""Remaster" is becoming rather a foreboding word in my glossary. Not a "re-release": same game with stability tweaks and maybe a nice resolution upgrade to pad out the shelf-life. Nor a "remake": a complete ground-up reinterpretation through the lens of modern sensibilities, polishing up the mechanics and filtering out the gay jokes. Remastering is a cold and unpleasant No Man's Land between the two, wanting the nostalgia cash-in of the latter while only putting in the level of effort required for the former. Except for the QA-department, which in this case was putting in the level of effort required for a permanent vegetative state. All they've really done is put the textures through an HD filter and updated the lighting engine. And when you do that with boxy turn of the millennium era 3D environments you end up with a look that I like to call "Little Timmy got loose on the custom level editor." The retro textures were a match for the janky retro 3D physics and unrefined gameplay design. The characters' faces were indistinct enough your brain was willing to give their intended expression the benefit of the doubt. Now you've got the uncanny valley effect that comes from everyone emoting like Thomas the Tank Engine characters. It's like, I can't appreciate the effort you put into applying lipstick to this pig, Rockstar, because now I'm going to feel weird about eating it. And also the lipstick has somehow given the pig dysentery, because even this easy mode remastering has made it explode with crash bugs and graphical glitches like those masks from Halloween III. I was playing the PS5 version – 'cos you may remember the PC release got yanked back off stores on day one like a disobedient dog off an unguarded picnic – and even that was crashing to home more often than a thirty year old liberal arts major. And after all this they still didn't fix some of the things about the old GTAs that could have used a remaster. Like the way half the voice lines in San Andreas were compressed right the fuck down to fit on a CD and now they all sound like you're listening to them while pouring Captain Crunch down your earholes."