Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition brings to Xbox Series X and S reworked versions of three classics – GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas – built on a new, unified engine. Players can once again roam the streets of Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas, complete missions for street gangs and mob bosses, flee the police in chases, and enjoy an open world full of vehicles, weapons, and side activities, this time with modern controls closer to later entries in the series. The core gameplay mechanics – shooting, driving, and completing missions triggered by phone calls and map markers – remain faithful to the originals, just supplemented with a more convenient camera system, navigation, easier aiming, and autosave, which makes it easier to return to unfinished tasks.

Technically, the collection runs on Xbox Series at a higher resolution and with improved lighting, new character models, and reworked weather and water reflection effects, while retaining the distinctive soundtrack and radio stations featuring period hits that were key to the atmosphere of all three games. The release was, however, accompanied by technical problems, crashes, missing rain in San Andreas, and inaccuracies in the graphical treatment of some characters, which sparked significant criticism from the player community shortly after launch and were gradually fixed by additional updates in the following months.

Despite its rocky start, the collection has real significance – it makes three groundbreaking games that defined the open-world action genre at the turn of the millennium accessible to new players who would otherwise struggle to reach the originals on old hardware. San Andreas, with its vast map of three cities and countryside, still offers dozens of hours of content today, including side minigames; Vice City remains valued for its eighties Miami atmosphere and accompanying radio stations; and GTA III laid the foundations of the entire 3D open world on which almost all later entries in the series were built, so the collection primarily functions as a convenient and accessible archive of the genre's history.

Why play it: For players who can no longer reach the originals on old hardware – San Andreas, Vice City, and GTA III still offer dozens of hours of the genre's key open-world history today.