San Andreas begins with Carl (CJ) Johnson returning to San Andreas after a number of years living in Liberty City.
Any hope I’d had of enjoying the gameplay were dashed before too long. Despite coming out 2 and 3 years after Vice City and GTA 3 respectively, the game is largely built on the same mechanics. San Andreas is no different from the other two games in The Definitive Edition. Grand Theft Auto – San Andreasįast-forward to today, and I thought the experience would have been about the same. It is one of those genre-defining titles and has been called as much by everyone who looked at it 17 years ago. When it was released in October 2004, it was very well-received, with an average rating of 95%. in Vice City, I moved on to San Andreas, the third and last entry in the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. When I got tired of cruising the beach listening to Run D.M.C. Tracks by Run D.M.C., Motley Crue, Judas Priest, Foreigner, and more make driving around Vice City a truly enjoyable experience. Rockstar really spared no expense, if you’ll pardon my Jurassic Park parlance. There are some absolute 80s BANGERS here. There was one saving grace for this game, and that’s the soundtrack. It was very much a “go here, kill/talk to this person” type of game, and then do it all over again. I always felt like there was no hesitation or contemplation in his choices. I need to have a likeable character to project parts of me into the game, and I didn’t get that here. I never felt like I was invested in the characters or the story, which is a shame, because Tommy could have been a very likeable character. Missions that are one-dimensional, uninteresting characters, same-y controls, and a forgettable story that never pulled me in. Vice City is just more of the same as its predecessor. The voice acting in Vice City is much better than GTA 3, but it still has a long way to go to be considered good. In this entry in the series, our main protagonist has a voice, so that’s something. We follow Tommy Vercetti in Vice City, as he works his way through the ranks to become the biggest criminal power in Vice City. At the end of the day, though, neon crap is still crap. It really looks like more of the same, but in the neon and pastel colours that the 80s were famous for. Grand Theft Auto – Vice City looks as visually passable as GTA 3 does in The Definitive Edition, and that’s not a good thing. My excitement peaked at that point, and it was downhill from there. I was interested in jumping into the 80s splendour that Vice City brought to the table. I booted up Vice City since it was next chronologically. “Grand Theft Auto – Vice City looks visually about as good as GTA 3 does in The Definitive Edition, and that’s not a good thing.” I was not enjoying myself and I have always felt that if I was not enjoying a game, I would stop playing. I shut the game off at that point because it wasn’t fun. I grabbed a Hummer (the in-game equivalent, anyways), and went after the truck.Īfter ramming into it multiple times, my car started to catch fire and eventually exploded, killing me, leaving the truck unharmed, and making me restart the mission.
I was completing a particular mission where I had to force a truck off the road and kill the driver because he had not been paying the protection money owed to Claude’s mafia boss. The longer I played GTA 3, the more I was frustrated.
There were several times during my playthrough where I wasn’t sure if I had fired one shot or seven at my target. Gunplay is another gripe due to there not being any sense of impact or severity to the action. Punching animations are sloppy and amount to the player mashing the “punch” button while Claude flails away on screen hoping to hit the person. The controls in GTA 3 are basic, simple, and deliberate. I realize that this is more the fault of the original release, but it’s still a detracting point here. At no point was I drawn into the story, and I use the term “story’ loosely. In this case, however, it’s probably for the best as the voice acting is not good, not even a little.
Generally, playing as a mute character is not fun for me unless the game is in first person, like Doom, where I can project myself on to the character. You play as “Claude” in GTA 3, a character that has no lines or voice acting of any kind, save a few grunts when climbing or running. “The longer I played GTA 3, the more I was frustrated…” This is a shame because the game originally came out for the PS2, so very little has improved.
This game looks like it was designed for the PS3, possibly even the PS2 in its later stages. A next-gen remaster is supposed to bring near-next-gen graphical display. I played the PlayStation 5 version of the trilogy, so it’s not like I was wanting for processing power. I can understand that this game came out 20 years ago, and the quality of the graphics is not going to be great, but it is not good enough.