The Long and Winding (and Violent) Road
Apr. 27th, 2005 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalJust finished playing through the main game of GTA: San Andreas. Much has been made of how frigging huge this game is, but you don't really get a perspective on the thing until you play it through. Let me put it to you this way: I got the game at Christmas. It took me until two days ago to finish it. Granted, I had to play it around Tom's schedule (this game definitely should NOT be played in front of sensitive ears), but it took me FOUR MONTHS to play it through.
So yeah, in the words of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, GTA San Andreas is big. Really big. You might think HALO is pretty impressive looking up close, but that's peanuts compared to San Andreas.
When you play it, not only do you get three seperate urban areas, each roughly equal to the total play areas of GTA III or Vice City, but you also get two large wilderness sections, one consisting of woods and farmland, the other of barren desert. In those areas are no less than seven seperate small towns with multiple streets and buildings of their own, and also minor roadside attractions like oil derricks and tourist traps (both animated. I'm especially fond of the giant bobbing chicken head near a motel.) I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly it takes you a minimum of a half-hour to physically travel from one corner of the state to the opposite on foot, and I believe it. It takes you almost a half-minute just to cross the GTA equivilent o the Golden Gate bridge.
And you can traverse it all without worrying about being interupted for a data load, unless you trigger a mission or enter a building on foot.
Oh, and the buildings you enter are rarely just static. Safehouses will probably have console video games to play, several AmmuNations have gun ranges, there are two large casinos, each with at least a half-dozen different gambling games to play, and totally unrelated to any scenario there's also a strip club where your character can get a private dance.
Real Big.
I'm at a loss though, to imagine what Rockstar will do for an encore, if they stick to the PS2. They might be better off waiting a couple of years for the PS3 to be created to handle improved graphics and an even bigger play area.
So yeah, in the words of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, GTA San Andreas is big. Really big. You might think HALO is pretty impressive looking up close, but that's peanuts compared to San Andreas.
When you play it, not only do you get three seperate urban areas, each roughly equal to the total play areas of GTA III or Vice City, but you also get two large wilderness sections, one consisting of woods and farmland, the other of barren desert. In those areas are no less than seven seperate small towns with multiple streets and buildings of their own, and also minor roadside attractions like oil derricks and tourist traps (both animated. I'm especially fond of the giant bobbing chicken head near a motel.) I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly it takes you a minimum of a half-hour to physically travel from one corner of the state to the opposite on foot, and I believe it. It takes you almost a half-minute just to cross the GTA equivilent o the Golden Gate bridge.
And you can traverse it all without worrying about being interupted for a data load, unless you trigger a mission or enter a building on foot.
Oh, and the buildings you enter are rarely just static. Safehouses will probably have console video games to play, several AmmuNations have gun ranges, there are two large casinos, each with at least a half-dozen different gambling games to play, and totally unrelated to any scenario there's also a strip club where your character can get a private dance.
Real Big.
I'm at a loss though, to imagine what Rockstar will do for an encore, if they stick to the PS2. They might be better off waiting a couple of years for the PS3 to be created to handle improved graphics and an even bigger play area.
