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Scene from the remaster of »Vice City«: Suddenly a tree grows through the car
Photo: Rockstar
If it were up to the user ratings on Metacritic, the best-known overview platform for game reviews, "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition" would be one of the worst games in history. The aggregate rating is 0.8 on the Playstation 5 and only 0.5 out of 10 possible points on the PC. This is of course nonsense and due to a pitchfork and torch mentality that likes to pave the way on such platforms. This game collection, advertised as the definitive edition, is still a nuisance.
It would have been so easy for "GTA" manufacturer Rockstar Games to get everything right.
Finally, "GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition" brings together three of the most important and influential games of the last 20 years in one package: "GTA III" from 2001, "GTA: Vice City" from 2002 and "GTA: San Andreas", which completed the so-called trilogy in 2004 and which became the best-selling game for the Playstation 2.
How good you find this collection depends heavily on your own expectations - and also on your sense of nostalgia.
Anyone who has never played the originals and got to know the “GTA” series through “GTA V” should actually only play “GTA: The Trilogy” out of historical interest and otherwise prefer to stick with newer titles.
From today's perspective, the graphics are marginal, the gameplay bulky and the bugs annoying.
But it could be different for gamers who were already active shortly after the turn of the millennium.
For many of them, “GTA III”, “GTA: Vice City” and “GTA: San Andreas” are inextricably linked with a quantum leap for games.
Where up until then game designers dictated the way, players suddenly had unimagined freedom to fulfill their missions and let off steam in 3D worlds.
Today's open world games are inconceivable without the three "GTA" games from the package.
"GTA" was a controversial topic for a long time
In »GTA«, however, freedom was always in the context of violence and shootings, which is why the games were not only extremely popular, but also became the target of major counter-campaigns. Rockstar Games had become almost synonymous with brutalizing youth. No wonder if you could discuss with friends whether it is easier to kill a Mafia boss with a sniper rifle or to park a few buses in front of your garage and then detonate a bomb. Crooked looks were always taken into account.
At the same time, with its three titles, Rockstar Games has managed to get games out of the nerd niche and to turn them into a total work of art with quotes from pop culture, from film, music, radio and television. Hardly a game in the past two decades is unaffected by this. The "GTA" series made games more adult, more versatile and more suitable for new target groups. Hardly any action game today can do without open worlds and different solutions.
But the three games in the trilogy were never one thing: good-looking and easy to play.
Every single one of them tried to get the maximum out of the Playstation 2.
The games explored the limits and preferred to forego graphic gloss rather than game ideas.
In the Playstation 2 era, it worked because the game system was so new and stunning - and because the developers knew the weaknesses and whitewashed them with style.
Players could use their imagination to make up for the missing ounce of graphics.
more on the subject
Image enhancement for »GTA V«: Is that still graphics or is it already reality? By Jörg Breithut
It stops where it used to
All the more annoying that a lot has been made worse in the new versions. Of course: the models have become more detailed, the shadows better, the cars more realistic. But again and again you can see faces that have been creepily distorted or animations that pull the comic-like animation style of the originals into the grotesque. There is rain that takes almost all of your vision away and reinterprets drops in the lightning bolts of a mini thunderstorm. The misty, blurred world of the original games has given way to a foresight that reveals ugly corners and edges. The cities in "GTA III" and "San Andreas" in particular have lost a lot of their unmistakable appearance.
Nevertheless: Anyone who lived through the games earlier can also have a lot of fun with the remasters and be reminded of the feelings from back then.
About how great it can be to fly into a sunset in a helicopter with »Atomic« by Blondie or how good it is to hear Dub by Scientist when you drive through the neon-lit Liberty City or how great it is to yourself to be heard with Chuck D in "San Andreas" through hip-hop classics.
The games were little guides through different strands of pop culture and are still great at describing an era - even if some titles were probably thrown out of the game for licensing reasons.
Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in "Vice City", in particular, is sorely missed.
Other memories are also awakened.
So you can briefly amuse yourself that »San Andreas« stops and reloads in exactly the same places as in the original.
Or be happy that the enemy AI is still so bad that it offsets the disadvantage of the lousy objective function.
The games were enjoyed back then as much as suffered, and with these remasters it is still like that.
Definitely not great versions
It speaks for the original quality of the games that they can still be fun.
For the effort the developers at Rockstar went to twenty years ago.
And it speaks against the work that has gone into the new versions.
Ultimately, all nostalgia cannot hide a few unpleasant questions: How can it actually be that twenty-year-old games run just as badly on new, super-fast game consoles as they do on the Playstation 2?
Which quality control did these loveless ports - which are also probably not based on the originals, but on the mobile versions of the games - nod?
And also: Why is Rockstar trampling on its own classics, its history, instead of lovingly restoring them and really showing them to a new generation?
One can only hope that at some point there will be a really definitive edition of the trilogy and that this definitely sloppy collection will not remain the end point.
"GTA: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition" by Rockstar Games, for Playstation 4/5, Xbox One / Series X / S, Nintendo Switch and PC, approx. 60 euros, USK: from 18 years of age