Recent reviews by zanesix

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100% completion with all achievements.

3 and VC Definitive Edition are flawed. They have numerous problems in their design that are super questionable that will probably never be fixed, as well as a handful of extra bugs and downgrades. However, they are still pretty much representative of the game to the point where casual players aren't likely to notice. They have their problems and I still wouldn't recommend anyone play them if they have another option, but they are still very playable versions.

San Andreas Definitive Edition, however, is mush worse than flawed. It's an awful version. Bad controls (wtf is up with the flight controls on keyboard? Why is the mouse camera super slow on only the Y-axis? Why can't I super sprint? Why is auto climb on by default???), bad or missing audio (minigun sound is super off, police dispatch is missing the "suspect last seen" lines, radio EQ option is gone entirely making the bass boost option in cars useless, some sounds in general seem much more crushed than the original version), badly ported map (there are holes in the ground and collision issues EVERYWHERE, especially in Las Venturas and the countryside to the point where it's impossible to ignore), bad textures, bad models, bad, bad, bad. They even went as far as to bring mobile handicaps, like the simplified gym and dancing minigames over to every other platform with no option to turn it off! Now instead of button mashing to lift a weight, it's a super simple quick time event that you can do with any weight size regardless of muscle. They also needlessly changed mission scripts for no reason which added even more bugs, such as the seemingly intentional change to let CJ off of the jetpack during Black Project which can softlock the mission since the jetpack can despawn if you're not on it!

During my playthrough a patch dropped out of nowhere. While a welcome surprise, it didn't really do much. They added a classic lighting option that looks way better, almost exactly like the PS2 graphics (in most areas, they overcorrected in places and now SF is now way TOO blue...), and fixed some of the bigger bugs (no more 100% AI accuracy thank God), but it's gonna take a lot more than one patch to fix these games. It was a good first step, but I'm not confident enough in their ability to continue to patch the game seeing how long it took for that one to come out (over 2 years!).

Avoid at all costs. If you are on PC, you have no excuse to not play the originals. This version does not represent San Andreas and would be better experienced with one of the original releases. Somehow it isn't the worst version of the game (that award goes to the 360 and PS3 ports of the mobile version), but it's still not something I'd want to see someone else endure or even worse, think is normal! Do not trust people that say that they "fixed" DE or similar statements. It has a long way to go, and it's not getting there any time soon. I fear for anyone who is experiencing the game for the first time like this...

Edit: Almost right after I did this R* released an update after 2 years of nothing... It adds a cool color filter and fixes some of the more glaring issues like wrong vehicle suspension, but most of my gripes still apply. You would be playing something better than what I played, but I don't think any amount of patches are gonna save this release.

100% completion with all achievements... and honestly this was a lot worse than I expected it to be. Overall, it's... playable, but super evident that it was rushed beyond belief. Way more issues than GTA 3 Definitive. Really gonna dread doing SA after this if VC was this bad. If you play this, know that you are buying a product that R* basically abandoned and that there will be a lot of outstanding bugs and poor design decisions that don't reflect the quality of the original game.

The environment: Actually pretty good in lots of areas, probably the best part about this version. I think the devs had a bit of a bias towards VC because it seems like they put a lot of detail into making sure the skybox and color palette really looks like VC, unlike the other 2 games. However there are still upscaled textures all over the place, GTA V props used in a lot of areas which makes no sense, and the parallax interiors are really poorly implemented. You actually end up losing a lot of detail that was in the original game because of it for not much gain. Collision issues are also very prevalent, I guess because they updated some models but forgot to change the collision around them, leading to what feels like significantly more jank than the original game. LOD models are super ugly and very visible in this game. They look like Google Earth building models and they stick out like a sore thumb, especially when they switch to their actual model.

The character models: Bad. Everyone knows this already. Outside of Tommys new spray tan, a lot of them also don't play well under the new lighting system making characters like Lance look way darker than they're supposed to be.

The audio: Mostly fine. This version has the cut soundtrack and is based off of the censored "Haitian Friendly" version of the game which botches a lot of cutscenes to the point you have no idea what's supposed to be happening. One weird thing is that they changed how the radio works in this game. In the original, it was just a single file that played from beginning to end, but here, they scripted it into "chunks" that manually skip the cut song rather than just removing it from the game files. This new system creates a bug where radios can "lose their tracking" and have to reset from the beginning, meaning you'll hear the songs at the beginning of the track much more times than in the original. Annoying.

The vehicles: Just straight up confusing. First of all, they used the Xbox vehicle models as a base, which is what they SHOULD HAVE done for GTA 3 DE, so good on that I guess. However, there are numerous glaringly obvious bugs with these models. Cars like the Cheetah spawn with double mirrors, license plates don't disappear when they are supposed to, and windshields and windows often don't extend to the full gap where they are supposed to be. Also, they messed up the bikes in this version. For some reason Tommy is glued to the bike meaning in situations where he's supposed to fly off, he'll just lose health instead. On top of this, they feel a lot more "slidy" in this version. Maybe its a frame limiter thing, but it feels like the bike is constantly in high gear which makes it much easier to spin out and harder to stick to the ground than in the original (possibly fixed in new patch). Also, the helicopter and plane controls are absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on keyboard and mouse with no way to sensibly change them due to how keybinds are shared. Up and down with the mouse? What they hell were they smoking?? Using a gamepad was a necessity for helicopter/plane activities.

The features: Almost nothing that mods for the original didn't already accomplish. The radio wheel is nice I guess. The weapon wheel would have been nice if they didn't botch the weapon order for some reason (just like 3). The GPS features can be useful, but is super buggy and often wrong and tells you to go in impossible directions.

The performance: About as abysmal as GTA 3. They obviously didn't or couldn't spend much time optimizing this game. I don't care how "good" this game looks, a 2002 game should NEVER dip below 60 FPS.

Really rough display here. The more I play these the more I think the devs should have focused on small quality of life improvements like Nightdive does instead of attempting an across-the-board overhaul. They obviously didn't have the time, nor the good judgement to pull it off.

Edit: Almost right after I did this R* released a surprise update that adds a "classic graphics filter" option (which, imo looks good for VC and SA but not in this game), fixed some textures and not much else. They also added the ability to run and gun with the AK now which in my opinion is kind of taking too much creative liberty since that's not how those weapons were balanced, but it's something new I guess! All of my problems with the game still apply unfortunately. Patches aren't gonna save this game anytime soon I'm sorry to say. Cool that they did it though!

Played this to 100% completion and got all achievements, and while this is probably the better of the 3 "remasters" this still isn't a good version of the game. It's super unoptimized, has its fair share of bugs that will probably never be patched, has random missions nerfed for no particular reason, mobile regressions in its control scheme that are still in the PC version, really bad AI upscaled textures (and sometimes textures that are just incorrect), and an art style that switches out the low poly gritty tone for a half-baked cartoonish one with some derpy cross-eyed character models that merely pretend to not be low poly.

DO NOT play this version of the game unless if you have a morbid curiosity with inferior ports like I do. Or you like achievements I guess. Play literally any other version instead.

One of the best remasters I've ever played, and free for all existing owners! Only nitpick I have about it is no way to revert to the "classic" enemy and weapon behavior but honestly the changes are so good that I don't even care. Truly an outstanding amount of effort.

it is much gooder now

Great game with a good (and free) remaster, soundtrack and all.

I can absolutely 100% say for certain that this is a doom game.

I understand

Grand