The whole thing is a matter of preference. VC and SA were the shit during the PS2 era, but after IV came out, there was no going back for me. I respect that you find SA's world to be more interesting... but I can't relate, at all. As soon as I played IV, all of the PS2 era GTAs felt like "LEGO Grand Theft Auto" to me. IV stepped up and became the real thing in my eyes, and III, VC and SA suddenly seemed like pale shadows of what they once were. That said, I'm being a bit dramatic here. I just replayed all three of the PS2 GTAs last year, and they were as fun as ever. (But as usual I only got about halfway through the San Fierro missions in SA and then stopped. More on that in the last paragraph)
For the record I was not being sarcastic or snide when I admitted that IV does lack variety compared to SA and VC's missions. I meant that sincerely. I just don't see it as the game-destroying major flaw the IV haters do. Almost all of IV's missions might have boiled down to "go to location X and kill/steal/destroy Y" but the overall world that those "boring" missions took place in made up for it, for me at least.
I suspect the bigger issue here is that not only is SA not my favorite GTA, it is in fact my least favorite. It's the only one that actually started to bore me before I finished it. It's the only one I've never been able to replay completely. I just can't relate to those who think it's the be all end all GTA. I've always felt out of step with the GTA fanbase from the beginning, which for me was when GTA III came out. I always felt like everyone was using cheat codes to randomly fuck shit up, and I was the only one who enjoyed to methodically plug away at the missions until the credits rolled. I know for a fact I'm in the minority on that.
