Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition

Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. These games were the cornerstone of my early teens (I had very liberal parents, don’t judge). I grew up playing these titles, loving each and every second of them. GTA III introduced me to Michael Madsen, as well as The Sopranos in a weird way. I discovered Miami Vice, Scarface, and new wave music because of Vice City; and San Andreas‘ Radio X pretty much made me the die-hard alternative rock and grunge ...

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition can be fun to play thanks to the inherent strengths of the three all-time classics it remasters, but the remastering itself feels shoddy, thoughtless, and rushed.

Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Edition is one of those “Be careful what you wish for” games. While it has all the improvements that would be considered the bare minimum for Rockstar to put into something, it also exposes the ages of the titles, making the cheapness appear worse than it is. Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Edition is barely worth it for returning players, but is perfect for first-timers to this trilogy of games.

Most games are lucky if they can successfully put a small spin on an existing genre, but there’s an elite few that transcend categories, changing the gaming landscape as we know it. The PS2 Grand Theft Auto Trilogy (Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) were landscape changers. They essentially created the modern open-world template that underpins most of today’s AAA gaming industry from whole cloth, and yet, not a lot has been done to celebrate these games. The original versions of the GTA Trilogy have remained easily playable on PC and there ha...

As I sit to write the review for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition (GTA: DE), I can’t help but be reminded of Vito Corleone, lamenting over the massacre of his boy in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather.’ I think many like-minded 30-somethings that grew up with Grand Theft Auto consider these games as more than just nuggets of blissful, adolescent nostalgia born out of sunny Saturday afternoons spent indoors. They’re very much part of the foundation that developed us into the gamers we are today. And so, we keep them close to our hearts, as if they were a long-lost friend.

Two of the three games are still pretty great, but this is one of the most brazenly offensive cash grab releases I've seen in recent memory.

Combining GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas into some sort of video game Megazord seems like an easy win for publisher Rockstar Games. When it comes to remastering classics, nostalgia can carry a lot of the burden, but not even my fond memories of sneaking off to play GTA 3 at my mate’s house can shoulder the weight of this mess.

The Grand Theft Auto series will always be seen as a cultural milestone in video gaming which led to the open world games that we cherish now, but the years have been a bit harsh on the trilogy and the complete lack of care put into what is essentially an afterthought of a remaster doesn’t help matters much. The few updates made with controls, shooting, and lighting are nice, but not enough to justify the $60 price tag. The games are still worth revisiting, especially if you’ve never played the original releases, but only if you aren’t playing on PC or the Switch as those versions seem to shar...

So, to recap my advice at the beginning: stick to your original copies if you still have them. If you need to see this mess in action for yourself, either wait until developer Grove Street Games heavily patches this collection or wait for a deeply discounted sale.

Grand Theft Auto takes us back to the trilogy that gave the franchise legs, only to make a few stops for some unwanted additions along the way.

Rockstar's remastered trilogy is, appropriately, an absolute car wreck of creative neglect.

In this, the year of remasters, remakes and re-releases, none tickled my fancy more than the long-awaited return of the most iconic gaming trilogy from my childhood – the reason I spent months cobbling together every cent I could muster to buy a second-hand PlayStation 2 in 2004 – and we didn’t even officially know it existed until a few weeks ago.