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Rating: Hello boys and girls, this is my first review, so I hope you appreciate it!
The title in question, I think most of you know it and have played it on a PS2 or a PC, or have at least heard it mentioned by some friend and/or magazines, websites, parodies, etc...
But before talking about the so-called game, a bit of history!
The Grand Theft Auto saga or "GTA" was originally conceived as a project for Nintendo 64. The game was supposed to be based on various missions to save the world in an open and free environment, but the project was discarded and later revived with the title "Body Harvest".
DMA Design, creators of "Lemmings", decided to focus on a game with a criminal as the protagonist, but of course, the Nintendo console was very strict regarding this type of video game, so development took place on the PlayStation and later on Windows.
In 1997, Grand Theft Auto was released and immediately attracted a lot of controversy due to its deliberately provocative advertising to boost sales. Needless to say, all the media fuss surrounding the series only served to make the game more known and sell many copies.
The success was enormous, so much so that a DLC set in London in the 60s, titled London 1969, and on PC London 1961, was later released.
In 1999, its sequel, GTA 2, was released, improving the predecessor’s formula in terms of gameplay but set in one city, Anywhere City. Again, criticism rained down furiously.
The early chapters are in 2D with a bird's-eye view. There was no plot because everything was composed of missions to be carried out for various bosses, obviously parodies of mafia gangsters or two-bit criminals. Even from these two rudimentary chapters, all the elements that would make GTA a saga that would enter the collective imagination were evident: police, goofing around, parody of America and the American dream, etc...
But the big change came in 2001 when GTA 3 was released, a historic game not only for the saga but for all video games in general.
For the first time, we have a 3D map to explore, a hint of a storyline, many secondary characters including Sicilian mobsters, Yakuza, Chinese triads, and corrupt entrepreneurs.
The protagonist was mute and never spoke, but from Vice City onwards, all protagonists would speak. Claude Speed was the player himself enjoying stepping out of an ordinary and peaceful world to wreak havoc in the city.
A chapter with some development difficulties due to the 9/11 attacks and, precisely for this reason, the release was delayed, removing bomb-related missions, clipping the wings of the Dodo, the only plane available (and unmanageable at that), and a couple of other things.
GTA 3 remains a landmark in video game history for introducing the concept of "open world", so much so that it generated several clones over the years.
A year later, Vice City was released, improving the predecessor's formula by introducing many secondary missions and a cooler city in a Miami Vice style.
A charismatic protagonist, lots of things to do, and a great soundtrack make this the most loved title of the saga, almost on par with San Andreas, which we will now review.
Released in 2004, San Andreas amazed everyone with its size, storyline, well-defined characters, and variety of locations.
Starting with the storyline: Carl Johnson is an African American who moved to Liberty City to forget his past as a gangsta with the Grove Street Family, a street gang in Los Santos in the state of San Andreas.
Returning home to greet his family, he discovers his mother has died due to an attack by the rival gang, the Ballas. CJ, therefore, decides to return to his gang and reclaim the lost ground.
Gradually, though, everything goes downhill due to a series of events, including two corrupt police officers who constantly frame the poor CJ (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn-Eddy the Crazy) and much more that I won't mention to avoid spoilers.
The storyline starts off linear but then intersects with various missions and events before arriving at a happy ending.
There are loads of missions and they are varied (apparently there are more than 100) and just the main story will take up a lot of your time. There are many pastimes, like stadium races, searching for horseshoes and shells scattered around the map, many vehicles including airliners and even a rare terramare hovercraft.
The game is structured like an RPG. Fat, muscles, sex appeal, respect, etc... are stats that increase or decrease depending on the case. If you don't eat for a period, you will lose energy and fat; if you go to the gym, you'll build muscle; if you swim a lot underwater, you’ll improve your apnea; if you often go out with your girlfriends, you'll improve the strength of your "piston" and so on.
Additionally, you can buy houses scattered throughout the state and engage in video betting or play poker... damn, you'll ruin your life!
San Andreas is perhaps the most explorable GTA in terms of interiors, as it includes pizzerias, fast-food restaurants, discount stores, weapon shops, casinos, semi-accessible locations via bugs like Area 69, your houses, some mission locations, and police stations.
The cheats are numerous and allow you to fly with a car, increase money, become muscular, perform super jumps, and punch like Chuck Norris, meaning you’ll kill half the city with a single move.
Some CURIOSITIES:
-on PC the game is moddable, meaning you can add vehicles, locations, interiors, skins, and modify the graphics to make it more realistic, etc...;
-there are many secondary characters from past GTAs: a mute and calm Claude Speed racing in illegal races, his future enemy and "big woman" Catalina, here a crazy maniac and Claude’s girlfriend, the musical manager Kent Paul who now manages the indie singer Maccer, the lawyer Ken Rosenberg who now has problems with the mafia from GTA 3, and the two mechanics Jethro and Dwayne;
-the K-DST DJ, Tommy the Nightmare, is voiced by Axl Rose;
-the game is also famous for its endless urban legends like the chainsaw killer in the Panopticon, Bigfoot in the Back o' Beyond woods, the ghostly semi-destroyed and unrepairable "Glendale" cars in the desert and forest said to move on their own (but that was a bug), the Man in Black whispering X-files phrases like "they are coming!", Area 69, suicide photographers, the ghost lake, and the Epsilon Program;
-the Epsilon Program is the source of one of the game's most absurd aspects.
It is a parody of Scientology, but this mystery has not been denied by the developers. On the contrary, it has been enriched to the point that people really believed it, wasting time performing absurd tasks like looking for a red car with a dent with a pedestrian dressed in blue and taking it WITHOUT DENTING IT to a specific location.
Furthermore, in GTA 5 the Epsilon became a reality, with Chris Formage appearing before you when you die for the first time in GTA Online!
-if you use the jetpack in the Ganton gym and go up to a dark corner on your left, you'll enter the "cut" part of the game, consisting of unused interiors or areas used for cutscenes, like the Doherty garage.
If you haven't played this game yet and have a good PC or a PS2, I highly recommend trying it!
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