Game kicks ass. I tried to get into the missions and actually play the game but I couldn't really get into them, especially not when driving around and fucking with cheat codes is so much more fun. I enjoyed what little I played of the story mode but I don't think I'll ever finish it, a bit too much tedium for my liking. There's a lot of really good voice acting - I had no idea Samuel L. Jackson was in this game, the opening cutscene kinda stunned me. Rockstar got a lot of (rightful) shit for saying they'd sell GTA 6 for $100, but if the gameplay completely consisted of stealing motorcycles and doing crazy ass stunts off cliffs I'd pay $100 for it.

... You ever be absolutely convinced something's the GOAT, and you expect to pick it up and feel the same way as if it was yesterday? That happens all the time with me cause I know what I like and think about games a lot, but San Andreas is not one of those cases, which I seriously didn't expect.

"So, what on god's green earth is your problem with SA then," you ask?
Well, to keep it short, I actually really don't like how this game controls. The gunplay is just whatever. It’s serviceable, and it feels like you’re standing there. Or it’s frustrating at times (whether that be because your character points their gun in the air too much, or manual aiming being really finnicky), and it makes dying in the early game, with your squishy HP and A.I getting hyper-accuracy when you leave cars, especially aggravating and tedious when you don't have ammu-nation yet. When you do unlock ammu-nation, it doesn't feel that bad taking a death usually, unless the way you died was some grade-A bullshit.
But more importantly,
I actually really don't like the car physics in this game. I feel the majority of cars are slidey, whether that be because of heavy swings during turning, or sensitive squirrely movement. If they aren’t either of those, they’re usually still fighting to stay stable in this game unless you’re a rare gem like the Huntley or Banshee, for example. A lot of the driving too is this rhythm of feathering the gas since it'll carry you forward a while, and while it can be pretty satisfying, it's also a huge factor as to why you're liable to crash or lose control. Most cars don't have amazing acceleration so you're always trying to push for that point where the car finally feels real nice, but the moment you get there is when you'll get really bad RNG on the cars on the road, or just generally lose control of your car because the car begins to behave more erratically than you expected during micro-turns or breaking or going down hills.
The cars might be a me thing, but in any case, you can see the problem, right? These are the two core mechanics for the whole game, and I feel like I'm constantly trying to enjoy the game in spite of them. Especially when driving might as well be the entire game.
At least once I got out into the country side and San Fierro I started to enjoy driving a lot more since it has more straight aways and I just also really like the vibes, but it's not like I suddenly loved it.

That's not all, of course. There are dozens of small positives and negatives in this game too, that we won't get into. But another surprising feeling I had was that I thought I'd enjoy the more simple mission and open-world design of a game like this. I thought it'd be a breath of fresh air coming back to a simpler time of making these games.
But that's not the case either. The reality is a lot of the missions are pretty short and don't pack a ton of punch. Like you'd think a mission about planting drugs in a DA's car would be pretty cool, for example, but it feels just like it's a normal mission playing dress up as something better. Or you sneak into Mad Dogg’s mansion for OG Loc, and then proceed to never do that again for most of the game. Or even something like stealing the farm Carbine from the far-righters feels like it lacks some punch that better presentation nowadays would help sell in a more modern game.
Missions can absolutely screw you too sometimes. And when they do, and you don’t die, you have to drive all the way fucking back to where you started the missions which can be an absolutely gigantic drive in San Fierro and the Bad Lands. Some missions just end really far away from where missions start too, and that’s also annoying as hell. The game has a lot of padding and tedium in general and it just doesn’t feel satisfying a lot of the time.
I’m not going to talk about the story either, because while it has some good comedy and dialogue, and fine socio-political commentaries and jokes, but it’s pretty bare actually. It’s better in concept than in execution, especially with how they handle Ryder.

I usually hate framing any game in this way, it's just not how I look at them, but the reality is that with this one I think we’ve made a lot of strives in Open World game design, actually. The game’s still fun, and I really like the map design and it's really easy to overlook how important that is, but playing it feels like playing a blueprint or rosetta stone for games I like more now. Whether that be its mini-games or collectibles, or its customization of CJ, the variety of guns, turf wars, anything you can think of… By now we have dozens of games that have evolved and iterated upon its ideas. Not only in games unlike San Andreas like Infamous or Assassin’s Creed, but in games that are doing very similar things, going for the exact same effect, like GTA IV or Saints Row (I may have been too harsh to SR IV). And with such direct comparisons it feels like the things that make San Andreas special have become marginal compared to what other games can provide as straight upgrades.

It absolutely deserves some respect on its name, but yeah, genuinely I think I’m good on playing this game in the future. I’m going to take the rest of my playthrough slow and try and have fun with it, I'm writing this now so I won't have to wait a few more months to get my thoughts down. 6.5/10 for now.
I'm interested in trying out GTA III and VC since I never made it nearly as far in those games by comparison, so we'll see how that goes. But maybe later rather than sooner.