Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is one of the most ambitious video games ever made. Built initially for the PlayStation 2 in 2004, it offered a level of freedom and customisation that is still unrivalled in many modern titles And to feel the same freedom in your studies, you just need to do a good grademiners review, which will
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In October 2021, Rockstar announced it would be releasing a remastered version as part of its Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Definitive Edition. But does it live up to the hype and is it worth the $70?
What’s New?
GTA III was released way back in 2001. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Rockstar Games created new versions of it and the two other PS2-era games. The content of the games has not changed. It’s the same story, the same missions, the same cars, the same weapons, and the same characters.
What has changed though is the graphics which have been redrawn and polished to give them a more modern look with increased definition and detail. On top of that, the controls have been tweaked to match what players are familiar with after playing GTA V.
How Does Remastered San Andreas Look?
Prior to the Definitive Edition’s release, the modding community had created its own reskinning tool for San Andreas. It offered GTA V-level graphics to make it look like an entirely new game.
The Definitive Edition, however, doesn’t go quite as far. Rockstar has said that it wanted to keep the original feel of San Andreas, so hasn’t changed anything that would remove that. That said, new lighting effects and ray tracing support have helped San Andreas to look spectacular.
The place where these lighting improvements are most notable is in Las Venturas, the GTA version of Las Vegas. The bright lights of the city’s casinos really bring the strip to life. Inside the casinos, the gaming floors feel more lively and are much brighter too.
This makes for a much better experience while playing the casino mini-games. In fact, with the improved graphics, San Andreas is now a great place for people that are getting started with the game of roulette to experiment with different betting strategies and techniques.
Changes to Gameplay?
For the most part, nothing has changed about the gameplay elements. The only things that you will notice are a new weapons selection wheel like we see in GTA V, a GPS-style route finder, and a more modern aiming system.
Bugs
With GTA games of the past, we’ve been lucky that Rockstar has, for the most part, been very diligent in QAing its titles. Unfortunately, the San Andreas Definitive Edition doesn’t live up to this standard.
Patches for some bugs have already been released, but in the initial version, players noticed strange rain effects, issues with boundaries of the map, missing fog revealing the entire map while flying, Ryder having what appears to be an additional arm joint, and broken missions.
The issues have been so bad that some fans have demanded refunds and the game was even temporarily removed from sale.
Worth the Money?
Bugs aside, the new games do look good. More patches should help to iron out the other issues that remain too. That said, anyone who already owns a copy of another release of San Andreas is likely going to enjoy that one as much as the Definitive Edition. Diehard fans will appreciate the improvements and anyone new to the game will also feel more at home with the modern graphics.
$70 is a lot of money though, and some people may find it hard to justify paying that much for a buggy remaster of a classic that was almost perfect when it was first released.
