ok, vamo la q eu tenho muita coisa pra falar sobre essa porra

primeiramente tenho q mandar um parabens por fazer san andreas ser um local tão vivo, tu customiza tanto o cj q vc se sente personificado nele, vc realmente se interessa nas atrações da cidade pra fortalecer o protagonista, e n foca só nas missões, eu por exemplo não teve um dia (do jogo) q eu não me pegava indo na academia ou fazendo as guerras de gangue, ou perdendo todo o meu dinheiro no turfe, ou encontrando com alguma namorada, ou comprando alguma propriedade etc etc

mas tem porem na parte da guerra de "gangues", pq a sua gangue é uma bosta, são tudo robozinho burro, se eles nem sequer sabem te seguir sem bater em alguma parede ou carro, imagina atirando? eles sempre morrem no primeiro minuto da raid e fica por isso mesmo, é muito mais eficiente vc só ir metendo bala em tudo vc mesmo doq vc perder seu tempo chamando eles. e vai se fuder rockstar por fazer as primeiras guerras de gangue durarem umas 5 missoes só pra depois só perder tudo e colocar no final, eu literal dominei todos os bairros de primeira pra eu perder tudo depois e ainda me obrigarem a pegar a maior parte dos bairros novamente

a gangue dos ballas é a gangue mais sem sal q eu já vi na minha vida, eles n tem uma especie de lider ou algum cabeça importante, é só um bando de drogado e é isso aí. até as gangues do vice city tinha seus próprios líderes e cada um agia de um jeito diferente

sinceramente o mapa também não é algo q me agrada, é ridiculamente grande e dps começa a ser tédio pra krl ter q ficar se locomovendo por aí dps de sair de los santos (até pq n tem nenhum fast travel nessa porra)

e também tem o ponto de sair de los santos, pq dps q o smoke e o ryder te traem e seu irmão vai pra cadeia, o jogo simplesmente fica chato pra um caralho, vc faz as missões mais fodase do mundo ficando quase nível gta 3. as de propriedade foram o maior downgrade q eu já vi do vice city pra cá, todas sem graças e sem ausencia do charme e estilo de cada uma presente em seu jogo antecessor

e os vilões desse jogo são... ruins? olha bem, todos tem o mesmo padrão de serem um filho da puta do krl sem nenhuma motivação aparente

ambos o ryder e o smoke te traem, e quando vc vai matar o ryder, vc questiona ele e ele só fica vangloriando a si mesmo e dps morre, e é a mesma merda com o smoke só q mais grandioso ao inves de uma perseguição merda de lancha

até a catarina entra nessa brincadeira eternamente xingando e falando merda pro cj até mesmo quando ela n tá mais em san andreas

aqueles oficiais corruptos também são as coisas mais banais q eu já vi na minha vida, eles obviamente são usados pelo tenpenny e quando vc questiona isso pro pulaski quando ele tá prestes a morrer ele só procede falando mais merda (igual o smoke e o ryder...)

e, o pior, a porra do tenpenny, literalmente desde a primeira cutscene do jogo sempre quando eu via ele eu pensava: pq q o cj ainda perde tempo com ele? ele fica desde o inicio do jogo só pegando no pé do cj de graça e mandando ele fazer algo a favor dele, sempre dá um nervoso quando esse puto aparece. principalmente no final do jogo, o fdp mata o smoke armado até as unha com um colete super foda, pra simplesmente largar a arma quando o tenpenny chega depois? e vale lembrar q o principal antagonista do jogo é ele, n é o smoke, é ele q a gente encontra na primeira cutscene, é ele q a gente mata no final (mesmo n sendo tão atrativo quando do big smoke)

dito isso, vice city sola.

I think there’s something to be said about how this game handles It’s open world, while your typical “open world” game consists of a large, barren map that’s there for you to walk from A to B on and occasionally be met with a fetch quest, cancerous collectibles or a “pick your poison” deal from towers and etc, and It’s all there to bloat up the game’s length (see Dying Light’s 2 500 hour ad) meanwhile side activities In SA are widely varied and exist to service the game’s world and help Immerse you Into It, ranging from pimping, Lowrider bouncing, racing, burglary, to gambling, pool, dancing, basketball, shitty arcade games, and gang territory. It’s really fun and helps give a sense of realness to the game’s world. The game also reacts to what you wear although It’s mainly In regards to other gangs or regular NPC’s praising/making fun of you, and you can respond either negatively or positively.

All this aside another thing I am fond of Is the mission variety In this game, for a game with a 100 missions It’s hard to say It ever gets mundane with missions going from drive-by’s to bombing planes from the inside or stealing advanced technology from a military base, my only qualm Is Rockstar’s typical aversion to non-linear ways of solving missions, you either follow their Instructions to a T or you risk quickly failing a mission, shit’s lame. As for the story, the main plot Is okay, where the writing really shines Is the characters, as they’re all unique and hysterical like Woozie, Truth, Toreno and more, even characters with 30 second screen-time end up memorable like Tony the Parrot.

One of the most iconic,imporant and impressive games i ever played,this is one of the most important games for my culture,really is the most important,sure you have your cs 1.6,pes 6 and other gta games,but none compare to the sheer amount of legacy and fandom this game gets,also i played with a mod that recreated the ps2 version on pc

Gameplay 8,75-9/10
is weird to talk about gameplay on a game like gta cause it has a lot of parts to it,like the game kinda has it all and most of it does pretty great,sure is not as good as gta 4 but it still extremely impressive especially for the time,good shoting,driving,movement,etc

Weapon tier list:https://tiermaker.com/list/video-games/san-andreas-weapons-3272/3426670


Graphics/Aesthetics 8,5/10
a time capsule ,it captures well like a early 90s feel without feeling to old and i like the orangy color pallete the game has

Missions 7,5-8/10
The levels themselves,or missions,are i think an improvement over vice city or other open world game of his era but it still has its problems with a lot of mid missions and some outright horrible ones,even though now you get more great ones and more amazing ones

mission tier list:https://tiermaker.com/list/video-games/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-missions-1417180/3427342

Map 10/10
since it is a open world game,instead of level design i will be talking about its map and the use of it.its flawless,you have everything on this map,three vastly different cities that each feels really big,a big ass forest a desert and a lot of towns and since technically the map isnt that big,even though it feels massive,it doesnt have a lot of unused useless space,is pretty tight,especially comparing this to gta 5 map that divides in two parts the city and the rest.

side content/replayability 8,5/10
even though most of the side content are like feathers from assasins credd,with the graffitis,horshoes,etc you still have a lot of fun side stuff to do and sure you will not get a new game by replaying it it still if fun

Ending 8/10
solid,a satifying end and it leaves a sweet taste

Soundtrack/Sound effects 10/10
one of the best soundtracks in gaming,the feeling of the vastly amount of quantity and quality those radio give me is hard to replicate,especially radio x,radio los santos and kdst

Radio tier list:https://tiermaker.com/list/music/gta-san-andreas-radio-stations-60330/3427350

Story/Writing/Characters/Lore 8,75/10
one word,charisma,like ryder for example is just so one of a kind and funny,smoke is wise and also funny,sweet is loyal and likeable and so on,these characters really gave the game a lot of heart even when the game had pace issues or the storyline just got kinda boring,also i like the way they introduced los santos and the amount of characters and lore it was introduced,and just a likeable and funny game in general

Character tier list:https://tiermaker.com/list/video-games/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-characters-62663/3426661

overall,one of the most important games for my culture and with reason,fucking great
10/10

Overall - 5/5 I would say that this is the best GTA game I've ever played, even though I played GTA 4 & 5, and yes they are awesome as well, but this one is just the definition of "PERFECT".

Story - 5/5 A journey presented by rockstar games as always, imo better story than gta 4 & 5, it is balanced so well, it gives u a feel of completion, adventure and nostalgia with the patented gta humour.

Graphics - 4.5/5 It is diverse, design wise unique and feels balanced, but the character graphics quality is a bit rough, games released on the same era had somewhat better graphics in some instances, but small details wise GTASA defeats them all.

Mechanics - 4.5/5 It does everything quite well, some things are a little hard to get used to, but the combat, driving, boating, flying all of them are enjoyable, the open world feels realistic and living, police chases are great as well.

CJ - "Ah shit! Here we go again..."

This is the third in a series of reviews on the 3d era of the Grand Theft Auto games and it reference my previous 2 reviews on GTA 3 and Vice City. San Andreas is a fan favourite in the GTA franchise and was a cultural blockbuster on release. The game was a chart topper for the PlayStation 2 beating out both previous games and even Sony's first party releases in sales to become the best selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. What I’m trying to get across is that this game was a big deal and it set the course for Rockstar's future. I want to state up front that I think this game is a monumental achievement, it’s setting and story was a huge step up from previous games, it made meaningful changes to the GTA formula and I had a great time playing it, yet I also felt a sense of disappointment as all too often the game strayed from the intoxicating hands off mission structure that the previous two titles had. San Andreas will often lead the player by the nose and not only does the game reduce the amount of creative expression the player can do but it even goes so far as to actively destroy any chance the player might make in preparing for missions or engaging in creative problem-solving instead choosing a serious of linear scripted sequences which are lacking in a satisfying payoff.

Let’s start at the beginning; its the 1990s and Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson has been away in Liberty City for a while but at hearing the death of his mother he has come back to San Andreas for the funeral. Whilst visiting the his old neighbourhood and gang he becomes dedicated to building the gang back up and its here we meet the cast of characters and establish the setting. San Andreas is set on the West Coast in the 90s and it is reminiscent of gangsta films of the era like Boyz n the Hood or Menace II Society. Unlike Vice City, which was a straight rip off off one particular movie, San Andreas doesn’t really follow beat for beat exactly what happens in it’s filmic influences and instead chooses to take elements from their setting and portrayal of hood life to create a very dry and drab looking aesthetic, one that’s romanticised by the influence of west coast hip-hop where the streets are mean and crime is a way of life. Corrupt police stalk citizens and enable gang violence, different gangs not only beef with each other but there’s also conflict within families. This is a more thoughtful approach to building a setting and it’s fantastic. In the previous games I talked about the ‘rags to riches’ catharsis that comes from building up the protagonist to a very glorified kingpin and whilst San Andreas starts the player on the bottom rung in a neighbourhood of poverty and systemic violence it doesn’t glorify the crime life, tragedy, downfall and consequences strike the characters. San Andreas retains the feeling of progression from older titles but chooses to make a conscious effort to depict its setting and characters with a more tempered approach.

CJ is the best protagonist of the 3 games hands-down because he isn’t an unfeeling, reckless gangster but rather he is a person who at times displays sadness and amusement and anger and despair, he speaks to different characters in different tones. CJ might show respect to his family members and people who treat him well but he also has a playful side where he makes fun of his homies, he speaks coldly and impatiently to Tenpenny and the police officers who keep him on a leash. CJ is successfully established not just as an avatar of player chaos but deep down, a decent guy with a complex thought process, he sometimes comes across as very trepidatious and whiny and like he feels pressured into doing something to appear strong even when he knows it’s the wrong thing to do. This is praise that you cannot say about Claude or Tommy. I think a lot of credit should go to the brilliant performances of the voice actors who deliver a fun and enthusiastic performance from start to finish.

The starting area of the game, Grove Street is a triumphant expression of game design and makes you feel like you’re back in the swing of GTA. San Andreas has better movement mechanics this time around, CJ can crouch, climb, roll and swim and the starting area shows this off by placing a few weapons on rooftops, encouraging players to reach tangible and useful early game rewards by exploring and interacting with these new mechanics. One of the first things I would do upon returning to Grove was pick up a pistol, SMG and body armour, the golden combo of early game GTA. The game also improves on shooting mechanics, the controls are more like what you would expect from a third person shooter with a reticle and finer movement controls, the lock on is very powerful and in fact its almost too powerful, you can snap onto enemies very quickly with very little effort combined with the improved aiming you can absolutely blast enemies away or snipe them before they even notice you, but its an overall good change, it feels like a robust system that encourages you to use movement and cover intelligently.

It sounds good so far right? Good story, good setting and meaningful gameplay improvements aside the shortcomings of the mission design appear very early in the game when Big Smoke takes you on a mission to kill some Russian Mafia. By this point in the game I had done laps of weapon pickups and equipped myself with an MP5 and a lot of ammo for it, what happens next is a sequence where a mac-10 is forced on my character replacing the powerful SMG and all the ammo I had collected so that the mission could perform an extended turret sequence. Needless to say this was where I knew this game and I would start to clash. After the mission all the effort and progress I had put into preparation had been undone and I was left with a shit gun with one magazine, I felt betrayed by this and it was made worse by the scripted mission wasn’t even very impressive in its delivery, considering it resembled a climatic chase scene on a motorbike in a storm drain being shot at by black sedans and a semi truck (A la Terminator 2) it was decidedly flat with no music or impactful sound effects and marked by invulnerable vehicles that had to reach an area to blow up cinematically.

This mission represents a problem with the entire game, the player is not encouraged to figure out a solution to a mission but rather follow a series of instructions and set pieces. If you’ve spent some time picking up grenades a mission will force you to replace them with Molotovs to complete an arson mission, if there's a warehouse full of enemies they won’t spawn from one entrance and you cannot scout the area because you have to hit a trigger at the front entrance and go through the mission on a set course, this linear approach to missions completely clashes with the open world design remnants like ammo and armour pickups and I wasn’t even particularly motivated to look for fast vehicles or use the new vehicle customisation options because the vehicles were either expected to be blown up as part of the mission or the player is just provided with a car and told to drive somewhere. Contextual health and armour spawn in the middle of missions and red barrels are placed everywhere. San Andreas doesn’t want you to prepare and it doesn’t want you to experiment and this is such a massive let down after the feeling of having Grove Street teach you to explore for goodies, any sense of reward or satisfaction is killed stone dead when a mission demands I complete it a certain way.

Nowhere is this focus on narrative-at-the-expense-of-gameplay shown more clearly than the in car conversations you can have with characters; these conversations are themselves really great and I want to listen to them but all too often they conflict with the games scripted timing, I shouldn’t have to stop before a mission checkpoint to hear the dialogue finish but it happens nearly every time CJ and Ryder start having a conversation across the dashboard, I have to park a few meters away from the mission trigger to hear character development happen, it’s like the game’s narrative is not just fighting the player but the nature of the open world itself. The missions also have some straight up awful mini games like the beat matching games where you have to dance or bounce a low rider to arrows like a really slow and clunky step-mania, quite frankly I would not choose to play these game if a couple weren’t required for progression, I decided to cheat engine myself 100,000 points and browsed my phone whilst they played themselves out, you might call this a ‘skill issue’ I assure you that I am capable of playing bad rhythm games, but I don’t actually want to, I would rather be, you know, stealing cars? Shooting people? Playing a bloody Grand Theft Auto game and not Project Diva Compton.

The game is festooned with half-baked mechanics that often feel like the game is trying to be too ambitious, there are terrible stealth missions where you have to crouch walk everywhere for example and whilst I do appreciate that the developers wanted to introduce new scenarios and new mechanics for players to experience I would much rather they took the approach of letting me create my own experiences. When I was playing Vice City and I found a way to sneak weapons into the golf course to snipe an assassination target at range that was ME creating MY OWN stealth mission, I didn’t need a visibility meter or noise meter or a new suite of mechanics that only work in a certain area, instead I built my own gameplay story and expressed myself without the game’s overbearing hand guiding me through it.

San Andreas is filled with ambitious mechanics that aren’t developed enough, the game has life-sim elements where you can increase your fatness, athleticism, muscle and lung capacity, these all effect the on foot gameplay and they add a really awesome element of flavour, I love that you can eat a ton of chicken buckets from fast food places and CJ will start to make wise cracks about his weight, characters will even call you up and tell you to go to the gym. This system is such a brilliant thing to add to this huge world but it’s fucked up by making the gym sections where you gain stamina and muscle these awful button mashing mini games that are a serious concern for people with RSI, its like the game can’t stop switching out the mechanics before fully exploring them. Another life-sim element that annoys the shit out of me is the mechanic of dating women, this ties into the rags to riches power fantasy as you begin to date sexier and more classy women who expect you to dress better and have a nice car but again it’s not thought out properly, you will be hit with random notifications that your ‘progress with Denise’ has dropped it’s like the game constantly demands attention from you as if it were a real relationship but all that it accomplishes is making the player go and do things that they may not want to do. My relationship with a girl should not decrease like a meter 10 minutes after I had already met with her and completed a series of very obtuse and boring date objectives like going to a bar wearing an appropriate amount of swag clothing and a $300 flat top.

I’m sure I could say more about the fact that you’re expected to cheat on multiple women who are largely portrayed as shallow gold diggers that you fuck for like, power ups and car spawns but its a 2004 GTA game, I wasn’t expecting much.

Another element that falls flat for me is the map layout, on the one hand its much much larger than previous games and the game continues the trend from Vice City of having cool interiors and little details, in terms of a variety in elevation and road complexity it still holds up today but it is much harder to navigate than most open world maps, very often I was met impassible geometry between me and an objective. Verticality is a big part of the San Andreas map but its supremely annoying to navigate because it results in the game putting a brick wall in your face and you need to drive an entire block around it. The areas outside the cities are expansive and devoid of any significant landmarks, Vice City and GTA 3 did a good job of getting players used to their environment by landmarking shops and points of interest with other areas to create a puzzle-like map that players could familiarise themselves with quickly. Highways in Vice City were dotted with interesting coloured buildings or a business or a unique bridge to cross to reach a new part of the city, compare this to San Andreas where you drive along featureless two lane highways between cities as if the game is attempting to recreate the mundane experience of driving in real life California. Areas are so generic that you can’t get used to them and you are forced to check a map to make sure the long, twisting road you’re driving on won’t just shit you out in a completely arbitrary direction. When I think about the West Coast of the US and the places there I don’t think too fondly of driving for hours on the i-15 and yet that's exactly what the San Andreas map feels like. Bad traversal of the map is mitigated somewhat by the new inclusion of really fun on foot options like parachutes and jetpacks but these aren’t always available, the bulk of a GTA game is always driving and having a map that feels boxed in whilst also being way too big is frankly upsetting.

It may sound dramatic to be upset with a game like this but I feel like I’m missing a trick with San Andreas, I feel like there's something not clicking for me here. I like the story, I like the characters, I like the driving model, I love the soundtrack which would’ve been a hard act to follow after Vice City and yet is still full of bangers and I love the new movement mechanics, I love the extensive amount of content and environments the game has, I appreciate that the game is ambitious even if it is too ambitious sometimes and I can see why it remains so popular amongst fans but there’s just something not right with it. I constantly felt like the game was wrestling away control from me and its the same feeling I get from contemporary Rockstar games. San Andreas exists in this weird space where the franchise hasn’t committed to its goal of a narrative experience and still has remnants of player choice and player expression like weapon pickups and collectibles so I get the impression that I’m supposed to be going out of my way to prepare for something when the game will just take all that away from me and give me a set of tools that I have to use. When the game lets go of the scripted linear focus it’s great and some of my favourite missions were the things like the heists with Catalina, the game lets off and tells you to choose a target and you play out a small heist with a dynamic shoot-out and tense getaways, these were exciting and unpredictable and were on par if not better than some of the best missions in Vice City and GTA 3. When the game rewarded me for increasing my lung capacity ahead of a mission that requires strong swimming that felt good, it felt like the game was acknowledging the choices I made. If San Andreas had a consistent mission structure that really let the player loose on the open world to build their own fun I think it would an incredible game, as it stands I can’t love it as much. Going forward Rockstar games would become increasingly railroaded in focus but also they became utterly immense in their popularity and cultural impact, its clear that even if this game didn’t click with me, millions more came to love this style of game, I think to understand San Andreas you have to appreciate a more authored approached to mission based open world games, but for me I will always prefer the freedom and unchained mayhem of GTA 3 and Vice City.

Definately a legendary game of the grand size, tho personally not my favorite (that honor goes to VC, VCS, 4 and TBOGT), I enjoyed it quite a lot. I also like all the story beats about drugs and what the hood really means (Sweet can't see the big picture, I agree with CJ on that argument they had)

I'd give this a 4.5 but goddamn this was full of so many shitty flying missions, ugh, the way they made the Flight School mandatory when they could easily cook those tutorials into missions is just dumb, I absolutely hated all the flying missions here and did anything I could to make em easier or use fuckery at my disposal without downright hacking or cheating. What they thought was innovative is just plain up poorly designed, imagine making such mindnumbingly bad game design that it actually demotivates the player from playing for a while...that's Flight School, by Vertical Bird, CJ being sick of this shit couldn't resonate with me more....

But to end this on a positive note, I love how enthusiastic CJ is about the heist, feels like he wanted to something like that his whole life, he's in his element and I'm happy for him. I also love Woozie and his friendship with Carl, it's quite fun and wholesome and it feels very natural, to the point it feels like not even Woozie and CJ themselves expected to get this close. He feels like a closer homie than Cesar, at least to me lol. I also quite enjoyed Catalina's phone calls, have fun with that in 2001, Claude!

Marcou a minha infáncia mas não o acho perfeito.

Um game aonde você controla CJ, um ex membro de gangue que agora tem que voltar para cidade natal pelo o falecimento de sua mãe e por conta disso voltou para sua gangue natal onde encontra Big Smoke, Ryder, e Sweet e lá eles tentam fazer a Grove Street Families e enquanto isso o CJ tenta conquistar o respeito da gangue e o resto é historia.

Esse game sem duvidas de sombras me marcou e marcou muita gente também mas certas missões me deram no pé como aquela do avião de brinquedo e do treino de avião, mas tirando isso o game ainda continua bem atual e interresante de jogar, uma pena que tirou a versão original da Steam e colocaram o Remake que é horrível. 9/10