GTA Trilogy comes back online amid refund demands and Metacritic score of 0.5

[midian182]

Facepalm: It seems that with GTA: The Trilogy, Rockstar looked at CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 and uttered the famous line, “hold my beer.” Following a disastrous launch and numerous complaints, the hugely anticipated remaster of the beloved games currently has a Metacritic score of 0.5 on PC, 0.7 on PS4, 0.4 on Xbox One, and 0.5 on Switch.

The GTA Trilogy got off to the worst start possible on November 11 when, just a few hours after arrival, Rockstar tweeted that its Games Launcher had been taken offline for maintenance. This left people unable to play the game they just bought and stopped them from loading Rockstar titles such as GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as their online elements.

The launcher did come back online late on November 12. However, the remastered GTA Trilogy remained inaccessible and was taken off sale as Rockstar removed “files unintentionally included in these versions,” likely music that was no longer licensed, full game scripts with developer notes, and data related to the infamous “hot coffee” sex mini-game from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Hot coffee was disabled in the original but remained in the code. Players found a way to reactivate it in 2005, leading to a $20 million lawsuit against Take-Two that it ultimately settled.

It was inevitable. pic.twitter.com/WGYJyLywsr

— J S-A VA 🇬🇧 (@SPITFIREVA) November 11, 2021

But it’s not just these problems that have led to the GTA Trilogy being hammered by reviewers and buyers alike. There are reports of bugs in the game itself, terrible effects, invisible structures, wandering camera angles, and even misspelled signs and posters, possibly due to an automated upscaling program.

The general sentiment was best expressed by u/Cyb3ron on Reddit:

Remasters of older games are becoming increasingly popular these days, but it’s an area where developers need to tread carefully, lest they be accused of a shameless cash grab. Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Mafia Definitive Edition were well received, but Crysis Remastered, which was delayed following a backlash against the very unimpressive trailer, has a mixed rating on Steam.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92218-gta-trilogy-comes-back-online-amid-metacritic-score.html

 

[Yenega]

Since when did Rockstar care for PC gaming. I want to play this dated crap anyway.

 

[Burty117]

I'm not saying I pirated the game, What I am saying is I had a smoother experience getting hold of, and playing this game from alternative sources that weren't run by Rockstar.

Seriously, these companies bring this on themselves. It's actually a joke just how little effort they put into a product like this, they're worth $5 billion and can't even upscale their own games properly. Something the community has done over the years for free...

 

[McMurdeR]

A scammer would have done a better job. Looks like another great studio/publisher has been rotted out by greed from the inside. There's gotta be a question mark over whether these guys can ever produce a functional game again not to mention a classic.

Sony and Microsoft should have taken this down too.

Never ever preorder games.

 

[noel24]

GTA Trilogy: Jack Thompson Edition.

 

[Dimitriid]

As I said on the other thread: anybody who's played or paid attention to GTA Online in the last 3 years already knows Rockstar is done being a great publisher: they really are out to just squeeze every single drop they can out of the franchise without putting back a single dime back into it: they'll try anything pay to win, non-existent developer teams with barely there skeleton crews, months at the time without updates or comments while their games get devoured by hackers and cheaters.

Online even had a huge issue with loading times reaching 5 to 10 minutes of you staring at the clouds that a modder was able to fix before anyone at R* ever bothered to because it wasn't something that was directly tied to micropayments and that's the only thing they cared about and ordered their devs to fix, nothing else.

Your expectations should be for every Rockstar game released in the future to be *this bad* by default or worst at launch with no guarantees of ever improving and if they ever release an honestly stellar, polished title it would be an exception and to be immediately abandoned afterwards for the next 10 years.

 

[Nobina]

I'm not saying I pirated the game

I did.

 

[Irata]

… possibly due to an automated upscaling program.

Hmmm….if only there were an easy to implement upsampling method that worked on all GPU….

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I find it amusing people are demanding refunds. You KNOW that this platform doesnt allow refunds, why on earth would you buy it that way? Hell why would you pay mroe then $10 for old PS2 games (or any game really these days) that comes with online DRM, and from a developer that has been consistently incompetent, and a publisher that have been greedy bastards?

You get what you deserve. STOP. BUYING. REMASTERS. Gamers have to be some of the biggest consoomers on planet earth.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I don't dislike Rockstar.

I dislike their $hitty games. GTA 3 was fun on the PS2, I'll give them that. Every regurgitated copy after that sucked more and more.

Then they're like, "Look at us! We did something new! Here's Red Dead Redemption! So much awesome sauce!"

It was a crappy, slower GTA 3 game. Instead of cars, you have a dumba$s horse.....oh wow.

Yeah, I don't enjoy their games so I avoid them. Anyone wanting to play old, remastered regurgitated games from them....well, I guess that's your prerogative and I do hope you enjoy the games. But you get what you pay for from a company like Rockstar - half hearted effort and games.

Then, for those that couldn't play while the server was down, let it be a lesson as to what happens when you have to play game (even single player version) that requires a server to up and functional to allow you to play. What happens in 5/10/15 years when the severs are taken down and you can't play games for that developer anymore?

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

Gamers were the ones asking for the remasters/re-release

 

[ypsylon]

ME Legendary while its nice remaster, all in one bundle without previous shenanigans, it still contains a lot of bugs which BW couldn't care less to fix now. They removed most obvious issues and all mighty problem with Miranda's bum camera mode , but there is mountain of problems.


I'm sure most happy about MEL remaster are console players, because they were stuck in antiquity of PCGaming. PC version had 4K mods for a decade and whole new cutscenes and side missions. That's why PC players are massively more skeptical about remaster quality. It wasn't a remaster but low-effort AI upscale, with 4K textures which wouldn't pass the 2K or 1440p scrutiny. Even PhotoMode while nice, uses BMP as files and whatever compression they run (on this supposedly lossless format) make them horrid on close inspection. Using 3rd party tool to take a screenshot produces different - much better results.

Even last week modders ported the original Pinnacle Station DLC into new game. BW clamed they lost the source code blah, blah. It's amazing what Gods of ME Modding Community can do for free while multi-billion corporation (to use the Krogan saying) piss on our graves.

 

[Toju Mikie]

It's a shame...
I was looking forward to these remasters but it's another game that was rushed out instead of releasing when it's ready. Looks like a game in alpha honestly.

Instead of hiring modders and working with them, they just sue them instead and force them to take down their work. It should have been easy for Rockstar to say "come work with us on the remaster" or "let us buy your mod" and it would have gone a lot smoother.

I don't have much hope now especially after announcing the 4th release of GTA V, the "enhanced and expanded" version, but I am not sure what is actually expanded and enhanced yet.

For now, I'll just boot up the original remasters on steam and just play those.

 

[DZillaXx]

Then they're like, "Look at us! We did something new! Here's Red Dead Redemption! So much awesome sauce!"

It was a crappy, slower GTA 3 game. Instead of cars, you have a dumba$s horse.....oh wow.

If this is how you saw the first Red Dead Redemption, I feel sorry for you and your lack of taste.

We've been getting mostly crappy games for the last decade...

RDR2 on the other hand is not as good as people like to believe it was.

 

[Nobina]

Gamers were the ones asking for the remasters/re-release

Not for a broken, half-assed one.

 

[mbrowne5061]

If you play console, things like this just make a really strong case for waiting for new games. 6mos, if its good, buy it new. If it still sucks after 12mos but you're a gluten for punishment, buy it used and give your money to someone like GameStop instead.

 

[Uncle Al]

Sounds like a continuation on the same feeble effort they started with .... I'm certainly not impressed!

 

[mbk34]

I must admit I loved GTA 3 when it came out. I still listen to mp3's of the radio stations from the game now. If the game did look and feel more modern with new missions then I might be tempted (if the price was OK). I'd also expect more radio to listen to.

I'd also love to play the original Unreal Tournament with new look and feel, updated AI and new locations. I must of spent half a lifetime on these two games combined.

 

[Karlos95]

I did.

I will be for the mere fact they didn't update music license and still expect $90 for the game.

I'll pirate the crap out of it and then change all the music stations to their original files with the help of either youtube to mp3 or a torrent.

 

[Karlos95]

I find it amusing people are demanding refunds. You KNOW that this platform doesnt allow refunds, why on earth would you buy it that way? Hell why would you pay mroe then $10 for old PS2 games (or any game really these days) that comes with online DRM, and from a developer that has been consistently incompetent, and a publisher that have been greedy bastards?

You get what you deserve. STOP. BUYING. REMASTERS. Gamers have to be some of the biggest consoomers on planet earth.

Nothing wrong with remasters if that's what people want. The problem is greed and not keeping things the way they should be. The things that made the game in the first place but then updating it with a bit of polish on controls and GFX.

If they want people to spend their money on their remasters, then they should spend their money to make it a finished product to take people back to the good old days. Not bug filled pieces of crap.

 

[arrowflash]

Some people on forums and imageboards appear to have found out why the models look so bad, and why the game is so unoptimized.

They're claiming that the developers just ran all classic GTA models through Blender's "subdivide" feature multiple times (it automatically smoothens out models by increasing polycount), without any post retouching (personally I've never done 3D modeling and never even used Blender so I'm not sure about the validity of those claims, but most of the community seems to agree). There's also the AI algorithm used to upscale and smoothen the textures, there's plenty of evidence that they didn't even retouched or reviewed most of them.

Nothing wrong with remasters if that's what people want. The problem is greed and not keeping things the way they should be. The things that made the game in the first place but then updating it with a bit of polish on controls and GFX.

If they want people to spend their money on their remasters, then they should spend their money to make it a finished product to take people back to the good old days. Not bug filled pieces of crap.

I agree. Remasters can be welcome when they are well made, and don't censor or alter content to pander to contemporary sensibilities. Remasters can be a good idea especially for games that have issues running on modern OSes and PCs, that can't be fixed with small community patches (which wasn't the case for the original 6th gen GTA games, by the way), and lack essential quality of life features that we take for granted these days.

However, when your official remaster is looking worse and running worse than community made mods and patches, that's not okay and you should go back to the drawing board.

In my opinion, the main problem with this GTA Trilogy remasters is that they were too ambitious and tried to fix what wasn't broken. Changing the engine to Unreal was a terrible and reckless idea, when the original games still run perfectly fine on modern PCs with community patches consisting of a tiny .dll file. All they had to do was relicense a few songs, update the executables and engine adding a few QoL features and proper 60 fps and ultrawidescreen support (things that the community patches already do), manually update a few scenery textures, and unify the best visual features of the PS2 and OG Xbox versions on all ports (community patches and mods also already do this flawlessly). Maybe update the vehicle models a bit, since these do look a bit too boxy and outdated, but don't mess with character models or scenery.

That's all Rockstar had to do, and they'd have a winner.