I 1000/1000’d this today, with my last Achievement being
The Los Santos Slayer (Kill 4000 people). and it was a chore to get through the final 1300 victims, even doing the
Brown Thunder Vigilante R3 Missions. That, and
Serial Offender (Get Busted 50 times) were two bullshit Achievements. Horrible. I think I finished my PS2 run of San Andreas without realizing I could be Busted.
Other Achievement-related observations: 100 GS for getting maximum Sex Appeal, which has little-or-no game significance, but exporting all three boards’ worth of cars at the docks is 20 GS. WTF
Calling “Cross the final base with a girlfriend”
Home Run instead of
Hot Coffee is missing a good chance to flip the bird to the world. Hell,
Ballad of Gay Tony featured onscreen sex in one cutscene, I’m guessing that was their intent. There’s a 10 GS for failing a mission; IMHO joke Achievements for failure should be 0 GS.
The controls are slightly off. Bicycle pedaling is always equivalent to being “fully mashed” though it’s on the Right Trigger instead of A Button. There could have been a good argument for making the on-foot controls mirror more recent GTA games, with Left Trigger Aim, Right Trigger Fire, and target cycling via left-analog tapping. An alternate control scheme would have been appreciated. Start Button summoning the menu has a 1+ second delay, sometimes 2. The variation in timing frequently made me think I’d not pressed it, so I pressed it again, resulting in the menu flashing quickly and then returning to gameplay, occasionally with radio skipping.
I want to complain about the radio
again. It’s REALLY noticeable. Repeating sections of audio data, sometimes only 3 or 5 minutes after they last played, songs cutting off halfway through playback, and rewinding/replaying data after just visiting the Start Menu are all much more annoying than just having less songs due to licensing issues.
Lastly, I recall that
GTA San Andreas, as with
GTA III and
Vice City on PS2, would load the most recent Save Data, so players could boot the game and just let the whole thing load while they made a sandwich. That was neat. For MS/Sony player account reasons, the opening menu is needed, but the default for Resume selects the Auto Save Data, not the most recent Save Data, which is ridiculous. Additionally, no timestamp information is displayed with the Save Data, also causing confusion.
That’s basically ALL the bad, and while there’s a good deal of it, it doesn’t outweigh the positives:
The story here, of CJ coming back to pick up the broken pieces of his family life, fighting against his impulses to just leave again, trying his best to help make right the things that he has screwed up, these are all very powerful. His brother is a self-victimizing, judgmental rage machine, who is crumbling under the weight of eldest sibling responsibilities. CJ’s sister a a strong and independent woman who has little time for anyone else’s bullshit. Each of the characters, bosses included, have distinct personalities and goals, though that-era’s madhouse GTA feeling is never compromised. No wonder we were all so disappointed in GTA IV. taking itself so goddamned seriously
I loved getting things for completing stuff. 150% Health and Armor is great. Becoming fireproof was awesome. Finishing Burglary Missions ($10K+) gives unlimited stamina, which I think I didn’t know previously. As I progressed through Story Missions, the advantages were clearly making my life a good deal easier. It felt like I’d invested, and it had paid off.
Story Missions had a little more variety than I remembered: Burning down marijuana fields before the DEA arrives. Stealing a farming combine and sending white supremacists through its thresher. Highjacking a flight, and clearing the cabin in a one-off instance of cover firing, a first for the series. Several “stealth” missions where breaking in requires grace and getting back out requires force. Catalina’s missions let you choose from several choices, and I think opens up a mini-game for trucking.
Hitting pedestrians and having them go rigid and comically flying offscreen is humorous and inoffensive. I like it much more than blood-spurting flesh bags rag dolling over my hood, which just makes me feel bad. Barreling around in a Fire Truck and smashing into other cars, where the whole thing is cute physics toy is fun. GTA V has that as well, but the physics have been tweaked to make things more egalitarian.
Anyway, thanks for reading if you stuck with me this far. I really love this game, and wish this had been a more faithful and detail-oriented port to celebrate the 10th Anniversary.
