With GTA IV quickly becoming yesterday's news, it seems a bit odd to review it's predecessor, GTA San Andreas, but the notion came to me after playing the new version this weekend. While GTA IV is much better graphically and adds that much more realism to the game, the cost of doing so is too much for me. They gave up on so much of what made San Andreas fun and that's the reason I play video games - to have fun and be entertained.
In the bizarro world of San Andreas, you get to play the epic character of Carl Johnson, a brash, irreverent, foul-mouthed, gangsta who drops some of the most hilarious lines I've heard. How can you not love a guy who screams, "I hate gravity!!" when falling off a building? Priceless. The beauty of this game is not in the missions. All of that stuff is fairly boring to me. I don't care if I complete missions or accomplish tasks or whatever; leave that to the gamers. I just want to lop someone's dome off with a kitana, shoot their head off with a sniper rifle and watch the fountain of blood spurt, or throw satchel bombs on them and then blow them up to watch the trajectory of their body. I want to laugh my tail off as I run over people on a motorcycle and they fly sky high, I want to hear the ridiculously offensive banter, I want to bazooka the world into oblivion, I want to use cheats and make myself invincible, I want to Super Punch someone fifty yards down the street, I want to fly a myriad of machines from a jet pack to a Hydra, I want to have meaningless sex with a host of freaks, I want to bet on the crudest and most perversely named horses, I want to win a million playing black jack and then shoot the dealer, I want to do side missions as a cop, ambulance driver, train engineer, or pimp, I want to kill drug dealers and take their money, I want to shoot the endless stream of Elvis impersonators strolling through Las Venturas. I want all of that and so much more. San Andreas delivers this is spades and unfortunately GTA IV does not. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the video game equivalent of being a god in a world of excess. It allows me, the casual game player, to vent some frustration, laugh until it hurts, and lose myself for the occasional hour or two in a world where I am king and no one can stop me. My goodness...don't we all want that from time to time or is it just me?
While my son and I did finish all the missions and complete the plot part of the game, we still have a few other side things to accomplish that we may or may not do because, really, who cares? We accessed all the cheats we could find and that made it fun and easy and thus that much more enjoyable. I don't play video games to be challenged. Life is challenging enough and I don't have endless hours to devote to playing the game. I'm a casual game player and not so much into role playing or heroic quests. I'm just in it for the laughs and they are a guarantee everytime I spend an hour or two with my boy CJ.
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