My Top 100: #52 – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

 

It seems a bit cliché to me, including this game on my list.  After all, it seemed like it was the “cool thing to do” to like it at the time, and everyone just went crazy over it.

A good game is a good game, though, no matter how you slice it.

The hype surrounding the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was monumental.  Rockstar started a trend that continues today, slowly teasing information for upcoming GTA games by releasing nothing but simple character art or nondescript screenshots.  They end up releasing footage in due time, but for the most part, people are told so little about it before it’s released that they’re just dying to learn more.  I’m no marketing guy, but that seems like an ingenious way to stir the pot without actually doing all that much work.

It was released to critical acclaim in 2004, but as usual, I bided my time.  I knew it would eventually make its way to the Xbox, and when it did, I’d be kickin’ ass to whatever custom soundtrack I felt like on that given day.  All the screenshots I saw indicated the Xbox version’s graphics would be superior anyway, so why not just wait a year?

I did, and I’m glad.  The game was rad, and I was not sad.

 

 

My favourite memory of playing this game was actually not that long ago.  Four years ago (whoa), my wife’s sister moved in with us after our initial roommate plan fell apart.  We were still looking for one six months after moving into our awesome new apartment, which we didn’t want to give up.  We thought it would be fun if she moved from the country to the city to live with us!  She had graduated from high school earlier that year, and it would be a great way to get her used to (kinda, sorta) living on her own.

There’s seven years between us, so I thought it might be a bit weird to get used to the age gap.  It wasn’t, and many great times were had!

One of the first things her and I did was do a thorough playthrough of San Andreas; I printed maps with unique jump locations, we tried finding every tag to spraypaint, every hidden horseshoe and every bonus mission.  The sheer amount of content in this game still boggles my mind.  Yeah, there may be games released nowadays with more content in general, but this was a pretty big deal way back in 2004……..  almost nine years ago…….  gross.

Where do I begin, though?  Well, you could swim now, so going over a series of crazy jumps and ending up in the ocean wasn’t fatal.  Aside from a bevy of airplanes to highjack (still a touchy subject when it was released), a jetpack was made available in later stages of the game.  You could go down every back alley and find something new, be it a shortcut or item of some kind.  The missions were very rarely simple as going from point A to point B, and were so varied that one even had you flying a jet to a snowy Liberty City, the setting from Grand Theft Auto III!

Throw a bunch of features on top of that, like getting CJ in shape and awhole bunch of other RPG elements (YEAH!), and you’ve got yourself one helluva game.