remakes.

Sure but Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection still includes Street Fighter I, despite being terrible.

GTA 1 and 2 are too different from next games in the series.

And the MSX Metal Gears are pretty different from the subsequent games too, still included in the collections (albeit as a bonus in MGS3 but still).

Whatever, my point isn't that GTA 1 and 2 should replace the two games released after GTA 3 in this collection, or even that they need to be included at all. I'm fine with a collection of the PS2 games and nothing else. To bring it back to my Street Fighter example, had it included SF 4 instead of SF 1, it would have been a much stronger collection.

All I really meant was that it is funny that this is called "The Trilogy" when the earliest game included is literally titled "III", it just the fact that I find it humorous. Had this collection been called "GTA: Turn of the Millenium Collection" or something else that didn't draw attention to something so erroneous, it wouldn't have caught my attention.

Metal Gear MSX games are part of the same story and have the same protagonist as MGS1, 2, 4. Also, they have never been available outside of Japan, before their release as part of MGS3.

GTA1 and 2 are standalone stories, which, outside of general gameplay mechanics, have very little to do with GTA3 and beyond.

SF4 had its own standalone releases, which are still available everywhere and most other games in collection hadn't, outside of random ports and collections here and there.

But it is a trilogy, as it includes three games.

... OK? I don't understand why I need to keep trying to explain this, I don't actually care that the first two games are excluded and I don't have a problem with a collection that is just the PS2 games. It does not really bother me. I think the first two games could have been included but that is not an actual concern for me. I also understand why the collection even has the name it does and don't actually care that much either.

It is just the fact that what is marketed as a trilogy starts off with what is explicitly part 3 is funny to me. That's it, I just find the title humorous.

If anything GTA IV, Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost & Damned would be the three games best marketed as a "trilogy", since they actually have story threads which connect them. Although yes, the latter two aren't full games by comparison. But still.

GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas actually aren't so much a "trilogy" as they are "the three GTA games that came out the closest together and share the most gameplay elements between them." I mean they take place in altogether different decades and don't have much storyline connective tissue at all.

I'm actually a bit surprised that IMJ hasn't popped in yet to declare that the three games in this trilogy are not "really" a trilogy, since he's rightly pointed that out about other things often. :trazz: But since he hasn't I will: This is a FAKE GTA trilogy. :tgrin:

You're kind of making the point against you there. There is very little/almost no connective material between ANY GTA games... but at least between GTA3-GTASA it's the same engine. GTASA also sets up the main villain of GTA3 and the beginning of that game. I've never played much of VC so I can't comment there.

And no, certainly the two DLC mission packs for GTA4 don't count as standalone titles.

You barely played Vice City? That was the best one! WTF man?

If memory serves, I got stuck/bored with a mission where you have to remote control a toy helicopter. And at that point I don't think I dug the vibe much (though I loved the hell out of Scarface: The World is Yours, similarly set in a 1980s Miami). I'd probably appreciate it a lot more now.

Oh, yeah, that mission sucked because of the controls and the camera. I had to take a break at that part too but I finally muscled past it.

After that nothing sucked until the racing section of the final mission. THAT part would probably drive you crazy since you already aren't a huge fan of the racing sections, AND the fact that succeeding at it was mostly random (the game explicitly cheats on that part of the mission and as I've mentioned before the developers admitted that it's all up to luck and not skill, the worst kind of "challenge" in a video game). If you keep at it, eventually you'll win, but man... I really, REALLY hope the new version fixed some'a that sh*t. I loved the game but 1% of it had me ready to put my fist through the wall, can't lie.

I liked III, VC and SA a great deal but I admit that being partial to the 1980s aesthetic is what put that one way over for me. "Vice City Stories" was great, too. "Smaller", since it was a PSP port. But still very good and complemented the original VC perfectly.

Well I finished the main story of GTA: SA and I'm shocked how short it was. It only took me 5 days. For some reason when I was younger it felt like the story went on for much longer, I guess it's because open world games back then were rarer. The added checkpoints in missions if you die definitely helped though, although there were still some missions that needed a checkpoint halfway in that still didn't have it so it was annoying to re-do some old stuff.

Obviously I'm not going to 100% all the extra stuff, like doing 100 graffitti tags or that nonsense, but I did all the driving school missions too for the car, motorcycle, boat and flight school. Also constantly defending your hood from ballas but that just keeps going with enemy waves. Only other thing to do is some police car/ambulance/taxi missions, but that shouldn't be too long.

Again, really surprised how short the game was. In my mind this game was like 100 hours long, I feel like I beat it in 20 hours. Granted I guess most of the extra time just comes around from roaming around the city causing chaos but I always shoot for the main story anyway. I'll play around a little bit for extra afterward.

I'm about 5-10 hours out of Los Santos, and I have to agree that the game has sort of floundered since. I think one thing you really miss out on as you leave the area of the game are the gang mechanics. No more rounding up members to go collect some cash from rivals or claim turf, which is one of the coolest new elements in San Andreas.

I also think it has to do with the fact that the mission design just starts to repeat itself. There is only so much fun to be had with the gameplay mechanics the game offers. The biggest joy of the game is exploring the world and story, but the missions tend to wear thin after a while. I believe I'm in the final city in the game (San Fieros), but I'm not sure I'm going to go back, unless I would be missing out on something significant that I'm unaware of.

I forgot that this option goes away after Tenpenny banishes you to the other county. Does it come back later on?

Right. Why introduce that whole feature only to take it away literally only about 5 missions later?

It always should have been about bringing up the Grove Street gang as a true force to be reckoned with, then evolving it beyond a mere street gang on the bigger stage, until your core gang (and yourself) are business people in a high rise building who are giving orders to the street-level gang while collecting tons of cash. That would have been epic and, I think, more in line with what people would expect to see after the first parts of the game.

I just finished the Woozie mission where you have to have at least 20% lung capacity first, to then go and plant a bug on a tanker ship. So, however far along that is.

Worst part of the game is the last story mission doesn't unlock unless you have 35% of the hood taken over from the Ballas gang. I didn't bother to do any of those turf wars throughout my playthrough so I had to spend 2 hours straight just getting through that just so the last story mission would unlock. It was just boring tedious busy-work.

Also the last story mission is long and hard as hell, even with checkpoints. The fact that they can destroy your car in the chase and it's so hard to aim since it's on-rails is nonsense.