Let’s get straight to the point, San Andreas is the biggest game this year, possibly ever, and many would argue that’s it’s also the best game this year; possibly ever. For your £35 odd, you’re getting an absolutely enormous amount of play time, and from a simple value perspective, this is almost unsurpassable. It’s the most important PS2 exclusive title of recent times, and it just about lives up to the gargantuan hype it generated.
We can’t and won’t pretend that we don’t love San Andreas dearly, it’s an awesome, amazing, brilliantly fantastic game; but it is fundamentally GTA 3.3 and not GTA 4 or 5; and for those reasons there are some issues worthy of complaint. A game of this scale and with such an ambitious premise is inherently going to build itself up for a take down. It’s a bit like if the Messiah returned, but had bad acne and ginger hair. It’s a thing of revolutionary goodness, but there are certain niggles that you can’t help but take issue with.
Realistically, anyone who has more than a passing interest in the GTA series and a PS2 is already likely to have acquired this game: and if not, that’s probably only because they couldn’t find a copy. So rather than explaining what makes GTA so darn good and what you should expect from a game you have (or should have) already purchased/tattooed onto your Christmas list, we thought we’d highlight the problems that prevent this from being a perfect game. Just getting into that Scrooge spirit…
Perhaps it’s a personal thing, but in taking on this premise, Rockstar has taken on the responsibility of making an all-time dream come true. As far back as we can remember we have, quite genuinely, always wanted to be gangsters, and we’ve got the bandanas, badly scrawled tags and well-rehearsed, intricately-choreographed handshakes to prove it. Having also studied the deep cultural history of west coast gangsta rap and the gang-banging it so subtly portrays, we feel the world of San Andreas is the manifestation of that daydream world: generated in geography lessons squandered during our adolescence(s). In the knowledge that this game represents the closest thing to a realisation of that vision that we will ever enjoy, we do really have to don our backward-facing caps of super cynicism and keep it real, homie.
You might have seen this before
Realistically, anyone who has more than a passing interest in the GTA series and a PS2 is already likely to have acquired this game: and if not, that’s probably only because they couldn’t find a copy. So rather than explaining what makes GTA so darn good and what you should expect from a game you have (or should have) already purchased/tattooed onto your Christmas list, we thought we’d highlight the problems that prevent this from being a perfect game. Just getting into that Scrooge spirit…
Whassup G?