The GTA remasters fail as remasters on multiple levels. Not only are they actually worse off than the originals in many respects (which is bad enough), they also don’t do the thing you’d expect any decent remaster to do, which is to sand out the rough edges of the originals. Many issues and bugs that existed in the original games can still be found in the new remasters, and here, we’re going to talk about a few of them.
JUMPING OUT OF MOVING VEHICLES (GTA 3)
GTA 3 was much more limited in scope than the games that followed it (even though for its time it basically felt like a limitless game). For instance, you couldn’t bail out of a moving vehicle, which, of course, is something that you have been able to do in pretty much every GTA game since then. This was one of the many improvements that we’d hoped the remaster would make- but didn’t.
CAR WIGGLE (GTA 3)
The “Ghost Car” glitch was one of the funniest glitches that existed in the original GTA 3. It required a number of steps, so it wasn’t exactly a glitch everyone could randomly chance upon, but the glitch itself allowed you to gradually increase the size of any car you were driving by constantly wiggling it from left to right. That glitch has returned in the remaster- and honestly, given how funny it is to just look at, we’re kind of glad that it’s still here.
JUMPING (GTA 3 AND VICE CITY)
While San Andreas made noticeable improvements to movement, allowing players to properly vault over walls and fences and clamber up to higher surfaces with dedicated animations, GTA 3 and Vice City felt much more restrictive in the movement, with jumping in particular feeling ungainly and choppy. The remasters haven’t fixed the issue, and trying to jump over even a knee-high ledge still doesn’t work the way you would want it to.
MISSION CHECKPOINTS
One of the most noticeable quality-of-life improvements made in the GTA remasters is the ability to instantly retry failed missions, but honestly, they could have done that much better. Every time you fail a mission, you still have to restart it from the beginning, and given how long some of the missions can get later on in all three games, it’s frustrating that there isn’t a more robust checkpoint system that allows you to restart a mission partway through.
PLANE HITBOXES (GTA 3)
Unlike the games that followed it, GTA 3 didn’t bother much with planes or flying vehicles of any sort, which meant that it didn’t bother much with the assets and models for those vehicles either. Planes, for instance, had no hitboxes, and could pass right through you like ghosts. That remains unchanged in the remaster. No, we weren’t expecting to be able to fly every plane in the game in the remaster, of course, but it’s strange that something as simple as a hitbox couldn’t be added in for the flying vehicles.
CAR WINDOWS
This is another basic improvement that we had expected to see in the remasters, but all three games are essentially unchanged in this area. San Andreas and Vice City allow you to break windshields, but all other windows on a vehicle don’t react to damage at all, while in GTA 3, even windshields don’t break.
SKYSCRAPER ROOFTOPS (GTA 3)
GTA players, regardless of which game in the series you’re talking about, can’t resist going up to the rooftops of the tallest skyscrapers on the map and beholding the world stretching out in front of them. That’s a bit more complicated in GTA 3, particularly because the rooftops are… sort of not there at all? You’re essentially walking on thin air when you get to a skyscraper’s rooftop in GTA 3, both in the original game and in the remaster.
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND (GTA 3)
Making bloody footprints on the ground is something that even the original GTA 3 allowed you to do (as does the remaster), but the game wasn’t entirely consistent about footprints. You could not, for instance, leave behind footprints while walking on a sandy beach, and you still can’t do that in the remaster.
UNDERWATER EXPLOSIONS
While shooting guns at water in the remasters is much more satisfying than it was in the originals, not all weapons have received similar treatment. In all three games, for instance, underwater explosions are still disappointingly tame- in that they don’t look or feel like underwater explosions at all. The water doesn’t react to, say, a grenade thrown in by you in any way, which is disappointing to see.
NO MELEE LOCK ON (GTA 3 AND VICE CITY)
All three GTA remasters have made some noticeable improvements to gunplay and controls to bring them in line with modern experiences, but they’re not entirely consistent about it. For instance, there’s no lock on for melee weapon in either GTA 3 or Vice City. That feels like a very basic improvement that the remasters should have had.
NO MOTORCYCLES (GTA 3)
This omission, frankly, is more understandable, because adding in entirely new vehicles is something you’d expect to see in a remake rather than a remaster. Even so, it’s still a bit of a bummer that there are no motorcycles or two wheelers of any sort in the GTA 3 remaster. Driving a bike off a ramp for a sick stunt jump is, of course, one of the most enjoyable things you can do in any GTA game.
FALLING THROUGH THE WORLD
The original GTA trilogy games were pretty buggy, which wasn’t uncommon for open world games at the time (or even now, to be honest), and a lot of those bugs have stuck around in the remasters as well. For instance, do you remember all of those times when you would randomly start falling through the world and keep endlessly falling? Well, that can still happen in the remasters. On the one hand, it’s undeniably nostalgic. On the other, it’s the mother of all glitches, so why it wasn’t fixed is beyond us.
FIRE HYDRANTS
The GTA remasters were also expected to make some improvements to physics in several areas, and while there are a few such improvements in the three games, there are also plenty of noticeable examples where no such fixes have been made. For instance, if you drive a car over a fire hydrant and park right above it, you’ll see a jet of water shooting right through your car, just like in the originals.
SHOOTING OUT TIRES (GTA 3)
Shooting out tires has become something of a staple in GTA games over the years (or all open world games with cars, actually), but that was not, of course, something that you could do in the original GTA 3. Sadly, you still can’t do that in the remaster. It feels like a very basic improvement that should have made it in, which makes its omission more than a little disappointing.