San Andreas was good!! Right...?

[Sewblon]

I actually found San Andreas depressing, mostly because I have no interest in the gangs of early 90s L.A. I missed that trend. If you are into that it is most likely the best sandbox game ever. I have no idea why Rockstar decided to omit the stats aspect in GTA4.

 

[Frybird]

Theoretically San Andreas was a great game. Except for the (at least i felt so) lack of style that Vice City had (i guess its an unfair comparison), it had a much grander scale and was in terms of Gameplay pretty much better and/or at least as good as the games before (especially on consoles, where you could finally aim manually)

However, by the time San Andreas came out, i was pretty tired of the same 'ol GTA. The new 90ies Gang Setting was interesting enough, but after you first got out of the Lost Angeles-ish City, you did the same total over the top stuff as in other GTA's...worse even, given the mission where you sneak into a hidden military base.
Of course there were lots of things to do...but as it turned out, not many things really were this interesting (oh god, i just remember the horrible truck driver minigame).
And of course, the graphics were really aged at that time. While it wasn't that big of an issue, it really made one of the greatest new things, the countryside between the citys, look either boring or horrible.


So in the end, GTA: San Andreas was a very good game, but since every good thing here came with another flaw there, it felt like "just another GTA Game" in the end...and it was the third one...and the 90ies Gangsta Setting was really a hit and miss thing. So it wasn't really loved by many people.

Also, when i took my virtual GTA girlfriend for my first date, she wanted to do a drive-by....WTF?

 

[EzraPound]

I liked San Andreas but the sheer size of the thing brought something new to the fore - Vice City, by contrast, felt tepid because it was just GTA III recontextualized in a more stylized, albeit less interesting ("the strip), city.

 

[The Wooster]

The sheer scope was very impressive, particularly when you got your hands on the fighter Jet.

Sadly being White and English I understood about one word out of four. Oh and the whole 'gangsta/hood' bullshit just wasn't my thing. Aside from that it was awesome.

 

[Calax]

it was awesome but, not meaning to be racist, the protagonist was a 'gang banger' and it just wasn't as appealing to me, personally, as I grew up exposed more to things like vice city and GTA 3 story-lines than to gang members fighting for cred in the streets of some lame american city.

Maybe it appealed to a wider range of people, but it just didn't quite do it for me, personally.

This and the RPG aspect of it kinda did it in for me. My CJ was always a ripped guy who was anorexic to say the least (I only ate when it said "You're getting hungry!"). Also the whole one day he's released from prison, and has 0 money and 0 contacts, and within a week he owns an airport and has a large stake in a casino seems just a little over the top for me. In GTA III at least you worked your way up the food chain. Vice City was the same, in San Andreas it just kinda got handed to you.

 

[L4Y Duke]

It was a good game. In fact, I'd probably rank it somewhat higher than GTAIV when it comes to enjoyability. Mainly because there was a lot more customisation options for your character.

 

[SmoothGlover]

I had no idea there was so much contempt out there for San Andreas!

So far it has been the game which i have enjoyed most out of the series. For me the game was worth it just for the 'messing around' factor, many a night was spent sitting around with mates landing a plane on top of a mountain just so that you could drive a camper van over the side into the abyss. Not too many games at the time let you do that.

As for the story i enjoyed it. (and I'm certainly not one of these '12 year old rappers' that the game was 'evidently' made for)
I mean okay, it was a bit wacky and didn't really make a whole lot of sense, most of the time. This is one of the things that i liked about it, it was just entertaining and fun.
Im not going to try and make out that i know exactly what it was that Rockstar wanted to create with this game, all i know is that as a mindless trend-following consumer, it was something that i enjoyed.

 

[kommando367]

it was far better than gta 4, mostly due to the sheer amount of stuff to do. i say: to hell with good graphics, if i can't fly a car, (or a plane for that matter) or beat someone to death with a dildo.

 

[TMAN10112]

It was an open sandbox game with tonnes of content to screw around with however you wanted, to a degree that had yet to be achived yet. It's hard not to love something like that.

 

[Calax]

-Large map, however it was relatively emtpy
-50cent gangsta feel=lame
-visuals were all round boring, Vice city had much more exciting visuals.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I hated the huge stretches of land/desert. I want cities. Cities filled with blood-filled, squishy meatbags for my murdering enjoyment.
I didn't have a problem with CJ being black, but he was a stereotype. And he held his fucking guns wrong. This is an issue for me. The sights are on the top for a motherfucking reason, and it is not so that you ignore them and turn the gun sideways.

Please tell me you read "Up is down and black is white" punisher storyline by garth ennis?

 

[lazerwolf]

San Andreas was good, but then it started hanging out with all the wrong geological formations, after awhile it was doing shakedowns, and now it's completely broken up under the surface. Now, it's completely at Fault [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andreas_Fault].

Win!

I enjoyed SA for the time it took to complete the 'story' missions plus a few extra messing arounds. I agree that while the scope of the game is impressive, it ended up being a pain in the ass getting around anywhere. The worst was when you start flying any sweet jet from your airbase and end up clipping a mountain that didn't render in time and having to bail in the middle of nowhere. Some of the RPG aspects were executed well. I was ripped all the time ha.

The whole gang banger appeal is hit or miss obviously. people could argue that they weren't into the whole mob theme just as much as so its really a personal preference. Personally i'm trying to see a GTA: Colonial times!

I actually played GTA3 the most out of any of them. launching cars with the train ftw

 

[SmoothGlover]

it was far better than gta 4, mostly due to the sheer amount of stuff to do. i say: to hell with good graphics, if i can't fly a car, (or a plane for that matter) or beat someone to death with a dildo.

Seconded. That man/woman/person sings the truth.

 

[rossatdi]

I really loved San Andreas but it is third on the list behind Vice and IV for me. I actually liked CJ, I thought they actually carried what could have been a very clichéd character and made him sensible.

It wasn't quite as funny as Vice but whoever Peter Fonda was and Mike Torrino were both fantastic. Wozzie Wu and Ceasar where also both really likable.

The sheer roaming was enjoyable. Admittedly the levelling was unnecessary but it made up for it with stuff like customising your cars etc.

Vice is the funny one.
San Andreas is the the sandbox one.
IV is the serious one.

---

For the record I actually like Niko. I think he's one of the most genuine game characters ever. Little bits like his conversation with Faustin's wife about losing hope for his soul and things like that. The 'victory' at the end where he goes "So that's it, I won" is just depression in a can. I'd actually say IV had the best central character with the worst supporting cast (excluding Brucie).

 

[DalekJaas]

I could not stand it, the music in it was awful and the story just did not grasp me.

 

[hypothetical fact]

I loved it, it gave me varied environments and missions specific to those environments, bonus races, wonderful cheats, a large open world and it was wonderfully over the top, jet pack anyone?

The game's story wasn't about gangbanging unlike hat crap saints row, it was about working your way up from nowhere and revenge. The brilliant way the world was designed made it feel like I was playing several different games: gangbanging in Los Santos, racing across the countryside and burning drugs for a hippy, developing contacts from a repair shop in San Fierro, flying around the desert and stealing the jetpack, gambling in Los Venturas before geting back to Los Sants which had fallen into riots.

The game made full use of its environments and even included the Chilliad Challenge and the triathalon for no reason other than the player's enjoyment. I dare someone to say that they preferred any other GTA when they found the jumbo jet.

 

[Abedeus]

much better than 4, i think there was more immersion in san andreas

HEY COUSIN WANNA GO FISHIN'?! COME ON IT'LL BE FUN!!

I liked San Andreas more than Vice City, and VC more than GTA 3.

And down there, under GTA London (ah, good times) there is GTA IV - horrible graphics if you compare them to THE REQUIREMENTS FROM THE FUTURE.

"Most users using current PC hardware as of December 2008 are advised to use medium graphics settings. Higher settings are provided for future generations of PCs with higher specifications than are currently widely available."

Which means we might be able to run Medium in Summer/Fall 2009. Cool.

 

[zeroyourpunctuation]

I will totally agree with anybody that says that san andreas is a good game. Heck I think that it is the best grand theft auto because of all the clothes and car customization. But then in grand theft auto 4 they just dropped all that and forgot about it. I wish they didn't because that would have really made the game a lot better, but it feels that without it there isn't much that you can spend the thousands that you get on.

 

[H.R.Shovenstuff]

I really hated the storyline and everything, but after that the change in terrain along with a whole load of fun cheats made it a pretty fun game to mess around with.