One of the amazing things I've found is that San Andreas is finely tuned in comparison to the previous two games. If you pay close attention then you'll notice the cop ratings tend to go down a bit faster now, and that they aren't quite as aggressive on the first and second levels. Also when you scrape their cars or bump into them, they don't quite as often react (thankfully).
There are subtle changes and tightening up of familiar elements all over the game if you look out for them. Bar the obvious technical difficulties I'm experiencing, the actual game design is top notch. Like a particularly strong Nintendo or Sega game, you can place faith and take for granted that certain aspects are going to be expertly balanced in the player's favour. Clearly a lot of attention has been paid to previous feedback as to where GTA III and Vice City failed.
Secondly, another great example of the freedom and choice in the game is evidenced in the valet side-mission. After a narrative-based mission focused around this job, I immediately went back with my valet uniform and took it up. During the first couple of levels I noticed that various valets were taking up the cars, but I ignored them, expecting if I assassinated the competition the mission would fail. Eventually my patience broke and I decided to nail a couple waiting outside of the hotel. While I did so, they ganged up together and threw comments to 'not mess with valets'. I beat them to a pulp and rather than end this side-mission, the game intelligently fined me 20 seconds a piece for wasting the two guys.
Now, this gameplay mechanic has pros and cons as to whether it's worthwhile dependent on context. For example, if you didn't have much time on the clock, killing the competition would serve no benefit. Whereas since I had a bit of time, this option afforded me the ability to service more cars quickly. At a small price.
Then there was the final valet to take care of...
So I drove my car into the carpark near the hotel and took him out. However, because I'd waited a few valet levels to do so within the side-mission, upon killing him, all the tips from his hardwork became available for me to scoop up from his dead body.
Now do you see the immense amount of detail which even relatively minor aspects such as this have been given?
If you don't assassinate the valets immediately, then you can let them milk their own tips and then kill them off at a latter stage of the side-mission, before snatching all their own takings. How utterly nasty and opportunistic is that?
So... In this one mission, you're given a variety of choices and dilemmas you can choose to either take or pass up on, and I think those moments kind of symbolised what the game has produced successfully up to now.
Apart from that, a special mention must also go to the radio stations again... Although it's been said before, the DJs react to the in-game environment, and from an intertextual standpoint, merge better with the player's situation/context far more effectively than in the previous games. An example of this would be K-Jah West, whose DJ commented on how it was going to be a rainy day and that people should take in their washing, whilst in the countryside I traversed at the time, buckets were pouring down from the skies. Not only that, (potential spoiler): but when the DA had been framed with the drugs in San Fierro during a mission, the DJ for Radio Las Santos, commented on the prosecution being caught with the dope in his car. What this does is effectively tie the narrative of the player's on-going situation to the background detail they saturate themselves inside of when they take a vechile to drive with. Another intuitive aspect of the audio context placement here is also in the game's sense of time. At 8am on the game's clock Playback's DJ commented how it was time to rise for the early morning, and he'd be playing music from Monday through until Sunday.
It's all these details, and how they tie into the player's individual experience which puts this game above previous GTA's in my opinion. San Andreas seems to be much more aware and in touch with our sense of progress, together with a handling on the current narrative scope, no matter how minute or seemingly inconsequential. The personalised integration of this is an intelligent touch, and I feel it's an element which is reiterated both in terms of the choices we have, and the impact those choices make through how they're reflected back at us inside the game.
For me, I find this highly impressive.
Something I find less so, and I feel is beginning to bear down on these carefully thought out elements, are (in my opinion) needless technical troubles sliciing into what is otherwise a cleverly chereographed illusion.
The game deserves better than random unstoppable crashes.
There are subtle changes and tightening up of familiar elements all over the game if you look out for them. Bar the obvious technical difficulties I'm experiencing, the actual game design is top notch. Like a particularly strong Nintendo or Sega game, you can place faith and take for granted that certain aspects are going to be expertly balanced in the player's favour. Clearly a lot of attention has been paid to previous feedback as to where GTA III and Vice City failed.
Secondly, another great example of the freedom and choice in the game is evidenced in the valet side-mission. After a narrative-based mission focused around this job, I immediately went back with my valet uniform and took it up. During the first couple of levels I noticed that various valets were taking up the cars, but I ignored them, expecting if I assassinated the competition the mission would fail. Eventually my patience broke and I decided to nail a couple waiting outside of the hotel. While I did so, they ganged up together and threw comments to 'not mess with valets'. I beat them to a pulp and rather than end this side-mission, the game intelligently fined me 20 seconds a piece for wasting the two guys.
Now, this gameplay mechanic has pros and cons as to whether it's worthwhile dependent on context. For example, if you didn't have much time on the clock, killing the competition would serve no benefit. Whereas since I had a bit of time, this option afforded me the ability to service more cars quickly. At a small price.
Then there was the final valet to take care of...
So I drove my car into the carpark near the hotel and took him out. However, because I'd waited a few valet levels to do so within the side-mission, upon killing him, all the tips from his hardwork became available for me to scoop up from his dead body.
Now do you see the immense amount of detail which even relatively minor aspects such as this have been given?
If you don't assassinate the valets immediately, then you can let them milk their own tips and then kill them off at a latter stage of the side-mission, before snatching all their own takings. How utterly nasty and opportunistic is that?
So... In this one mission, you're given a variety of choices and dilemmas you can choose to either take or pass up on, and I think those moments kind of symbolised what the game has produced successfully up to now.
Apart from that, a special mention must also go to the radio stations again... Although it's been said before, the DJs react to the in-game environment, and from an intertextual standpoint, merge better with the player's situation/context far more effectively than in the previous games. An example of this would be K-Jah West, whose DJ commented on how it was going to be a rainy day and that people should take in their washing, whilst in the countryside I traversed at the time, buckets were pouring down from the skies. Not only that, (potential spoiler): but when the DA had been framed with the drugs in San Fierro during a mission, the DJ for Radio Las Santos, commented on the prosecution being caught with the dope in his car. What this does is effectively tie the narrative of the player's on-going situation to the background detail they saturate themselves inside of when they take a vechile to drive with. Another intuitive aspect of the audio context placement here is also in the game's sense of time. At 8am on the game's clock Playback's DJ commented how it was time to rise for the early morning, and he'd be playing music from Monday through until Sunday.
It's all these details, and how they tie into the player's individual experience which puts this game above previous GTA's in my opinion. San Andreas seems to be much more aware and in touch with our sense of progress, together with a handling on the current narrative scope, no matter how minute or seemingly inconsequential. The personalised integration of this is an intelligent touch, and I feel it's an element which is reiterated both in terms of the choices we have, and the impact those choices make through how they're reflected back at us inside the game.
For me, I find this highly impressive.
Something I find less so, and I feel is beginning to bear down on these carefully thought out elements, are (in my opinion) needless technical troubles sliciing into what is otherwise a cleverly chereographed illusion.
The game deserves better than random unstoppable crashes.
ft:
It was one of those unrepeatable moments, I went in armed just with the camera (rookie error) and tried to use it as a gun. 
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