Standing Alone in Negativity on GTA:SA

I waited a long time for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The PC version came out almost a year later than the PSP2 and XBOX versions, and although I missed GTA3, I played and loved Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

I loved the way the driving mayhem of the altogether lacking Driver was married to some super lite role play meets action meets adventure, to give the crazy driving some purpose beyond throw-away arcade action. I loved the retro setting, complete with radio stations full of 80's New Wave and other music. It was a real sleeper hit with me, so I couldn't wait for the next game in the series.

Unfortunately, GTA: SA left me feeling a little alone. Pretty much everyone seems to have loved the game, including this PC version, but I was extremely disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, this game isn't a shocker, even in my view. I can see there is fun to be had here, but it just wasn't for me.

It's true, the graphics aren't really much of an improvement over the last game in the series, but this bothered me far less than the sound-track. I guess I should have known the 80's wasn't going to be revisited, but there's a reason I stopped listening to the radio around 1988 - That's right, all the music sucks. There is so much Rap in the sound-track and similar lamentable 90's offerings that instantly, before the game even really got started, it was off on an extremely bad foot for me. I never really realised how much the soundtrack had to do with my enjoyment of GTA:VC, until faced with the unlistenable trash here.

I did enjoy the game play in Vice City, so I didn't think the lack of music I enjoyed was going to be a killing stroke for San Andreas. The city is positively huge and well designed, so there is plenty to explore and there's a lot of freedom involved - you aren't forced to follow the main quest chain. There's also a nice variety of cars to jack and drive around the place.

Sadly though, the biggest problems I had with the game involved the vehicles, or more specifically, the PC control method. Instead of the very simple, very accessible method seen in the previous game, PC users are presented with what basically amounts to the PSP2 controls. I never did quite get the hang of controlling the game with mouse and keyboard and all the wrestling with what should have been very simple sucked most of the fun out of what was part of the magic of previous entries in the series. I don't play flight sims because they aren't fun to control and this was no different. There's also a crazy camera system which is togglable, but never entirely satisfactory no matter which way you slice it. The whole driving experience was spoiled by changes to an unfriendly control method, very different than what previously worked smoothly. I view this as unforgivable given the delay between console and PC releases of the game, which had me optimistic there would be no heinous direct porting from the console.

There are heaps of quests and side quests to complete in GTA:SA, although a lot of them are a tad more... arcade action than your thinking man's sort of thing. There's some neat touches like lifestyle influencing your character's physique and the need to get your hair cut (although this becomes tiresome after the second time you do it), but I am concerned about the low level of imagination and innovation that seems to have gone into the quest and story in general here. I didn't really identify with the protagonist and the combination of issues meant the game fell rather flat.

On a positive note, I didn't encounter any of the bugs which have been reported as widespread throughout the initial release of the game. This probably means I just got lucky with my hardware configuration, so if you do play, be sure to grab any patches available to save you pain in the long run.

Overall, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a major letdown for me. Sometimes a simple control method which gels with the gaming platform in question can really make the difference between a highly playable game, and one which finds its way into that drawer full of far too much junk you never look at any more but cant quite throw away, no matter how much your mum/wife nags. You know, the one so crammed full you can't really open it anymore, bits of unedintifiable stuff have fallen down the back into whatever lies beneath, etc. We all have them.... Either that or I'm a total slob. Maybe I'm just a hoarder.

It's true that much of my dislike for the game revolves around personal taste, such as the soundtrack and the more ghetto-style plot, but in the end I don't see how anyone could proclaim this more than an average game. Still, 56 users on Amazon and an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 shows that everyone has their own opinion. What your's may be is purely up to you.