Free with a Netflix subscription and revised from the existing console versions, but is GTA worth a look on mobile?
The Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition remasters were highly controversial and to this day, their quality remains contentious. These Unreal Engine 4-powered game updates modernised the three classic PS2-era GTA games – GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas – with much more advanced rendering technology. At the same time, the reworked lighting was very different from the original titles and the updated assets didn’t hold up to close scrutiny. Some two years later, these titles have been released for mobile devices, with versions for iPhone, iPad, and Android. These promise the same updated graphics, paired with considerable lighting improvements. So how do modern iPhone and iPad devices cope with these divisive remasters and do the new lighting effects rehabilitate their visual designs?
The GTA Definitive Edition titles adopt a very different visual tone from the original games. San Andreas was the most severely affected, lacking the sepia-toned haze that defined the original release. GTA 3 lost its blue and green tint, and Vice City had a pretty neutral look. Basically, all three titles look bland when measured up against their PS2 forebears, which had distinctive visual styles. Looking at the iOS version of the game it’s clear that the lighting has been dramatically overhauled to bring it more into line with the original games. During gameplay, distant detail is occluded somewhat by a sort of blueish distance fog, giving the game a hazy and slightly oppressive feel.
If we go back to PS2, this kind of fog effect served a dual purpose, obscuring pop-in on the relatively weak hardware, and providing a sense of atmospheric scattering, so its replication on iPhone doesn’t need to occlude as much distant detail. As the day fades away, this effect takes on a hazy, orange look, as the sun’s rays travel through a thicker layer of atmosphere.
The same is true in GTA 3. The original Definitive Edition remasters present with a clean, sterile tone, while the new iPhone versions give it an obvious blue-green tint. The sky also has a very different appearance here. If we circle back to the original title, we see similar artistic flourishes, which helped define the look of this early PS2 classic and definitely set it apart from the Definitive Edition on consoles.
Vice City probably fared best of the Definitive Editions, with an overall visual appearance that didn’t feel too far from the original game. Even still, there are some changes, like how the sun takes on a vibrant, overwhelming look at sunrise. It does vary a little from the original, but I think it gives the game that sun-baked Miami look that the original title tried to achieve. The revised lighting also significantly affects the colour of the water across all three games. It tends to appear darker across a range of lighting conditions, which lends the water a slightly more realistic appearance. The opacity and use of reflections on the water do seem very similar though.
I’ve been discussing the game running under its ‘classic lighting’ setting but it is possible to turn it off where we get a lighting presentation that is quite similar to the earlier Definitive Edition releases. It’s not exactly the same, but it does resemble those releases much more closely, if you’d prefer a more neutral lighting style.
Overall, I think the updated ‘classic lighting’ is a big improvement over the earlier DE versions, and it resolves one of my major contentions with those games. The revised lighting clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the original titles, and in doing so it brings these new releases stylistically much closer to those games. But of course, there are a variety of settings tweaks and adjustments beyond the broader lighting changes. Relative to Xbox One S – the weakest of the eighth gen consoles, we’re mostly looking at cutbacks.
