| |
|
So, search for San Andreas turns up J.S., no ones's playing this?
Well, I've been playing it.
It still suffers from the limitations of the PS2, even more noticeably than the other two. The primary problem is pop-up: cars simply materialise fifty feet away from your speeding vehicle as the game engine gets distracted trying to draw complex structures on the horizon, which is endlessly frustrating and often leads to unnecessary crashes. On top of that, it's often afflicted by slowdown. Horrible, horrible slowdown.
But really, I'm struggling to find negative things to say about it. It's exponentially better than GTA III and Vice City in pretty much every way. This is an breathtakingly, arrogantly ambitious game, and, engine quibbles aside, its ambitions are fulfilled with remarkable assurance. As videogame world-building goes, it's pretty much unrivalled in terms of sheer staggering size.
I think every piece about the GTA series I've ever read has mentioned the games' creation of a "living world". San Andreas not only creates a living world, but for the first time puts you in control of a charming, believable character. Tommy Vercetti and the guy from GTA III, whose name escapes me at the moment, lacked much character of their own (if you remember much about Vercetti, chances are it's down to the charisma of Ray Liotta rather than any character inherent in the part), but CJ is smart and engaging. I liked being him.
A large part of his character that comes from the fact that he has a family and friends, and has complicated, nuanced relationships with them. The main characters in the other games were completely without family ties, and the relationships they built up with their partners in crime were usually destined to end in betrayal and bloodshed. In San Andreas, CJ has not only siblings and buddies, but, in Woozie, a crime partner who doesn't end up wanting to feed him to the sharks.
It's a smartly-written script, and it's realised with the greatest voice acting ever in a videogame. Full stop. Rockstar are so far ahead in this regard that they long since disappeared over the horizon.
I think anything else I could say about it would be stating the obvious, really... It's not often that you play a game that genuinely feels like a big step forward in videogaming, but San Andreas certainly does. Value for money, too... 42 hours of play, and only 53% complete? Yikes. |
|
|
