San Andreas? [Archive] - VideoGameReview Forums

moya

06-21-2005, 07:13 AM

Any of you punk-ass niggaz clocked GTA: San Andreas fo' PC yet? I'm hearing it's the shiznit, but I'm too busy runnin ma ho's out the dizzle to get my hizzle on that fizzle merchizzle. Fo' shizzle dawg.

Anyways... Page me the 411 when one of you homebwoys gets a minute. I gots ta go an fix my 24" spinners on my ride. Playas gots ta play when yo' out on tha streets all damn day. You know how we do.

Laters homies. Peace (but 'member to pack tha nines, cuz y'all never know when it's gon' hit primetime a'ight?)

Mochan

06-21-2005, 07:32 AM

Yes, I've been playing for the past two weeks now, the game expands a lot from Vice City and it's pretty good. Performance is also quite good although the graphics are a little dated. Still, the game doesn't look bad so that's fine.

I just don't like the setting much, I hate all the swearing it can get on one's nerves! All this gangsta niggah crap can get a little out of hand. But ignoring that the game's fun and worth your efforts.

moya

06-21-2005, 08:33 AM

So here's my dilemma: would you recommend either The Sims 2 or San Andreas for my next purchase? I can only get one in the short term (although in the long term I'll probably buy both).

Mochan

06-22-2005, 05:41 AM

San Andreas easy. Unless you're more into the "wholesome family entertianment" thing than the "gangsta shiz" thing. But it's no secret I've never been too fond of The Sims and that I look down on it in many ways. Come to think of it, I'm not really into the GTA thing either but San Andreas has managed to eat up a lot of my time lately, something The Sims 2 couldn't claim when it came out.

The story of San Andreas is a lot more invovling than Vice City's was (but I never really got far in Vice City) and I think this contributes a lot ot why I'm playing it more. I also got a kick out of the customizability of the game, and I ended up buffing CJ into a Vin Diesel-esque physique and going around barechest with "Homey" tattooed on my chest.

The size of San Andreas also contributes a lot to it I guess. Vice City felt constricted in the city but in San Andreas from the get go you get a HUGE countryside to drive around (spent a lot of my early hours in the game driving around the highways and interstates) and I hear that as you go along you unlock 3 other cities around the state to drive around as well. Doesn't get much better than that.

Actually the reason I stopped playing Boiling Point was because San Andreas actually made Boiling Point feel claustrophobic! Well not really claustrophobic, but BP felt like just too much more of the same jungle whereas the terrain and locales of San Andreas felt fresh and well-designed. Make no mistake though Boiling Point still has a lot going for it that San Andreas doesn't. It's just that the opposite is also true.

DBS

06-24-2005, 06:42 PM

I enjoyed GTA 3, picked up VIce City and never got far in it. I was considering working on it before picking up the next installment but I dunno..I am having trouble really getting into VC and can not put my finger on why.

Meanwhile I am finishing off Painkiller and to my surprise I really enjoyed it. I have Splinter Cell PT to finish up and then I should load up Vietcong....

Renzatic Gear

06-24-2005, 08:19 PM

From what I've heard, San Andreas is the most improved of the 3 PS2 releases. While Vice City was just a copy of GTA3 with an 80's theme, SA adds alot to the game that makes it worth playing. I'm probably gonna be picking it up here soon.

Oh..and Moya....English people.....just...just no.

BaneNWN

06-25-2005, 03:32 PM

I just picked this one up today had to decide on this or BF.I figure it would be nice to play a singleplayer game for a change as all ive played for the last 6 months or so is multi.So far i like it and the graphics well still not the most attractive seem to be much improved overall over vicecity.

BaneNWN

06-26-2005, 08:07 PM

ok i ran into a little problem.i go into the gym to workout and when i leave it automatically makes me go back in again??basically im stuck in the gym and it wont let me leave.Ive searched for patches but have not found any.Mochan u had this problem to or no??i take it you havent since you said your buff hmm.

Mochan

06-27-2005, 12:09 AM

What? Gym wont let you go? Maybe you didn't pay your subscription fees? :)

Just kidding, there are no fees. This is a weird problem, I've never encountered it. Are you sure your joystick or whatever isn't stuck in some way that the moment you exit it moves you back in towards the gym's entry? That's the only scenario I can think of.

BaneNWN

06-27-2005, 10:02 AM

works fine now that i pulled my controler out of the usb port.im going to have to monkey with the settings i think.at first i didnt figure it was the controler only because i paid good money for it and wasnt expecting it to freak out on me

Mochan

06-27-2005, 01:16 PM

What controller is this perchance? Logiech Dual Action?

BaneNWN

06-27-2005, 01:23 PM

Saitek p880 paid about 35$ for it a year or so ago.i dunno if its my controller now either cause i had the controller plugged in and it takes me about 5 times but eventually it lets me go im thinking it could be a bug in the game

BaneNWN

06-28-2005, 05:15 PM

Man i read in a short while they will be making a multiplayer for sanandreas.Man how fun would that be to get about 6-10 of us to go on there and run eachother over lol.

moya

06-29-2005, 12:28 AM

Oh..and Moya....English people.....just...just no.

Whut?! Why you be frontin' an' all up on it like dat boy? You thinkin' jus' cos we'ze be English we not gots tha cheese or tha ice or sumthin'? Let me tells ya nigga we gots tha EXTRA FINE cheese right here! It's a thug life in tha English ghetto homie; thug muthachuffin' life...

Word.

Aku

06-29-2005, 01:12 PM

Whut?! Why you be frontin' an' all up on it like dat boy? You thinkin' jus' cos we'ze be English we not gots tha cheese or tha ice or sumthin'? Let me tells ya nigga we gots tha EXTRA FINE cheese right here! It's a thug life in tha English ghetto homie; thug muthachuffin' life...

Word.

...Spken while moya lifts a cup of Earl Gray to his mouth, pinkie extended.

moya

06-30-2005, 01:12 AM

LOL. Yeah, that's exactly the image I was trying to evoke!

Mochan

06-30-2005, 04:17 AM

moya

06-30-2005, 05:20 AM

Cat got your tongue Mochan?

Mochan

06-30-2005, 07:15 AM

Too much nigga-speak eroded my ability to eloquently express me ideas.

Friend_Bear

07-01-2005, 02:36 PM

Is this really worth getting?? I'm seriously thinking about trading in Dungeon Lords and MOH: PA and playing a bit of cash to get San Andreas, is it better than Vice City?

Mochan

07-01-2005, 02:37 PM

I'd say it's significantly better than Vice, although I liked Vice's soundtrack better and all the nigga speak swearing does get on one's nerves.

BaneNWN

07-01-2005, 03:42 PM

Is this really worth getting?? I'm seriously thinking about trading in Dungeon Lords and MOH: PA and playing a bit of cash to get San Andreas, is it better than Vice City?

Ya theres deffinetly more to do like you can wager at a game of pool now.Heck they even have an arcade in the game and you can actually play it.If you can get past the mediocre graphics its a great game and suprizingly deep.

Mochan

07-01-2005, 08:20 PM

BaneNWN

07-01-2005, 11:55 PM

The weak point of San Andreas for me though, as it was with the past GTA games, are the crappy quest missions that just frustrate. Like all the RC and plane missions. Those missions just plain suck. Maybe I need to buy a flight yoke to actually get them right? I just can't seem to do it no matter how hard I try.

Man i cant even get that far.im to the part when u pick up ur buddy from prison and u end up doing a motorcycle chase shooting his enemy.i tried it like 20 times and cant get past it how frustrating

Mochan

07-02-2005, 01:33 AM

LOL, those missions are still a cakewalk. You're talking about OJ Loc right? I admit I had to replay that mission about 5 times.

BaneNWN

07-03-2005, 12:24 AM

LOL, those missions are still a cakewalk. You're talking about OJ Loc right? I admit I had to replay that mission about 5 times.

Ya i always sucked at driving games.I keep running into cars well i chase him.I doubt even without cars i could even do it.I think it would be much easier if the vehicles werent so arcadey handeling and more realistic.

Aku

07-03-2005, 09:33 AM

The worst GTA mini games are the ones where you have so many seconds to make the next checkpoint, which is some glowing orb. On one of them they stick the checkpoints all over the side of some hill, so you're sliding an flipping over trying to get to the next one. A real pain. I just stopped playing them after that. Why do developers think that's fun? Do they actually play these games they come up with?

Mochan

07-03-2005, 09:35 AM

I'm not bad at racing games (used to beat up my friends everytime in the arcades in Daytona), so I had no real problems with the racing parts. My real problem is the RC and plane missions (RC for helicopter and plane). Now this isn't because I suck at flight sims... I'm a hardcore Wing Commander ace and for the less arcady, I was also pretty good at X-Wing, Red Baron, etc. It's just that the flight controls are really bad! Or maybe I need to buy a joystick for this; flying with an analogue pad is simply not conducive for ace flying.

Still I agree. These stupid mini-games are not fun! I mean driving around hills to reach waypoints? It's dumb, not fun. And the excuses are like, "You need to show us your determination! So you must reach all these waypoints in under six minutes to show us you are serious. We have a GPS in the car so we'll know if you hit all the points." I mean, WTF.

moya

07-03-2005, 03:25 PM

Yeah, it's true. The highly scripted and time limited missions are still there and still as annoying as ever. They wouldn't be so annoying if you could save wherever you want. But, as in all the previous ones, you can only save back at your safehouse (by running into a huge rotating 3.5" disk icon - ho ho ho!).

Like Bane, I'm currently stuck on the OG Loc bike chase mission (although I've only tried it twice). That one is particularly frustrating since there are three sections: you have to drive to pick up OG, then drive to the house, then get on the bike and give chase. So if you fall off the bike and the guy gets away you start all over again from section 1. Arrgh!

And what gets me more than anything is the fact that you must use the bike. It's not like you can take a car and head him off then run him down or anything. That really grates with me, since the rest of the game is so wide open. Why can't they give you the freedom to do the missions the way you want to? Why not let OG follow him on the bike and take a car then mow him down like that? I don't understand since it'd clearly be possible in the game as it is. It comes down to bad design choices.

Anyway... Don't get me wrong, I really like the game. It's the best in the GTA (3) series. By far. I love the customization options for your character: My CJ is currently bare chested and RIPPED with green shorts and a pair of green hi-top sneakers, with a wedge afro and red sungoggles to round off the deal! Dope! And despite what I said about the bike mission, most of the missions thus far have been pretty good and fit in with the storyline very well. It helps that I love the setting and the script is funny and well acted.

Overall, a damn tight game, but still disappointingly restricted in some areas. Maybe we'll just have to wait till the next iteration of the GTA series for TRUE gameplay freedom.

Mochan

07-03-2005, 10:36 PM

LOL Moya, our CJs are almost the same! I ran around for along time wearing black boxers, bear-chested and ripped, with red shades and a dollar chain!

The OG Loc mission further ends with a shootout, the when I got there I finished it with almost no life then ran to get a save point, and got run down by a random car so I had to restart. =_= By the way, if you've cleared the drive you can skip it by pressing the Skip Trip button, and you'll go directly to the motorcycle chase scene.

What is it with the "repeat the mission if you fail it routine?" It's so bad and it's so unrealistic. Did these people forget wha deja vu means? How come games can't do things like Wing Commander 1 did so long ago, where if you fail a mission the game continues on taking this into account? Only Wing Commander 1 did this, and it was what made WC great. It wasn't the excellent dogfighting action that made it great, that just made it good. What set it above the rest was the non-linear campaign where every action you made had an effect on the course of the story. It's a shame but this kind of gameplay will probably never come back, what with the track record of games for the past 10 years.

I'm not waiting for true gameplay freedom from the GTA series; I'm looking elsewhere.

moya

07-04-2005, 03:47 AM

Ahhh... So that's what SKIP TRIP does! I was wondering about that since I pressed it a few times and nothing happened. Cheers Mochan.

Agreed with you on the mission repeat thing as well. It is annoying and it seems tied to this whole culture of 100% completion in games. I don't want to necessarily complete a game perfectly; I want to do it MY WAY. If that means I fail a mission and have to take another route to the top of the gangsta tree, the game should let me. Ideally games should be about the player using the gameplay to express a unique story, not just a case of... well first you complete mission X and then move on to mission Y, which is what EVERYONE does...

Mochan

07-04-2005, 07:56 AM

Yeah. It's getting quite boring. I guess it's just easier for a game dev to just make a linear sequence of quests rather than come up with branching outcomes. I think you and some of the older vets on this board probably still remember me whining about this particular issue come five or six years ago (or more).

It's not like it's without precedent, I mean Wing Commander did it quite successfully more than ten years ago! There are a few, and I mean precious few -- you could probably count them on your fingers -- games that do this or something close enough to it (like Arcanum) but most games are really the Mission X Mission Y sort of deal.

It's sad, and even sadder when you consider that Troika started with the freeform (Arcanum) but ended with the linearity (Vampire) before kicking the bucket, as did Origin.

moya

07-05-2005, 07:51 AM

Yeah, and don't forget that some of the guys in Troika were the driving force behind the Fallout games, which were similarly freeform.

Mochan

07-05-2005, 09:41 AM

How could I forget? The reason I got Arcanum was because it was riding on Fallout's reputation. Well we can only hope that we get something good from Bethesda in Fallout 3. I'm not too hopeful, it's just not Bethesda's kind of RPG, but I'm hoping they can pull off a worthy successor to the legendary series.

moya

07-06-2005, 12:36 AM

Back OT: I finally got past the OG Loc bike chase mission. I just spent some time doing other stuff (courier missions for Roboi's food market, pimping missions, taxi missions, paramedic missions, vigilante missions, bmx challenge, etc.), and, most importantly, I spent time just riding around Los Santos and surrounding areas on a motorbike to up my bike skill.

Once I'd levelled that up enough (LOL level grind in GTA!), I took on the bike chase again and just concentrated on riding and catching up with Freddy, rather than shooting. That saw me through to the end where I wasted him and his buddies. There were a few moments of heartstopping tension afterwards because I got a wanted star for doing the hit and then I find that I have to take OG to the burger bar before the mission is complete!?!... WTF!! So there I am trying to find a car with OG and a police officer chasing and shooting us. Eventually I ended up just hopping back on the bike (which was badly beat up from the chase) and using that to escape. I had to take it easy, since the bike was smoking and couldn't take too much more damage.

I've done several more missions since, all of which I did on the first try (except the one where you chase a train on a bike, but that only took two goes). Overall I'm really enjoying the game, apart from the aforementioned general grumbles. It seems they've got the city feeling just about right this time around. The gang areas feel seedy, gritty and dangerous; the roads can be fairly dangerous too -- civvies won't just stop their cars if you stand in front of them as in Vice City; and pedestrians seem to have more variety and even stop and talk to each other.

Mochan

07-06-2005, 06:04 AM

The civvies will stop if you stand in front of them. Well, most of the time. Sometimes you end up with a concussion. =_=

Anyway I agree that the game is enjoyable except for some annoying missions. Right now I'm stuck in the plane/RC copter missions and I don't think I'm gonna go back to them for a while. I'll finish up Vietcong for now and take a break from this plane level grinding. ;)

moya

07-06-2005, 08:37 AM

Oh yeah, how do you do wheelies and stoppies on the bikes?

Friend_Bear

07-10-2005, 10:07 PM

I got san andreas on Saturday, traded in MoH: PA and Dungeon Lords for it + $15 so far, the control method is different but I like the game homies.

Mochan

07-11-2005, 06:25 AM

What's a stoppie? Wheelie is when you raise the front wheel right? Just push the analog stick back, that'll raise your front wheel. I haven't tried screwing around on the bike course with a mountain bike yet, but it was something I always wanted to do. You could conceivably do apple pickers with the controls you are given, since you can raise the wheels, hold them, and actually even hop around. I never really tried though.