Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition

While these are some of the best examples of interactive entertainment the medium has ever seen, this collection has also been marred with technical issues and other problems. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition titles provide exceptional storytelling, open worlds that makes you feel like you can do what you want, in any order, and live vicariously in these fictional, bustling cities. You can hop into vehicles (120 in total in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City alone, such as ‘80s sports cars, motorcycles, boats, planes and choppers), and hear great music, have a laugh with silly commercials and disc jockey chatter, meet memorable characters in many locations, and engage in hundreds of primary missions and side quests for a thrilling taste of "underground" adventure. The controls are tight and responsive, the graphics are impressive, and there's a ton of content to keep you entertained for several months on end. The acting is also great, which is often rare for video games. In Grand Theft Auto III, for example, the many cinematic cut-scene sequences are very well done, with more than 30 recurring characters, and voice talent is provided by Hollywood celebs such as Joe Pantoliano, Kyle MacLachlan, and Michael Rapaport. In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there are also familiar celebrities, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, James Woods and George Clinton, to name a few.

But because of the mature content, it's strongly recommended parents don't allow young kids, tweens or young teens to play these raunchy, gory titles -- and not dismiss them as just "games." There's a lot of adult themes here, including sex, along with murder, drugs, and very strong language in the dialog and lyrics. These remastered versions do in fact look better, but there have been many issues with this remastered collection. On Windows PC, players who paid for the set were unable to play due to Rockstar Launcher issues, and for all versions, these three games have been filled with bugs, visual glitches, freezes and crashes, problems with frame rates, weather effects, and more. To make matters worse, the PC version was said to still contain code from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas "Hot Coffee" Easter egg controversy, with a deleted (but still accessible interactive sex scene), along with some developer comments, and other issues, such as some songs that were presumably cut over licensing restrictions -- perhaps these reasons were tied to the game being temporarily pulled from that platform. This is all too bad, as Rockstar Games had a chance to re-release three of arguably the most significant games in a generation, for a whole new generation to enjoy, as well as enable fans of these instant classics to enjoy them all over again with better visuals and revamped controls on modern systems. Hopefully, these issues will be eradicated quickly, so that they don't mar the exceptional work on the originals and give these games a well-deserved new life on today's tech.