Grand Theft Auto is back!!!

[imitationleather]

I don't know what everyone was expecting, I was expecting much less than this. I think it looks great and I will be curling up in bed with my Switch getting well stuck into these. With Bluetooth headphones! Imagine!

+1

[QDRPHNC]

That does sound pretty good to be fair.

Just seems so underwhelming though, especially coming so soon after the flop of the next-gen GTA5 E&E "reveal".

[Mister Six]

It IS a shame that they haven't included the PSP games. Holding off as a possible follow-up if these do well, I guess? Couldn't take that much more effort, surely, if most of the assets are in place from GTA 3 and VC? Which was the advantage of the original Stories games, come to think of it.

Won't bother with these, but watching the cars fly through the air reminds me how much fun the games used to be before the Housers apparently became obsessed with writing their own third-rate Carlito's Way or whatever. Just give me movie physics, fun characters and fundamentally solid gameplay, FFS. Who was asking for yoga minigames, carefully choreographed missions or elaborate cutscenes anyway?

And bring back packages and rampages while you're at it!

[Waking Life]

I'm not sure how expectations could have been less to be honest, especially for the price. Most remasters - at least on appearance - offer more at a lower price point. Maybe they have retooled the gameplay significantly, but it just feels very cynical. I guess it's still early doors.

The rationale for deleting the old trilogy now makes sense at least; clearly, they won't want to undercut the same-ish product. Were the originals available for the Switch?

I'm probably overreacting, as I don't really care about it that much. From what I understand, this is one of many remasters Rockstar is planning to release. It seems like they have little intention of moving forward anymore.

[popcorn]

Who was asking for yoga minigames, carefully choreographed missions or elaborate cutscenes anyway?

When I was working in a game shop I remember teenagers excitedly telling each other "mate you can get a haircut in this one"

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I don't know what everyone was expecting, I was expecting much less than this. I think it looks great and I will be curling up in bed with my Switch getting well stuck into these. With Bluetooth headphones! Imagine!

You want us to imagine you in bed?

[Mister Six]

When I was working in a game shop I remember teenagers excitedly telling each other "mate you can get a haircut in this one"

I don't mind the character customisation stuff - in fact, I loved it in SA, putting a Groucho Marx moustache on CJ and making him walk around in his underpants during serious dramatic cutscenes - I just don't understand the motivation to make mediocre and manifestly un-fun stuff like the yoga minigame in V.

Yakuza is stuffed with minigames, I know, but they're all mostly fun, and very videogamey, and you get (effectively) EXP to spend on skills and upgrades if you play them, whereas in pseudo-realistic V, they're just... there, pointlessly flailing in the wind, serving no purpose outside of whichever dull on-rails mission introduces them.

[Thursday]

Won't bother with these, but watching the cars fly through the air reminds me how much fun the games used to be before the Housers apparently became obsessed with writing their own third-rate Carlito's Way or whatever.

I feel like they always were it was just that restrictions in hardware limited them in a way that was actually pretty good.

[popcorn]

I don't mind the character customisation stuff - in fact, I loved it in SA, putting a Groucho Marx moustache on CJ and making him walk around in his underpants during serious dramatic cutscenes - I just don't understand the motivation to make mediocre and manifestly un-fun stuff like the yoga minigame in V.

I fully agree and I don't really like Rockstar games for many reasons, including this. GTA has always struck me as technical achievement triumphing over sense.

However, I think much of the philosophy that has driven the franchise, and the appeal it holds for its fans (especially younger ones), is in its ridiculous maximalist kitchen-sink approach. Remember when you were 12 and fantasised about games where you could do anything? Imagine a game where you could get a flame-thrower and blow up your school and then eat ice cream while surfing! It's that sort of approach, except it also wants to be The Godfather and "satirise America" by doing things like renaming Wal-Mart to Ass-Mart and that sort of thing.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Remember when you were 12 and fantasised about games where you could do anything? Imagine a game where you could get a flame-thrower and blow up your school and then eat ice cream while surfing! It's that sort of approach, except it also wants to be The Godfather and "satirise America" by doing things like renaming Wal-Mart to Ass-Mart and that sort of thing.

That's exactly what I always think Rockstar seem like, it's school-kids brainstorming game ideas "it'd be cool if you could get eat too much and fat," "it'd be cool if your beard grew and you had to shave," But they're not school-kids, they're AAA game developers, and it turns out all that shit sounds 'cool' but doesn't translate to fun game mechanics. Plus it's taking development time up that could be spent polishing up the controls or optimising the engine so it doesn't run like a piece of shit. You've got temperature-reactive horse testicles? That's great, I can see them shrink along with my framerate.

[Mister Six]

I was going to add pretty much exactly the same thing to my post, but was pressed for time.

"Hey, remember there was a golf course in Vice City, but all you could do was steal the little golf carts and do silly drive-bys in them? Well now you can actually play golf!"

"Oh, cool, I guess. I haven't played a golf game since the Mega Drive. Is it fun?"

"Well, no, but..."

Again, look at the Yakuza series. I'm playing Yakuza 0 at the minute, and in that you can:

* Sing at karaoke (or shout encouragement as one of your character's friends sings),
* Dance at the disco,
* Play baseball at a batting cage,
* Go 10-pin bowling,
* Play darts (various rules),
* Play mahjong,
* Play shogi (Japanese chess),
* Play various gambling games - poker, blackjack, roulette etc,
* Build up a property empire,
* Develop a hostess club, and play a surprisngly detailed associated minigame,
* Chat up girls in a weird target-shooting game,
* Race Scalextric-type cars,
* Watch ladies wrestle (a rock-paper-scissors thing),
* Go fishing.

Plus there are conversions of Out Run, Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone and Super Hang-On, although it's not fair to include these really, as the game is produced by Sega, which already holds the licences.

Not that the minigames are all brilliant, although some I really love (I'll never understand why people like the baseball or disco ones, mind). But at least they have an obvious point (unlike the yoga one), are designed to be a fun blast of quick entertainment (unlike the golf) and actually reward you, either in cash or EXP.

Did anyone go back to the yoga mats after they were introduced? How many people played the golf game long enough to warrant its inclusion?

Just weird.

[Mister Six]

I just remembered the GTA V mission where you pick stuff up with a crane and move it around very slowly for about 10 minutes, then the mission ends and you don't get any money.

Jesus Christ.

[JamesTC]

Love the crane in San Andreas which could hold a car. You could drop the crane while holding the car and then get out of the crane and into the car and drive with the crane still attached to swing into the air.

[mobias]

For £55 I dare say you could pop down to a car boot sale and buy an old PS2 and a CRT TV and enjoy these games as god intended, warts and all.

It does look a bit weird giving a modern make over to a 20 year old game(s). I'll reserve judgement until I see more footage though.

[VelourSpirit]

This is a fun kind of "what if they took these 20 year old games I know like the back of my hand and shove a lot of PS4 tech into it but they're still the same game underneath". It's ugly but it's fascinating and I get such a thrill seeing them run at a high frame rate with new models, shiny lighting/shadows/reflections and shit. It's like a missed generation of games that I was expecting when I was younger - games that actually looked like CGI FMV adverts.

Not paying that much for them though and I don't appreciate that they've taken the originals off the Steam store! *especially considering that so far there's no Steam announcement for this

[Steven88]

I've played all three fairly recently on the PS4 so i'm not in a rush to get this and i'm definitely not paying £55.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I swear to god the SA fog was not as prevalent as you're all making out either. I dumped 2000+ hours into that game as a kid and have no recollection of ever having issues with the fog. And as a teenager and adult I've played probably another 2000+ hours in multiplayer mods.

I'm not sure if it's because I played on Xbox, which had a bit more oomph than the PS2 so it didn't need things like fog to make it run well, but I only remember there being a yellow smog effect in Los Santos. Once you got out of the city it was pretty clear.

[Steve Lampkins]

Someone did a deeper dive comparison, and it's looking more tempting when you really see the differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NglSuMJ5vhY

[mobias]

Still not 55 quids worth of differences, for me anyway. It'll be interesting to see how it does at that price. I guess maybe PS5 owners, with not a lot to play at the moment, might be well up for paying that for it.

My guess is it'll be on sale for 30 quid in 6 months. Which is the most I'd pay.

[samadriel]

After playing Vice City, the car controls in GTA3 were pure poison. I hope they get fixed.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Someone did a deeper dive comparison, and it's looking more tempting when you really see the differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NglSuMJ5vhY

I can't say I'm any more tempted to part with £55, just because someone freeze framed the trailer.

Right now, my greatest motivation to get it is just that I'm feeling rather nostalgic and I don't have an alternative copy of GTA3.

[Rev+]

After playing Vice City, the car controls in GTA3 were pure poison. I hope they get fixed.

I kind of like the tin foil feel of them, but the motorbikes!?  They've surely got to overhaul them in the way they did with the Lost and Damned.  But then that would make the roof jump thing in Vice City far too easy, and the dirt bike thing in the arena.

Shall we just not bother?  Let's just bung some cartoons on.

[H-O-W-L]

I'm not sure if it's because I played on Xbox, which had a bit more oomph than the PS2 so it didn't need things like fog to make it run well, but I only remember there being a yellow smog effect in Los Santos. Once you got out of the city it was pretty clear.

XBOX SA is enhanced graphically, yes. There is still "fog" but it's distant and barely notable. It's more like "gentle gradient culling", much like it is on PC.

[H-O-W-L]

Right now, my greatest motivation to get it is just that I'm feeling rather nostalgic and I don't have an alternative copy of GTA3.

If you have a PC capable of running a modern browser you can probably run it if you get a pirate copy, or a cheap CD Key for the Steam version (they're still available).
If you have any issues running it check out this page:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_III

[Beagle 2]

It only just occurred to me that this might look terrible on Switch. I wouldn't be arsed to play it on any other platform. I was playing a bit of Saints Row the Third last night to get me in the mood and it looks like frothy dog sick.

[Mister Six]

Someone did a deeper dive comparison, and it's looking more tempting when you really see the differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NglSuMJ5vhY

Gee whiz, rounded train tracks! Well worth 55 of anyone's Great British pounds.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It's a telling detail, that. Other than the characters, the upgraded models are all things that only need making once for multiple instances. You can spend a minute making a rail, then just replace all the old crappy ones in a couple of clicks (I assume). Upgrading unique assets, like the buildings would have been a much bigger task (sticking a bit of shrubbery on the windowsills doesn't count).

Would it be reasonable to expect them to overhaul all three maps? Maybe not for the price of a single game, but it would have been nice and certainly more impressive. The new versions aren't so far beyond the old ones that I wouldn't have been happy with a straight port of the originals. I bought the port of San Andreas on the Xbox 360 and it looked a lot better then the PS2 version, simply for not having to go through the HD telly's terrible composite video upscaling.

Fair enough, three large games is a lot of bang for your buck, but I don't reckon the amount of work put into this is equivalent to a modern AAA development cycle that the price implies.

This is a really nitpicking point, but I just realised one reason why the trailer was underwhelming is because the new and old footage is misaligned. Boy, I hope someone got fired for that blunder.

[Chedney Honks]

Mad thing about this isn't that the graphics are peff, it's that the gameplay will be the same. Trail a cunt while ten minutes of noose tier dialogue plays out, shoot a man pick up a box and drive back to do the same again. Mission Failed? Hope you enjoyed those ten minutes.

[Mister Six]

It's a telling detail, that. Other than the characters, the upgraded models are all things that only need making once for multiple instances. You can spend a minute making a rail, then just replace all the old crappy ones in a couple of clicks (I assume). Upgrading unique assets, like the buildings would have been a much bigger task (sticking a bit of shrubbery on the windowsills doesn't count).

The buildings have all been replaced by new models, if that video is anything to go by. That building has more than just "a bit of shrubbery" added to it. So work has gone in here. And you'd still have to playstest it, and make sure that the altered assets etc. I still wouldn't want to pay 55 quid for it, mind.

I suppose this makes sense for Rockstar, though - given that their absurdly huge and hyper-detailed games take years to produce, this is a useful way of keeping income flowing in.

I do wish they'd just make smaller, better games, but perhaps they don't think that's a feasible model after the standards set by GTA V and RDR 2.

[Chedney Honks]

RDR2 is the best game they've ever made by a mile, though.