It's well-known that the PC ports of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas were a shemozzle, thanks in part to re-used code across the trio of games, but also a general lack of care that used to be the norm when it came to PC ports. The excellent SilentPatch has long been the solution, and it's now even better thanks to a significant update that not only fixes leftover bugs, but also restores cut content that was inaccessible thanks to typos in the code.

One big change you'll notice with this version of the patch is that 100 voice lines have been restored to GTA San Andreas. Some of these were only bugged in a specific circumstance—like the lines CJ says when shooting at people, which only worked if you played with a controller. Those lines will now trigger when you pull the trigger when aiming with mouse and keyboard.

A lot of other dialogue that would otherwise never be heard has been restored too. Pedestrians will now have conversations about the weather, criminals have lines specifically for running away, CJ has unique lines for taking over specific neighborhoods and more lines when interacting with sex workers, there are more gang taunts, cops now announce when they have you surrounded or need covering fire, there's a grunt specific to being sprayed with paint, and more shopkeepers have lines for when they're being held up. According to the patch notes, "Most notably, the Ammu-Nation vendor had over fifteen voice lines for this event, all previously unused!"

That's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to improvements across all three games. Lens flares and heat haze now scale with resolution, NPCs can use sniper rifles and RPGs properly, cops no longer shoot gangsta-style, birds spawn correctly, roadblocks face the right way, and you can put a boat in your garage without crashing the game.

Extremely specific bugs, like the one that turned the sky over San Andreas red at 8 pm if it was raining, have finally been squashed, as well as the one that caused an explosion in Fort Carson by incorrectly spawning a plane in someone's driveway. GTA 3's street gangsters now walk in formation instead of meandering around and then freezing, fixing a problem that affected even the PS2 version.

The list goes on. SilentPatch was already essential to fix more blatant issues like broken mouselook, but now it's even better. If you're in the mood for a replay, here are the setup instructions for all three games.

When I open up a trailer for a parkour game, I expect breakbeats or bassy electronica. You know, something radical—Vholume zigs where other games zag, scoring its run 'em up action with dejected, atmospheric synths punctuated by lonely footsteps and effortful grunts. A self-billed "melancholic first-person parkour adventure," it looks like the moody stepchild of Mirror's Edge.

A new trailer for the game dropped last month and revealed it comes out Aug. 21. It provides a sneak peek at the game's overgrown, brutalist jungle gyms and shows off Vholume's multiplayer. According to its Steam page, you can race your buds in real time or compete against their ghosts. It seems ambitious given that just three people are credited as developers on Steam, one of whom you may recognize as one of the Lemaitre Bros. behind Straftat. We called that game 2024's best FPS, and its music is, in fact, radical.

I hear the kids are really into liminality these days, so Vholume's dystopian dream world should appeal to anyone who saw Backrooms and felt like, for the first time in a long time, they were right where they were supposed to be. It also honors the parkour game tradition of being overtly anti-authoritarian, centering a plot where the protagonist has to get "ration tickets" for his family.

A cliche? Maybe, but parkour platforming is kind of the perfect setup for dystopian themes: why bust out of a cage if you're not going to run, jump, and be free? Living in America's contemporary car-centric world, I sometimes long to leap from rooftop to rooftop just so I can be somewhere without filling up on gas. I can't wallrun or strafe jump, though, so videogames will have to do.

And it's a great time for that sort of thing, as there are plenty of other Mirror's Edge-likes on the horizon. If Vholume has piqued your interest, you can try a demo out on its Steam page.