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i'll give it a shot re: san andreas
i played it for a while before going to sleep last night. i started by heading to my wardrobe to fiddle around with my character's outfit for about 15 minutes (i always loved the paper doll aspect of this game, and it's a lot more advanced than it was in VC), then went outside and shot a few random people before hopping into my rhino tank parked under an overpass. i turned my turret around so that it was facing behind the tank, then accelerated forward while firing behind me to increase speed. i rampaged my way to my airstrip, where i got out of the tank and got into a harrier jet, which conveniently has a radio. i turned it to the deep house station and listened to some guy sing about living in harmony while i unleashed fiery death upon the denizens of las vegas (i forget what it's called in-game). eventually i make the mistake of flying over area 51 (forgot its in-game name too) and i almost get shot down but i bail out in time, except i forget how to work my parachute and end up splatting on the ground.
why san andreas over gta3 or vice city? well, it's just better, but i guess that isn't as self-evident as i thought. gameplay-wise it makes the others seem hopelessly crude, 'fixing' a lot of the simple issues that would jar you out of the game experience - swimming, jumping, targeting, car physics, camera, etc. (this stuff is a big deal, because it makes the game that much more playable!) its range of environments makes vice city seem monochrome and monotonous (vice city feels really cramped to me, and there's no range as far as what it evokes - it just makes you feel like a drug lord from beginning to end), the writing's at its funniest and most interesting, the missions are amazing and the voice acting owns (the gta games are the only ones where celebrity v/o make sense)
some things i didn't like about it:
-not enough options after you finish the game - it would've been nice if you could've had the option to replay any mission from the game (there's some amazing set-piece missions in this game), or at least be able to initiate gang-wars again
-cutting off some songs early, meaning no monster breakdown on Rusty Cage and no sick instrumental section of Freebird ;_;
-wardrobe interface pretty clunky and slow
-it pushes the limits of the ps2 and out of neccessity the draw distance is very low, making things difficult when you're piloting the high speed harrier
those are extremely nit-picky and are basically the only things i could possibly hold against the game. something i keep coming back to when i think about san andreas is, funnily enough, something s1ocki said about goodfellas once - talking about the scene where sorvino slices garlic with a razor blade, he simply says 'there's nothing else like that.' well, there's nothing else in gaming like san andreas. except maybe gta4 but i havent played it and i heard it was boring anyway plus it's on another system so who cares. i mean, gta's main legacy is probably the proliferation of sandbox games, but i can't think of a single game in that style that reminds me at all of gta, especially san andreas - nothing with the ambition or the ability to see that ambition through. i mean, nobody else even WANTS to make a game where you can fly a jetpack, murder cops with a dildo, get into dofgights 2 thousand feet above the ground while listening to wreckx-n-effect, decide between a caesar and a fade - let alone TRIES.
That basically how I break it down to an extent.
― Are Slimes the Jews of monsterdom? (cankles), Thursday, 4 March 2010 16:37 (fourteen years ago) link
why san andreas over gta3 or vice city? well, it's just better, but i guess that isn't as self-evident as i thought.
haha. i def need to replay the ps2 gtas (gta IV is aight but not special in the way u mention i think). ill admit that the smaller scale and more modest ambitions of vice city make it more approachable/playable for me ~ the possibilities were big enuff to be thrilling w/o being so wide as to be intimidating.
― (Head) (Lamp), Thursday, 4 March 2010 17:44 (fourteen years ago) link
it's like the lightbulb went off when they were making SA: if we make all these places and cars and weapons, we should have the plot incorporate going to all of them and using all of them. i swear 65% of IV is, "drive six blocks, watch cutscene, shoot 6 guys, get $400".
― goole, Thursday, 4 March 2010 18:48 (fourteen years ago) link
it's basically Road Rash, right?
No. One of you is in an attack helicopter, and the other is on a motorcycle. The helicopter is supposed to kill the guy on the motorcycle as quickly as possible, and you take turns. Whoever gets the most kills within a set period of time wins.
Getting murdered via helicopter blades is very common.
It is sooooo awesome.
― Your body is a spiderland (polyphonic), Thursday, 11 March 2010 21:22 (fourteen years ago) link
eight months pass...