Evgeniy Obedkov

Players rated GTA remasters by 0.5 points. They complain about bugs, graphics and demand a refund

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The release of a trilogy of remasters of classic GTA turned into a failure. User ratings on Metacritic dropped to 0.5/10 — one of the worst results in history. Players complain massively about bugs, the depressing technical condition of the project and demand a refund. At the same time, remasters were unavailable for launch for three days.

How did the remasters meet the users?

GTA Release: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition took place on November 11. The journalists did not receive the keys in advance, and therefore there are still very few reviews from critics on the network. But there are hundreds of user reviews on Metacritic.

The lowest score was for the Xbox One version — 0.4 points. Next are the versions for PC, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch with a rating of 0.5/10. The trilogy received the highest scores on PlayStation 4 (0.7) and PlayStation 5 (0.9).

So far, The Definitive Edition has not become the lowest rated game on Metacritic. This anti-record belongs to Madden NFL 22, which users rated by 0.3 points. But in the category of remakes and remasters, the updated GTA trilogy overtook the failed Warcraft III: Reforged, to which the players put 0.6/10.

Here’s what some disgruntled users write:

  • “It’s just disgusting. Free mods are much better than this $60 set”;
  • “Great job, Rockstar. That’s exactly how remasters should be done. You are on par with the best — in this case with Blizzard”;
  • “I thought it was impossible to make a remaster worse than Warcraft III: Refunded, but Rockstar succeeded. This game is even worse. Low FPS, all the old bugs and a lot of new, terribly squeezed sounds. And the cherry on the cake — new models and textures generated by AI looks very bad”;
  • “This is the biggest video game failure of the 21st century (on par with Cyberpunk 2077, but still). And do you know why? These remasters were made by a company with a billion-dollar turnover. If desired, they could invest a huge amount of money in this project. It’s not like it’s some kind of indie company. Terrible job.”

Other player comments

Many users complain about bugs and glitches, which in some places have become more in remasters than in the original titles. Also, the players are unhappy with the graphics — some of the textures may have become clearer, but some of the models now look creepy.

Также игрои остались недовольны решением Rockstar изъять из продажи оригинальные тайтлы и заблокировать несколько популярных пользовательских модов. Они не понимают, зачем было поступать так, если ремастеры местами выглядят хуже фанатских работ.

Photo: Reddit

Earlier, Rockstar noted that the abundance of fog in old games was due to the technical limitations of consoles and the inability to render large chunks of the open world in detail. In the remasters, the fog was removed, but with it the sense of scale disappeared.

Now the world of the game seems to many small and toylike. As John Linneman of Digital Foundry noted, this solution breaks the visual design: “Fog was added to the game not only because of technical limitations – it was embedded in art direction.”

Another problem was the rain. In bad weather, the screen is literally filled with huge white stripes instead of drops, due to which visibility is almost completely lost. The problem was eventually fixed thanks to fan mods.

Помимо этого, в ремастерах GTA встречаются просадки FPS с падениями до 30 и ниже кадров в секунду.

Against the background of the release of The Definitive Edition, users also remembered the words of Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two. In February, he commented on “the work of a competing studio that did not meet expectations,” referring to Cyberpunk 2077.

According to him, it is always worth striving for perfection. Ask better to wait and finish the game in order to implement all the ideas as efficiently as possible. That is why, Zelnik noted, the company often does not name the exact release dates of its titles.

Considering the state of GTA: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition on release, players found such statements ironic. “No one rushed Rockstar with GTA remasters. In addition, they had a lot of great mods from users. But no, they just released ugly remasters without proper control. This is a very lazy attempt to make money,” said one of the users.

Withdrawal of remasters from sale

On November 12, there was a failure in the operation of the Rockstar Games Launcher store. Because of this, PC players could not launch not only GTA remasters, but also other studio titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA V.

Soon the store started working again, but Rockstar completely withdrew the trilogy of remasters for PC from sale. She explained this by the need to remove “files accidentally added to them” from games. The project itself returned to sale only on November 15.

Now users are massively writing in support of Rockstar with a request to issue a refund.

Judging by the above reactions of the players and the general state of the project, GTA: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition turned out to be the most disastrous launch in Rockstar’s history. Bugs and technical problems in the studio’s games have been encountered before, but none of them has ever received such low ratings from users.

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