Grand Theft Auto V's Cunning Stunts Update Now Live, Redux Mod Due In August
Double news-blast
It's Two-For-One Tuesdays here at RPS! Read one Grand Theft Auto V [official site] post, get one free. Your first serving is a wee apéritif served with a curly straw: news that the 'Cunning Stunts' has launched for GTA Online to add TrackMania-ish aerial raceways with loops and jumps and whatnot.
Your second bevvy is served in a hollowed pineapple festooned with sparklers, streamers, umbrellas, and slices of four fruits on the rim: GTA V's Redux mod [official site] has a new trailer announcing the fancying-up overhaul mod will launch in August.
Cunning Stunts - an anagram of 'Cnut Stings Nun' - is now live and should update automatically. The download size was 666MB for me, which can only mean this update is fantastic. Cunning Stunts bolsters GTA V's multiplayer side with a load of wacky races, as well as new vehicles and clothing. As Rockstar explain:
"Cunning Stunts takes GTA Online racing to epic new heights with a series of 16 brand-new, high-octane Stunt Races that feature everything from winding tubular tracks amongst Los Santos' tallest skyscrapers to technical courses through canyons, over water and across the desert. Stunt Races utilize ramps, loops, wall rides, tubes, raised tracks and dynamic objects for a radically new take on GTA Online racing.
"This is unlike anything you’ve seen before: tracks coiling up into the sky, skyscraper jumps, turbo-boosted corkscrews at 20,000 feet... and that’s before you get to the giant bowling pins and the rings of fire."
As for Redux, it's a big ole overhaul mod touching up a lot. Features include all-new weather arrangements and new weather effects, new motion blur and other blurry cinematic touches, new road textures, real-world brands for billboards and such, new debris, oodles for particles on special effects, reworked police, rebalanced weapons, a few "realistic" changes to weapon fire rates and such, more-active NPC populations, reworked vehicle handling, tweaked physics, and a whole load of ReShade post-processing settings. And more.
Some of the systemic changes sound interesting but I hope there are lots of options on the graphics side. Overhaul mods often have a confused visual identity, pushing technical 'improvements' without a unifying style. I'm especially sick of over-sharpened textures presented as better because they're high-resolution. Redux's look doesn't quite come together for me, silky reflections clashing with over-saturated colours and noisy asphalt all covered up with flashy effects. It looks a bit like a made-for-TV action film concealing a low budget with post-processing. How's it look to you?
Anyway, Redux is coming on August 26th, as this new trailer reveals:
I'm still really impressed by how the Resident Evil 4 HD Project is coming along, remaking or retouching almost everything while still looking like RE4.