Digital Foundry Begins GTA Trilogy Analysis, Describes GTA 3 On Switch As A 'Big Mess'

Leave the Switch version alone and pick on the other versions already!

(hehe)

I'm just happy to have it playable on Switch, performance be damned. Good performance is obviously preferable, but I feel this way about the majority of Switch ports.

I have to disagree with DF on this one. We need to wait for an update before jumping into rash conclusions here. What I have figured out is that this is just a rushed port for all the consoles and they made a mess of a 20years old semi remake/remastered port.

I've only really put any time into Vice City and whilst performance isn't very good its very playable and I've had a good time playing it. I've taken the mansion from Ricardo Diaz and the framerate has never got in the way of me completing missions. I've only played GTA 3 briefly and that did seem worse.

It's far from the worst performing game I've ever played, Skyrim on PS3 was way worse for example. Maybe it's because I regularly play retro games so low framerates don't bother me as much but whilst these should obviously be much better, I still think its been overblown somewhat apart from that rain effect which is truly terrible

This game should run easily at 60fps and 1080p in every console. What a mediocre port.

Disappointed. Cancelled my Switch pre-order. With the $60 price, lawsuits against modders, and removal of the old games from digital storefronts, it is hard not to feel incredibly cynical about Rockstar. The QA seems totally absent, for a mobile port from a developer seemingly out of their depth. The CEO and Michael Pachter gaslighting fans with “tough decisions” / “like rating the first Star Wars movie against most recent” BS is just the icing on the cake of the whole sorry episode. So much potential wasted.

Let’s face it this is trash on every format

@Thaliard I'm having fun with it poor performance and all

"Hello, Gamers! Here are some games you loved when you were younger, but worse. That will be $60, and you'll probably buy it anyway because we are Rockstar."

-Rockstar Public Relations, probably

That's a shame. I haven't played any GTA properly (I remember playing one casually in a friend's house, but I was just messing around, not doing any missions) and I was looking forward to try these on Switch. Now I'm on a wait and see approach.

@Rpg-lover You disagree with facts? He's not presenting an opinion. He's presenting objective facts from analyzing the technical side of the game. If you want to disagree with facts, well, I don't know what to tell you.

@Rpg-lover Yet Rockstar is still charging $60 for this game right now and for that reason, it's subject to every bit of criticism!

I remember when we used to get full complete games at launch that didn't need a "day one" patch to actually work, or needed to wait a few weeks for patches that removed bugs. Every day I see my favorite hobby getting treated worse and worse while people continue to defend getting less and less.

@Rpg-lover I think you're being sarcastic and it was just very dryly delivered/sounds exactly like everyone else who thinks extracting joy from a game means criticism is invalid.

Or at least I hope, please clarify lol.

@LegendOfStewart i don't disagree with facts the game on all the consoles are a mess! What do you expect from a 4gb ram and an outdated Tegra processor on the switch? A miracle to happen? The switch version is as bad as others. If anything the other powerful consoles needs to be ridiculed more.

In fairness Vice City on the PS2 was so rushed that the game would corrupt your save if you saved at the Cherry Popper Ice Cream Factory.

The real problem here is the way Rockstar hid the game- no previews, no review codes and virtually no screenshots or footage of the game running. If they’d at least been up front about what the game was it would have been OK. Instead they hid the game until almost the last moment in the hopes of securing lots of preorders. Luckily I’ve seen publishers do this often enough to be suspicious and avoided preordering.

If they sufficiently fix them with patches I’ll definitely get the collection as I love a bit of Vice City, but as it stands, I’ll get a better experience playing Vice City on my iPhone with a controller.

@GrailUK the other versions are bad too

Remember when the games on a cartridge were actually good, functional, and complete? And relatively bug-free? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

The apologists for day-1 patching devs are infuriating and depressing. Our physical carts are becoming nothing more than physical DRM keys for downloaded games, and will become worthless once the servers are gone.

How often do reviewers, etc. go back and revisit a game after it's been patched? Rarely?

Well calling it th definitive version probably wasn‘t the best move. How about GTA: The Trilogy: The Early Beta Version

That said, I won’t give a final opinion on it if I haven‘t played it myself. Much like carlos82 I‘d probably have fun with it…Still, I guess I have to agree that chraging 60$ is too much in this case given that actual remakes (not remasters) are usually 40$ despite being built from the ground up.

Milking this story are we, NL?

It's too bad these NL articles are only focusing on graphics and performance when it's the actual game content that makes these games so great. The games were always janky, but perfectly playable. They would crash after playing extensively and glitches were commonplace, much like a Bethesda game. Maybe some people just don't know a lot of these criticisms were already present originally.

Here's what you get for $60:
GTA III
9.6/10 original review by IGN
Avg Completion Time: 15 1/2 Hours
GTA: Vice City
9.7/10 original review by IGN
Avg Completion Time: 19 Hours
GTA: San Andreas
9.9/10 original review by IGN
Avg Completion Time: 31 Hours
+ Graphical Improvements Across all Games
+ Lighting Improvements Across all Games
+ Map GPS, Improved Aiming, and Weapon Wheel Improvements Across all Games

As a reminder, these are games that released in 2001, 2002, and 2004. I find it odd this article compare these ports to more recent game ports like The Witcher 3 and Dying Light that released in 2015. Both of these titles had excellent optimization when they were built originally, which made it easier to port. I'm not at all saying it was easy, these are masterful ports, but this, in my opinion, was very lazy comparison that gave no consideration to how old these games are and how the older a game is, the harder it becomes to port them into newer engines.

All that said, if you've never played these games before and you're used to modern games like GTA V, you should probably avoid these titles because they are from a much earlier time when all open world games were still called "GTA Clones." These games defined the genre of open world action games before they became as commonplace as they are today.

Mobile port to Console to Switch and moving the game from Renderware to the Unreal Engine leads to a mess.

Each day this keeps getting worse. Rockstar should be ashamed.

Mobile developers tries to port 8 different versions of 3 full games....fails miserably.

Film @ 11

@YusseiWarrior3000 they're milking it harder than Rockstar milks GTA V.

The lack of early reviews for these games should tell us what kind of trash ports they are. Rockstar could had done a lot more with this collection and they took the greedy/lazy way out just like Sega. There's no reason for these modern remastered of these old games to be worst than their originals. Sega and Rockstar really need to stop treating their fanbase like sheeps. Sonic Colors Ultimate and GTA Trilogy could had been right up there with the Crash N-Sane Trilogy and Spyro Re-Ignite Trilogy.

@carlos82

Not the Framerate is the Problem, all the Bugs and messed up Stuff it

Look at this haha:

https://imgur.com/Um05OXQ

@Azuris haha, I'm totally trying that next time I play 😂

There's part of me that hopes these glitches never get patched

I stopped trusting DigitalFoundry when they didn't even notice Breath of the Wild had dynamic resolution scaling

It’s bad on every console, but on switch is the worse

Simple response to Rockstar and Take2, get your sh*t together and fix it yourselves instead of hiring some random mobile dev studio.

@YusseiWarrior3000 I'm not giving them any more clicks for GTA. Lol

@fenlix

I watched the DF thing on GTA3 and yeah; this this needs to be buried with those ET carts.

I mean; it's a total mess. The BEST version: PS4 version on the PS5. That should tell you something about the mess they released.

Cash grab 100%. Rockstar should be ashamed. I'd rather just play on the PS2.

@Rpg-lover I don't think it's rash for a released game or any waiting needed. This is how they chose to release it, this is what they are charging people for, so this is how it gets reviewed.

The only people defending it are the ones that need reassurance for their purchase. Its garbage. Also...Nintendolife is obsessed with this game. 🤣

There were some here saying that they wouldn’t have bought the trilogy had they been ported from the iOS versions.

If anything, porting from the iOS versions would have probably been an improvement. I can’t vouch for the trilogy, but Liberty City Stories looks and plays great.

They are all crap regardless of version. Even the Pc version had to be pulled

Play Dying Light on Switch instead of this mess

@LegendOfStewart it's just their coping mechanism to not feel buyers remorse as strongly as they do deep down. Been seeing it a lot all over in comment sections of this game.

@sremick I made a similar comment in another recent post about this demaster, and all of the patch apologists came out in full force.

"Memory is cheap nowadays" (I disagree, but it's a moot point because publishers shouldn't be releasing half-baked games to begin with)

"A patch generally replaces the existing code" (lol how does this work on the ROM of game card?)

"I'm all digital so I don't care" (awesome, what does that do for people who buy the physical edition?)

"Games have always had bugs. If we waited for every bug to get fixed in a game, then no game would come out" (there is a gigantic rift between acceptable little bugs/glitches and a rushed game that never made it past beta testing. Can we give the publisher only a part of the sales price and pay the rest later when the patch comes out to make the game acceptable?)

Probably had more fun watching the DF video than I could get out of the collection in it's current state.

With modern game ports, I'd be fine playing at subpar quality because it takes a tremendous amount of time to optimize the game properly.

For re-releases, remasters, and some remakes, my standards are through the roof; it HAS to run at peak performance on the Switch or it becomes an insult to the Switch library. GTA Trilogy had the same level of potential. It could've been a game developed with the Switch's specs, while being greatly enhanced on other consoles. Instead, they chose the middle ground, like most developers do. Rather than choosing the path with all upgrades, they choose the one where there are downgrades and upgrades.

@Azuris that's a feature, you know 😂

@Rpg-lover Rockstar didn't develop this tragedy, I mean, trilogy. Second. These games are not worth the $60 asking price. I bought the double pack on xbox back in the day for less than $20 used on gamestop not long after release. GTA games devalue in price quickly; V being the only exception because people can't seem to stop buying it.

@Astral-Grain Rockstar tried to sell us a Honda Civic 2001 with a fresh coat of paint done by a jobber , but the mechanic is broken the body is rusted and it’s good for the dump and they ask full price for this piece of ***** , but in 2001 this was a good car with good reviews but in 2021 it’s worrh nothing.

@carlos82
So you must play a lot of garbage retro games if you think that excuses this rush job that Rockstar tricked you into buying.

@SalvorHardin no, most of them are great but low framerates were common back then

too many comments on here are going out of their way to make excuses and trying to make out that its not all that bad. this is why publishers know they can pump out dreck like this and people will not only buy it but defend it to the death in some sort of misguided attempt to justify their purchase. I played these games as they wee intended on the PS2 and wot not so im lucky that i dont need to play this remaster. But i still think people deserve better than this.

@Astral-Grain These games do not exist in a bubble. Just because the originals are flawed masterpieces doesn't excuse a remaster of them from being a separate disappointing product. We've had remasters of everything from Crash to Destroy All Humans to the Mass Effect Trilogy and all of them treated the original material with respect and improved on them. They didn't make the games objectively worse.

Your defense reads as excusing Rockstar from having to polish their remasters because the other versions got high scores. That makes no sense, it's a separate product.

I heard the other console versions are a mess too? Is this right? Probably not quite as bad as the Switch version though?

sigh

I'm not making excuses for Rockstar; The remasters are messier than they should have been. It does seem like as far as the Switch goes, they could have just done straight ports from the PS2 versions, and ended up with the same result, for less work, and maybe even better performance. But, I WILL say, that having the GTA V style control options has made the games infinitely easier to handle in most cases and I haven't noticed anything too shabby outside of graphical bugs that pop up. It's clear these games were not ready to launch, and a delay or two could have done the development some good. Hopefully patches and updates can address some of the more glaring issues, but games should not launch like this.
Still over the moon to finally play these on Switch, and I'm glad Rockstar decided to put something else on Switch besides a detective game nobody cares to buy on this console.

@RavenWolfe81 My only intention was to say these games have aged very poorly, and I don't think anything could have been done to make them more palatable besides what is already done in the definitive edition.

The "bones" of the old GTA games were about being able to play in an open world, and there is a reason there weren't many open world games from 2001-2004, it was very hard to achieve without making the game look visually hideous due to system limitations. The GTA games were not pretty back then and they're still not all that pretty in the definitive edition. I play these games for the sense of freedom and I like the life sim elements in San Andreas, but no one wants to talk about the actual game content, they just want to talk about visuals and performance, and that's fine if you personally can't enjoy a game unless it runs smoothly. I suppose I am fortunate because I have my nostalgia glasses and I'm having fun playing an admittedly hideous game. It's just odd to be playing a game with occasional stutters but nothing impeding my progress while others are talking about the same game as if it's making people's systems catch fire. I'm just sharing my truth because I actually own the trilogy and have been playing every day since it released.