You may think that I am insane for sullying the mighty "GTA" name by writing a less than perfect review, and maybe I am, but keep reading and we'll find out...
First off, I am a fan of the "GTA" series, "GTA 3" was a fresh, new experience in gaming, and I played that game long into the night. It's possible that I enjoyed it so much because it was so different than what had come before it. So when "Vice City" came out, I hadn't expected to to rank it as high as it's predecessor. Strangely, I was still very pleased with "Vice City," which was a testament to good game play, and not some flash-in-the-pan fad.
Leading up to it's release, "San Andreas" seemed like the greatest achievement in the series yet, with more features than you could shake a stick at. But does that mean that it's a good game? An enjoyable game? Perhaps for some, but unfortunately, not for me.
The biggest problem that I had with the game is the dialogue. I've heard many a review say that the dialogue was excellent. Well I got news for ya' mo**** -f*****. I can write that stuff in my sleep. Admittedly, I'm not one that enjoys abundance of profanity, but if it is used tastefully then I can appreciate it.
I am well aware that Rockstar was trying to re-create the era of the 1990's ghetto scene. However: so is American suburbia. I have gone to schools where I am surrounded by guys who talk EXACTLY like that, all the time. They call themselves: "hardcore gangster" and such... The problem with that is: they're not oppressed black people living in the slums, they're preppy white kids. Guys who 'rebel' against society; writing rap songs about how oppressed they are; but come from an upper-middle class family. Let it be known: if you upgrade your iPod to a larger one "just cuz" (actual quote), you are no where near being a hardcore gangster.
The fact that these people use the same speech as the real 'gangstas' it greatly demeans the words, to the point where they have no meaning anymore. It may just be me, but the the words in the game had little to no meaning to me.
This also spills into my other problem with the game: the lack of likable characters. I had a hard time finding anyone to root for. Even the main character I could not find appealing, as his motivation seemed extremely lacking. His mother was supposed to have been killed, but soon into the game it becomes a vague attempt to get 'cred' and to beat out the other gangs. The motivation for the "GTA3" and "Vice" characters was a lot more convincing in my opinion, limited as they might have been.
The final piece, if you actually read this far, is about the hundreds of features that were promised for the game. Many implemented features did not seem to have the impact that they should have had. Exercising, clothes, eating; all those features seemed great at the time but in practice, they didn't effect the main game that much as far as I could tell. A case of something-cool-but-kinda-useless is the dirt on cars. The game was supposed to have dirt collect on the cars as you drive them. I couldn't really see any dirt, and it didn't seem to hinder the car's performance either, so why was it there? Maybe if I had stuck with one car for more than 32 seconds, but that was part of the fun of the other two GTAs.
I can appreciate the game on a technical level, but when I get down to actually play it, I find that I'm just not having fun.
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