a number of the side missions and a few of the minor aspects of the game i safely ignore. the gameplay is not affected and i'm still able to squeeze maximum fun from the open-ended design.
for example, i don't care for the stadium car derby missions. they are not needed to reach the end of the story and are far too tedious and difficult to complete. its under these conditions that i resort to cheat codes and only to take a spin in the race cars that are the rewards to those specific diversionary missions.
overall, this is the greatest game franchise ever. and if only the level of detail reaches the heights i've seen in pc games like crysis, then this series will have taken another monumental step forward. i'm particularly looking forward to having the custmization vehicle options you find in rockstar games like 'midnight club 3: dub edition'.
sometimes in can be a real b**** to get around and that can be annoying but that just says how big the game is but when you die and your in the middle of the desert and you need to get to los santos it can be very annoying
This is not the greatest game franchise of all time. By any means. Sure it's fun, sure it's cool, sure it's entertaining. But, even though it is very great, it has PLENTY of distasteful things in it, like when you meet the two british guys, the things they say are sick. There's alot of unneeded grossness in the game, and if I had to pick the greatest game franchise, I'd say Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Half-Life 2 are way more fun and exciting and better.
Posts: 59 | Location: M.C. Town, WA | Registered: 13 November 2006
If you liked the previous Grand Theft Auto games, I don’t understand how you could complain about San Andreas in any way, It offers all the same style of game play that you get in Liberty City and Vice City and THEN some!
The San Andreas world is massive and enjoyable to explore, the story is nicely paced, the game has a ridiculous amount of side quest stuff you can do, providing all the extra game play that I could ask for, and I loved the characters.
I also liked how the plot was focused around the wars between street gangs and dirty cops in the early 90’s, a cool and new choice of atmosphere for the Grand Theft Auto franchise, in my opinion.
Over all I’d say it’s a great game that lived up to my every expectation and deserves heaps of respect.
The question I ask you is what more could you ask for in a Grand Theft Auto instalment?
I don't think you can really say any game is the greatest game of all time. But you could say this game is one of the greatest games of all time. You could say that. Just thinking about the sheer volume of things to do in the game, the cars, the music, the dialogue (yes, even those gross British guys, hilarious).
"San Andreas is an amazing game so I selected 'Nah, it get's all the respect it deserves.'" < neonfire372 >
"in that sleep of death, what dreams may come...?"
I reckon Vice City is the most rounded game in the franchise. San Andreas over-reached a little bit, and a lot of the missions were needlessly frustrating.
Posts: 87 | Location: Hull, UK | Registered: 23 November 2007
Originally posted by Danks: I reckon Vice City is the most rounded game in the franchise. San Andreas over-reached a little bit, and a lot of the missions were needlessly frustrating.
No, san andreas is not overrated, but I'd agree that it has too many needlessly frustrating missions and components. I don't know if it over-reached, I guess it depends on what you're wiling to put into time wise. I did find it to take way too long to get into the use of airplanes/helicopters and some other annoying repetitive elements of the game (the girlfriends, tags, oysters, etc.) significantly detract from it, as they did with the earlier games.
==== What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
Posts: 455 | Location: Care-a-lot | Registered: 16 July 2007
I'm not a fan of San Andreas. I was a huge fan of the GTA series back when they were 2d. I was anticipating GTA3 so much that it didn't quite live up to my expectation, but it was still a great game. Vice City I thought was a sidestep, I liked the Miami style, but I found the way the cities were growing to be negatively effecting my experience:
The cities were getting too big with not enough variety. When I think of a big city, I think of a bussling downtown core where all the nightlife happens, business during the day, and heavy traffic. As you get further out the mainstrips are 5-8 lane roads with commercial surrounding them, but as you veer off the strip, it's straight up residential suburbia. Then you have varieties of residential area ranging from high class mansions to middle class cookie cutter housing to a run down ghetto. The lack of a good expansive residential layout has always been my biggest beef with the GTA series... for the amount of Commercial they have, it just feels too big and too confusing, I have no idea where people sleep at night.
Additionally, most gang warfare happens in the ghetto. You'll find higherend growops happen in the middle - upper class housing. Proper organized crime will always have upper class housing that looks more goddy. So there could be plenty of storyline to put you through these areas.
Posts: 3 | Location: Canada | Registered: 01 May 2008
Originally posted by Eirhead: I'm not a fan of San Andreas. I was a huge fan of the GTA series back when they were 2d. I was anticipating GTA3 so much that it didn't quite live up to my expectation, but it was still a great game. Vice City I thought was a sidestep, I liked the Miami style, but I found the way the cities were growing to be negatively effecting my experience:
The cities were getting too big with not enough variety. When I think of a big city, I think of a bussling downtown core where all the nightlife happens, business during the day, and heavy traffic. As you get further out the mainstrips are 5-8 lane roads with commercial surrounding them, but as you veer off the strip, it's straight up residential suburbia. Then you have varieties of residential area ranging from high class mansions to middle class cookie cutter housing to a run down ghetto. The lack of a good expansive residential layout has always been my biggest beef with the GTA series... for the amount of Commercial they have, it just feels too big and too confusing, I have no idea where people sleep at night.
Additionally, most gang warfare happens in the ghetto. You'll find higherend growops happen in the middle - upper class housing. Proper organized crime will always have upper class housing that looks more goddy. So there could be plenty of storyline to put you through these areas.
So how would an "expansive residental layout" add variety and make the cities more interesting? It would add to the realism, I'll give you that (though all of the elements you mentioned are already present, they just aren't extraordinarily large areas), but adding cookie cutter neighborhoods stereotyped by economic class sounds like the opposite of interesting to me.
My beef with San Andreas is that it seemed like about half of the story missions were all about turf wars, which made for some pretty repetitive missions (for me anyway). I found many of the side missions to be way more entertaining.
Posts: 109 | Location: At work - not working | Registered: 26 February 2008
I don't think San Andreas is overated at all. Yea, the turf war stuff kinda drags a little. But in terms of story, size, amount of things to do, immersion, variety, (Breaking into folks houses never gets old), and overall fun, I think San Andreas was the best of the 3. And if you wanted, you could even talk to people on the side of the street, or, if you wanted a whole conversation, go get one of your fellow gang members and start one with them. But the best thing about this game (to me anyways) was the freedom. I used to go out into the woods some nights, with a shotgun and nightvision goggles, and go hunting for something unknown. This brought some pretty crazy moments and memories, and even a few scares lol. And I honestly think that if I started to play this game again, I would find something I haven't seen. This game never forces you to do something. If you didn't like the story missions or something, the game always gave you hundreds of other things to do or try out. Gta3 and Vice City were, and still are, very good games. But in my opinion, it wasn't until San Andreas that it became an Epic.
