Rockstar Games has a love-hate relationship with gamers. It has never had a problem-free release — Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 5 were plagued with a host of problems that were only rectified weeks after they were pushed out onto the PC, and the problems are due in large part to the company’s insistence on using its own proprietary game launcher.
The release of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy remaster is no exception to the rule. Worse still, even the PS5 version of the game is impacted by this sloppiness. Fans are calling it an unplayable mess.
The game was broken from launch. GTA fans who clamored to play the GTA Trilogy upon release were disheartened to learn that the entire service went offline for well over 16 hours.
“Services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles are temporarily offline for maintenance,” the company stated early Friday. “Services will return as soon as maintenance is completed.”
Despite returning online, gamers are now learning the true meaning of disappointment with the GTA Trilogy remaster. A highly upvoted thread on Reddit saw thousands of gamers venting their frustrations with the title, with its creator noting that a review embargo of GTA Trilogy remains in place despite already being available to the public. That alone is absurd.
“First off, there’s a reason Rockstar showed next to no gameplay of this game,” wrote the user OpticalRadioGaga. “Think back to any recent release and they’ve always done a gameplay overview, but obviously that’s not the case with this remaster.”
“Add the fact that there’s still a review embargo in place, Rockstar knew exactly what they were [putting] out,” he observed.
The gamer highlighted a number of glaring issues with the PC release, noting that oddly enough, the PC version has options for “fidelity” and “performance” modes, indicating that it could be a direct port from the console versions of the title. Generally, PC games have a host of options that players can fully customize without having to make sacrifices one way or another if their hardware is capable of supporting it.
Others in the comments pointed out that Grove Street Games, the remaster’s developer, was originally called War Drum Studios and hired by Rockstar to produce console “remasters” of classic GTA games of “very dubious quality,” according to RagingDraugr.
“Much of the additions and changes they made in these ports were either of poorer quality compared to the original,” citing shiny textures and out-of-place character and vehicle models that were never present in the original games.
“They added a specular shader for peds that makes everything looks like it’s doused in oil and called it enhanced lighting,” wrote another user about one of the company’s previous efforts.
Most of the comments on the thread complain about the trilogy’s performance, with many struggling to get a solid 60FPS framerate, even on the PlayStation 5 and high-end PCs.
It goes without saying that the game is best avoided until Rockstar addresses these glaring issues.
