GTA San Andreas Had a Disappointing Soundtrack...

[SAMAS]

You know, I put many, many hours into GTA:VC, and never saw this oft-reported scene where Vercetti kills the hooker. What mission is that on?

Or are people simply talking about the general "kill passing pedestrians and take their money" action?

That's what everyone is talking about. In both games, the player is allowed to kill a hooker after she's done to get his money back. In VC, I can picture Vercetti doing that. I just can't imagine CJ doing it, so there's a disconnect between the character in the cutscenes and the character the player controls.

Welcome to open-ended gameplay.

Seriously, though. I suppose there was the problem with the fact that they tried to make CJ more like a character in the 'Hood movies that SA is based off of, rather than the amoral thugs of the previous games.

If you check out Boyz n da Hood, Juice, Baby Boy(featuring Omar Gooding of all people being thuggish) Meanace II Society, etc... You see that these protagonist are rarely as bad as the GTA games let you be.

[CDiehl]

Anyone else think that GTA as a MMORPG would be like the best thing ever? Or is this already in the works?

It probably would. As I wrote my last post, I was thinking that what I was describing would work much better in an MMO, with the PC's forming gangs and fighting each other to get control of different cities, which could each be a different server. A GTA-style MMO would be a change of pace for MMO's.

[Stark]

Until I got a rocket launcher and killed dozens of people driving down the road, then escaped to the pay n spray. Playerkilling would never be so easy!

[Big Orange]

Originally Posted by RedImperator:
Yeah, but everybody hates the OG Loc missions anyway.

I thought the OG Loc missions were not too bad, even though OG Loc was a pretty annoying and obnoxious character. I liked it when you dumped that sleazy rap manager into the drink, even though the girl with her most likely drowned as well.

I have nothing really to complain about San Andreas as a game in terms of characters, setting and missions for the most part (and many of it's problems were inherited from GTA III and Vice City anyway; primarily the irrational AI displayed by NPC drivers and pedestrians).

But I do agree that Carl Johnson is not too much of anti-hero and does not seem sociopathic like Tommy Vercetti was. Carl Johnson in the cut scenes seems to be a relatively mild mannered honest person who is rather naive and mostly gets pushed around by other people. He's no wise guy like Tommy.

With Tommy Vercetti you could see him go on psychotic rampage raping and killing hundreds of innocent people and laughing manically while he's doing it. He's like Ted Bundy. While playing as Carl, however, I am far less inclined to kill innocent people (except by accident) and I mostly only kill people who had it coming to them (like gang members or crooked cops).

Anyway, what do you blokes think of my own alternate music selection for San Andreas?

[Pezzoni]

I think there is a point where 'bigger is better' no longer applies, for me anyway. In a game like SA, where the core playability factor is not changed over time, it just gets repetitive reasonably quickly. When I got to a point where I got stuck, rather than try and get round it, I just gave up because I'd had enough, and there were other games out there to play. For me, long games just don't really appeal; I don't go 'Wow 10 discs! Thats 5 gazillion hours of play!' when the next Final Fantasy is released.

Bigger is better in an already good game, but there needs to be sufficient variation to keep things interesting. Zelda: Ocarina of Time did this well. It was a vast game, but there was always somthing new waiting for you at some point: The 1/3 part of the game had you moving forward seven years in time, and gave you an entire new set of weaponry and items to collect and use, and all of the dungeons were very different, both in the puzzles they offered, and the general theme.

Big games can work well, but a lot of work and imagination needs to be put into them. In SA, I started getting bored towards the half-way point. The missions were essentially more of the same. I still finished, and enjoyed it immensely though, if only due to the awesome missions taht occasionally popped up (Area 52, for example )

[Big Orange]

I felt San Andreas was big and long enough, without being boring (my opnion) plus there are many, many other things to do besides the main missions. You could eat at fast food joints, do pimpin missions or go out with a girlfriend.

And there is a lot of attention to detail added to the three main cities and wilderness inbetween - for example the pedestrians match the territory (ie inbred hicks in the countryside, Sharon Stone look-a-likes in the "upmarket" areas of Los Santos and Elvis impersonators in Las Ventura).

San Andreas is a great, great game but the soundtrack mostly left me cold (even though the music was solid in places).