Free with a Netflix subscription and revised from the existing console versions.
The Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition remasters were highly controversial and to this day, their quality remains contentious.
These promise the same updated graphics, paired with considerable lighting improvements.
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.
The same is true in GTA 3.
The sky also has a very different appearance here.
The revised lighting also significantly affects the colour of the water across all three games.
The opacity and use of reflections on the water do seem very similar though.
But of course, there are a variety of configs tweaks and adjustments beyond the broader lighting changes.
Texture filtering, for instance, operates at a much lower level of fidelity.
The alpha textured grass is reduced in volume or absent across these games as well.
The cubemap-based interior maps of indoor environments are gone.
There are plenty of smaller tweaks to lighting.
The bloom lighting on the neon signage in Vice City is gone, as well as the volumetric lighting.
Car headlights also no longer cast shadows from the player.
And the shadows move continuously, not in brief chunks every so often.
And of course, with overhauled - and largely improved - lighting.
At their lowest points, the games render at about 240p.
This is up against the roughly 792p image on Xbox One.
The game is normally presented in an ultra widescreen format, but cutscenes are letterboxed down to 16:9.
The characters are probably the most infamous example.
They sport a lot of extra geometry, including fully-modelled fingers and more detailed faces.
Textures are the other sore point.
Some of the materials have a slightly awkward specular response too.
To be fair, a lot of the original art - particularly signage - has been fully redrawn.
This came with its own issues however, as many of the signs contained spelling errors.
Most of these have been fixed but some remain.
Dropping the parameters to their lowest values doesn’t seem to help at all unfortunately.
On my iPhone 15 Pro, I couldn’t really do anything that would hit the frame-rate significantly.
All the games perform just about identically here as far as I can tell.
There are some issues with compatibility as well.
That said, loading times are the one really compelling performance bright spot.
Typical loading times clock in at about two seconds or so - a lightning-quick pace.
The new Definitive Edition releases on iOS are a mixed bag.
The visual cutbacks are reasonable and not especially noticeable on a smaller mobile rig.
However, performance is unfortunately just not good enough, with highly unstable frame delivery despite their 30fps caps.
The games can also be bought separately, but for many people these titles will essentially come for free.
