GTA San Andreas Had a Disappointing Soundtrack...

Big Orange · Post by **Big Orange** » 2006-05-21 05:40am

Did any of you think GTA San Andreas had an uninspiring and uneven soundtrack in comparison to GTA Vice City?

But don't get me wrong San Andreas had a much better soundtrack than GTA III and much of it's music selection is pretty solid, but it pales in comparison to Vice City's music selection (which was a lot more in tune with it's early to mid 80s setting). I felt the most consistant radio stations were Radio-X and K-DST ("A Horse With No Name", "White Wedding", "Personal Jesus" and "Fools Gold" are among my favourites).

Then we have SF-UR (a horribly wasted opportunity) that have only two tracks that were any good ("Pacific" and "Voodoo Ray"). Why didn't they have a much better selection of that sort music from the late 80s and early 90s? Then we have middling radio stations such as Master Sounds and K-Jah. K-Jah was not awful but so "meh" and I did not listen to it much. Master Sounds was not too bad, however the music was not to my taste (I liked that song that was often played in the Marmite adverts plus that 1960s organ and guitar number that is played in Heartbeat - don't know the names for either of them).

There is also K-Rose that is in the so bad it's good category ("All my Exes Live in Texas", "Three Cigerettes in the Ashtray" and "Hey Good Looking" were the cream of the crop). And finally at the bottom of the heap was Bounce-FM (waste of code), CSR, Playback and Radio-Los Santos. I'm sorry but hip hop and gangsta rap sucks. There are only three tracks that I sort of like from those four radio stations ("Keep on Moving", "Don't be Cruel" and "You Dropped a Bomb on Me").

All in all San Andreas's soundtrack was merely solid and no where near as entertaining or as groundbreaking as Vice City's music selection.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2006-05-21 05:55am

GTA 3: APart from Flashback there wasn't a single song i recognised. And they were a bit crap.

GTA VC: Had songs that just about everyone can recognise, hell they got frikkin Billie Jean!!! They got a whole fuckton of the best songs from the 80's! Then they set it in (pretty much) Miami Vice, a classic 80's TV show. Of course the soundtrack rocked.

GTA SA: They tried to do the same, but 90's Los Angeles doesn't have as much nostalgia as the 80's yet. Plus the music wasn't as old so i bet they had a harder time getting permission to use what they wanted than they had for VC.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 05:59am

I find the retro hip hop to be fucking hilarious. It Was A Good Day is on permanent rotation, along with 99 Problems. Many of the stations were disappointing, though.

Darth Quorthon · Post by **Darth Quorthon** » 2006-05-21 06:18am

I thought they both did a pretty good job of capturing the "mood", although my general dislike of rap kept me from getting into SA's soundtrack. But honestly, I never really listened to either one that much. The only music station on SA I did put on much was the channel that played Ozzy's "Hellraiser" (Radio-X, the "Alternative Station"). My favorite, though was the talk radio channel, WCTR. That was funny. However, since I played the PC (not politically correct) version, I used the "MP3 Player" option to play my own music. I always chuckled at the image of two hard-core "gangstas" driving down the road to a drive-by while Rush's "Subdivisions" played on the stereo. At any rate, I didn't let the music bother me from enjoying the game, and by the way, James Woods was great in that one.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-05-21 06:35am

I liked Rise FM from the original GTA3 a lot. But I think the best one by far is the Arabic/Indian radio station in Liberty City Stories.

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2006-05-21 07:12am

I loved the SA soundtrack! I don't know the names of most of the songs because I am not a music buff by any stretch of the imagination, but I really liked the funky soundtracks and the tune that comes on in the Casino was really catchy.

And nothin' but a G thing is such a great song, one of my favourite rap tunes of all time!

NeoGoomba · Post by **NeoGoomba** » 2006-05-21 09:34am

In GTA III I loved KChat listening to Lazlo. That stuff was so great I got the MP3 of the entire hour and a half talk show.

Vice City was great (I loved the hispanic music for the boat missions), yet it was missing out on one key song...Smooth Criminal. Sure, we can have Billie Jean, but goddammit, in a game where I'm a friggen thug in an expensive suit, you play Smooth Criminal

I remember enjoying the San Andreas soundtrack, but that game was so long I didn't bother to finish it, and its been months since I played it, so I cant remember specifics

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-05-21 09:40am

I thought GTA3's was pretty good, myself. Well put-together anyways, I don't think they intended much of it for serious listening.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2006-05-21 09:52am

I couldn't stand any of the stations other than Radio X, K-DST, K-ROSE and that NPR-ish station. Rap is the one thing that I am NOT a fan of; I couldn't stand Radio Los Santos, had to change it whenever I got in a car with that station on.

What's wrong with K-ROSE, though? It had "I Love a Rainy Night", an eminently hummable tune.

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-05-21 11:54am

I thought the music on SA was great, I've since downloaded a lot of the songs. 'Welcome to the Jungle/Guns n Roses' was, for me, the song for the whole game; there's really nothing quite like that song blaring out as you dodge through a busy city in a hotrod, pursued by police and helicopters.

I tended to listen to X and Dust, and I rarely flipped to something else, so if the other tracks sucked I wouldn't really know, but then I don't like most of the other music genres available anyway.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-05-21 12:20pm

Are you kidding? The music in GTA:SA is one of the best things about it, IMO. Especially Bounce FM. I'm sorry, but Kool and the Gang, Rick James, Dazz Band, etc. are neither rap nor hip-hop, and anyone who puts them in that category is a musical cretin.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-05-21 12:42pm

2000AD wrote:GTA 3: APart from Flashback there wasn't a single song i recognised. And they were a bit crap.

It should be noted that in GTA3, the music was pretty much all original. It wasn't until VC that they started to liscense music.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2006-05-21 01:25pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:Are you kidding? The music in GTA:SA is one of the best things about it, IMO. Especially Bounce FM. I'm sorry, but Kool and the Gang, Rick James, Dazz Band, etc. are neither rap nor hip-hop, and anyone who puts them in that category is a musical cretin.

I enjoyed Master Sounds, myself.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-05-21 01:52pm

Hotfoot wrote:It should be noted that in GTA3, the music was pretty much all original. It wasn't until VC that they started to liscense music.

The irony is that GTAIII had Flashback playing the soundtrack from Scarface, and not one of those songs appeared in GTA:VC despite the whole game being based roughly around the movie. But VC wins simply because a) I'm an '80s child, b) '80s > other decades.

But then SA never really appealed. VC is still my fave GTA game after III and the very first game.

Big Orange · Post by **Big Orange** » 2006-05-21 02:33pm

Originally Posted by Darth Quorthon:
At any rate, I didn't let the music bother me from enjoying the game, and by the way, James Woods was great in that one.

I thought James Woods was great as well; I'm not really trashing San Andreas as a game, I think it's excellent (another good voice actor that I liked was the recently departed Chris Penn - he made his crooked cop character so vile and nasty) it's only the music I was genuinely disappointed with.

Originally Posted by Admiral Valdemar:
But then SA never really appealed. VC is still my fave GTA game after III and the very first game.

I actually preffered San Andreas to Vice City, although where the music selection is concerned Vice City blows San Andreas out of the water (although in turn, San Andreas trumps GTA: III on the music front).

I thought San Andreas was more gritty and a lot less cheesy than Vice City, plus there was a whole state to explore, with three different cities seperated by miles upon miles of suprisingly realistic looking woodland, deserts and Red Neck farmland. It was not all bangin n' da hood.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-05-21 03:33pm

GTA SA had a great set of music. Of course it was my music. I listened to MP3s solely while playing.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2006-05-21 04:02pm

San Andreas was about capping gangsta's in the hood. Gangsta Rap is a fucking requirement! Beacuse you play a gangsta! HELLO! McFLY!

Big Orange · Post by **Big Orange** » 2006-05-21 04:45pm

Originally Posted by Col. Crackpot:
San Andreas was about capping gangsta's in the hood. Gangsta Rap is a fucking requirement! Beacuse you play a gangsta! HELLO! McFLY!

Yes, I've tolerate gangsta rap if it's regulated to one to two radio stations, but what I'm mostly complaining about is that the music selection for SF-UR, CSR, Bounce-FM and K-Jah was mostly poor. If I had it my way I would've ditched CSR, Bounce-FM (possibly K-Jah) and then heavily restructure SF-UR.

Master Sounds was not awful but sounded a little out of place. K-Rose was silly, but fitted in with the provincial setting outside the cities. And although K-DST and Radio-X were solid there were still glaring omissions in their music selections (Radio-X could've played a few more high profile tracks from the late 80s and early 90s).

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-05-21 05:59pm

Guys, the soundtrack had Living Color on it. That is all that needs to be said.

Now, I just need to strap on my gats and park my buick on some foo's lawn before I roll up and blast him.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2006-05-22 09:12am

SA was a good game. It was great. But suffered due to its storyline based in some gangsta hood bitches. I'd have liked it better if they simply repackaged VC and made it bigger and better.

WyrdNyrd · Post by **WyrdNyrd** » 2006-05-22 09:31am

Since we've veered off discussing the music of SA, and onto the game itself (well, we have now!) let me just say that I enjoyed VC more. VC was an amazing experience that sank into my soul in a way that no other game ever has. I really felt like this was my town.

I could get over my initial dislike for the gangsta setting of SA, but in the end, I, too, simply got bored of the long storyline of SA, and just gave up.

SA was too damned big. I was initially excited by the idea of so much space to explore, but by the time the third city opened up, I was thinking "Oh fuck, yet another street-plan to memorise, and yet another wide expanse of wilderness to drive through for hours every mission. Fuck this shit, I'm playing something else."

Oh, and I also preferred the VC soundtrack. I'm just too whitebread to appreciate 90's rap. So sue me.

Big Orange · Post by **Big Orange** » 2006-05-22 01:34pm

Originally Posted by WyrdNyrd:
SA was too damned big. I was initially excited by the idea of so much space to explore, but by the time the third city opened up, I was thinking "Oh fuck, yet another street-plan to memorise, and yet another wide expanse of wilderness to drive through for hours every mission. Fuck this shit, I'm playing something else."

I thought San Andreas was a much better game than Vice City, I cared about the characters more and I thought the map was the right size.

I do play San Andreas more often than I played Vice City, but I do agree that with the next GTA game they should go back to mafia setting of the previous games with licensed music that has a more broader appeal than gangster rap.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-05-22 07:59pm

WyrdNyrd wrote:Since we've veered off discussing the music of SA, and onto the game itself (well, we have now!) let me just say that I enjoyed VC more. VC was an amazing experience that sank into my soul in a way that no other game ever has. I really felt like this was my town.

I could get over my initial dislike for the gangsta setting of SA, but in the end, I, too, simply got bored of the long storyline of SA, and just gave up.

SA was too damned big. I was initially excited by the idea of so much space to explore, but by the time the third city opened up, I was thinking "Oh fuck, yet another street-plan to memorise, and yet another wide expanse of wilderness to drive through for hours every mission. Fuck this shit, I'm playing something else."

Oh, and I also preferred the VC soundtrack. I'm just too whitebread to appreciate 90's rap. So sue me.

Did you utilize the map and waypoint function? It made getting from A to B a hell of a lot easier.

Jack Bauer · Post by **Jack Bauer** » 2006-05-22 08:05pm

Shroom Man 777 wrote:SA was a good game. It was great. But suffered due to its storyline based in some gangsta hood bitches. I'd have liked it better if they simply repackaged VC and made it bigger and better.

Because Tommy Vercetti beating a hooker to death with a baseball bat after he fucked her is so much classier.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2006-05-22 08:11pm

Alyeska wrote:Did you utilize the map and waypoint function? It made getting from A to B a hell of a lot easier.

Yes. Until I could cruise in a plane, waypoints were what made the whole thing work.

As for the size issue, it was a lot of fun the first time through, and is still fun to cruise around from time to time. But on a second playthrough I did get rather impatient when I had to do the "San Fierro to Angel Pine back to San Fierro" type missions.

But nothing beats jacking a Learjet, flying it wear you want to go, and then just ditching it to crash in the middle of wherever you're going while you parachute down safely.