Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | The Completionist

grand theft auto 3 changed the landscape for open world games pretty much for forever the developer rockstar pushed the limits of storytelling and sandbox gameplay to create a unique experience unlike anything else at the time four years after the groundbreaking grand theft auto 3 and just two years after the vice city follow-up came gta san andreas one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed games ever released on the playstation 2. san andreas takes a maximalist approach to game design often rewarding incredibly frustrating and all around satisfying grand theft auto san andreas has the highest highs and the lowest lows of any rockstar game i've completed today sh here we go again hey everyone and welcome back to another brand new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them there are some types of games that always find myself drawn towards completing that seems to be roguelikes jrpgs and open world action games and i know it doesn't make sense who has all the time in the world to dive into these deep meticulously detailed worlds and complete them i mean i i sure as hell don't yet somehow here we go again am i right you might ask yourself what's the draw to complete yet another gta game and you know what it's because the masochism is a part of who i am at this point i know you sickos love seeing me suffer and i love proving that overcome the challenge again and again if i've got to climb mount everest a few times a year just to make you all happy then that's the amount i'm going to eventually die on but rest assured i won't die for long because here comes the brand deal any time my energy is dipping i just drink some good old-fashioned g-fuel and i'll be okay whoa seamless am i right use promo code completionist on checkout g-fuel.com save 30 off your next order on any of their magnificent flavors see that's why i'm flawless j now baby i don't make mistakes unless they were mistakes to begin with g fuel completionist 30 off go let's start the show yes all glory goes to the winner over wake up last one standing please oh so one of the most impressive things about rockstar as a developer and publisher is their consistency the company has a legacy of throwing incredible amounts of resources at their games and the results are pretty undeniable from red dead redemption to bully to the gta series rockstar has more or less set the standard of what we expect out of open world games almost every one of rockstar's legacy titles is legendary and grand theft auto san andreas is no exception when gta 3 was released in 2002 it was a smash hit its follow-up gta vice city came out just one year later and refined the gameplay of gta 3. it placed the action in an entirely new 80s themed setting both games sold millions and millions and millions of copies but rather than rest on their laurels after successfully crafting the blueprint for sandbox games san andreas rockstar made their most ambitious game yet company culture at rockstar this period required everyone to push as hard as they could all the time nobody on the gta team wanted to be seen as less ambitious than anyone else now i'm not saying i endorse this business practice by any means but the results are plain as day san andreas implemented a truly insane amount of new stuff making it one of the best remembered games of its era and it was released only two years after vice city in 2004. san andreas is still the best-selling game ever released on the playstation 2 and it's not even close the gameplay characters and atmosphere combined with the time it came out and shrined this title as a nostalgic masterpiece so having completed both grand theft auto 3 and vice city within the last couple of years i was interested to experience the differences in mechanics that san andreas would provide i did not expect to find that this game features what is far and away the most involved narrative of any gta game i have played in my lifetime our protagonist cj is visiting his home state of san andreas or his mother's funeral in los santos upon his arrival his old friends catch him up to speed on how his former gang has lost most of the territory they once held cj agrees to help the grove street families regain their strength but mixed up in all this is the sinister crash organization corrupt government officials who blackmail cj into helping them keep their dirty deeds in the dark it's a wide-ranging story that deals with crime secrets and most importantly family like the other grand theft auto games and what would eventually come to be known as the gta trilogy setting is a hugely important part of the story so in an interview with the uk's official playstation 2 magazine lead writer dan hauser mentioned that this game's map was five times the size of vice cities loosely based off an amalgamation of locations from the west coast san andreas is composed of los santos a los angeles analog and san fierro and las venturas basically parallels to san francisco and las vegas compared to its predecessors san andreas is sprawling and as the location expands so too does the game play on a surface level the gameplay is the same as what has come before it right san andreas is a third-person action game packed with driving and shooting there are lots of side missions and activities to engage in besides the main story missions that propel the plot forward the core of san andreas might be its narrative but the real draw the thing that makes this game so beloved is its evolution of the sandbox style gameplay established in gta 3. now i've been completing the playstation 2 classic version that's on the playstation 4. and i've been working on this way before the disastrous definitive edition was even announced and even though it's still an 18 year old game with trophies added the gameplay is still incredibly experimental and complex for its time now to be clear and i cannot stress this enough i am not a particularly huge fan of the gta games i found elements about them that i enjoy but honestly i think actually playing them is kind of rough i way prefer the red dead redemption series when i did complete grand theft auto 3 and by city i had a few hiccups shout outs to those awful ambulance missions in gta 3 and the truly abysmal experience of maxing out the criminal rating in vice city but san andreas has many more features and gameplay elements crammed into it that added so much more grinding to this mess so there is the usual 100 completion moniker in this game and trophy lists complicating things however is this game's aim to reach a level of immersion that was almost unheard of at the time players can customize cj's appearance with cosmetic touches like tattoos facial hair and various accessories however cj's appearance is also changed by how you play the game if you ride bikes everywhere go for a quick dip in the bay and or go to the gym to train you keep cj fit he becomes lean and muscular if you chow down on only full racks from well-stacked pizza company every single day he will get that rockstar committed so hard to these gameplay elements that completion is in fact affected for better and for worse rockstar also kept up the tradition of pulling up incredible hollywood talent to tie the entire package together if you thought the voice cast of gta 3 was crazy san andreas goes all in we've got samuel jackson iced tea david cross and rockstar even showcased underground la rappers as voice talent the stellar voice talent on display contributes to the atmosphere and makes san andreas feel alive the voice acting combined with the writing helped me grow attached to all the side characters in ways i did not expect more so than the silent protagonists of gta 3 or the broader caricatures of vice city it helps that this game features side stories and missions that are far more developed than previous entries and yes it wouldn't be grand theft auto without music and radio stations the soundtrack is livelier than ever and when i was driving around i was reminded of cruising down pch and blasting my own music i've grown to expect killer radio stations and songs from gta and san andreas will pull even the layman in with its variety everything from billy idol to boys to men perfectly evokes a place in time and that time is the 90s on the best coast baby now the music might not be as completely full of bangers as the vice city soundtrack had but it's still a great mix of funk pop gangsta rap and hip hop that laid the groundwork for the next generation of grand theft auto games on an aesthetic level it is impossible not to be impressed this game is packed with all kinds of diversity on like basically every conceivable level the three main cities are almost completely distinct from each other in a great way i even appreciated how spread out all the main locations are at least at first i also love how the cast has a real slice of life feeling to it san andreas really blew me away with its presentation which went a really really long way towards making the world feel believable this game is hands down the most immersive gta of its time and the technical leaps from gta 3 to this game are astounding but all that immersion all of that customization all that new stuff to do in this brand new sprawling map comes with a price it might not surprise you but completing gta san andreas is more time consuming and significantly less enjoyable than completing either gta 3 or gta vice city [Music] considering how close in the timeline san andreas is to the other early 3d gta games i don't think i'm out of line to compare the three to each other everyone has their preferences but it's difficult to argue that the mechanics and gameplay of san andreas far outclassed the previous two titles at first completing san andreas feels almost liberating as there are dozens of small yet meaningful changes to the core gameplay that really makes san andreas stand out but before we get into the weeds here i just have to say there is no way in hell i am going to be able to touch on everything that everyone loves about this title rockstar deliberately made this game to give players the freedom of choice at essentially any moment it is simply too large to discuss every single little grain of detail so i've opted for sort of a helicopter approach here i'm gonna dip in and out of specificity yes there is going to be stuff i miss in this video and please please please shout me out in the comments about side missions great characters anything you loved doing in this game that i did not touch on because i truly believe this game's experience is for those who want to experience it play the game you want to play with in this game and i would love to hear your favorite memories of why this game is so iconic to you especially since i did not experience it during the height of its popularity i want to know how it made you feel at the time and what memories you created feed me your delicious nostalgia people anyways obviously these games play similarly to each other but san andreas adds so much to the main formula that i did not realize i was missing there are many quality of life improvements that are streets ahead of the other games the improvements to camera controls alone are massive i cannot stress that enough combined with the waypointing i had a much easier time finding where i was supposed to go at any given moment not to mention finding out who was shooting me much faster outside of quality of life changes there are also brand new mechanics to master take for example stealth it's not perfect by any means but it is a nice addition that is executed surprisingly well all things considered it feels like a big risk for rockstar to have added stealth missions into the game but crouching and prowling up on a guy and stabbing them in the neck feels really visceral and violent and fun i have a problem considering that this game reuses so many mechanics from the previous entries i found the change of pace extremely refreshing in fact almost every new mechanic introduced in san andreas stands out to me the bike riding controls really well with shockingly good physics and aside from being nearly indestructible cj controls motorcycles pretty accurately being able to customize cj's appearance to the degree you're able to is very awesome it's made even more awesome seeing that customization during cut scenes my city did give players a small taste of customization but san andreas really leans into this there are even car modifications which i didn't experiment with because it would only increase the already high likelihood of crashing into but hey it's cool that it's here because you know for fast and furious reasons i guess family other game changing mechanics introduced here are home invasions and gang wars wow what a fun sentence i just said these make perfect sense in the crime crazy world of gta gang wars are available after a certain story mission and tie back into the theme of making the grove street family gangs powerful again to initiate a gang war i had to essentially stir the hornet's nest in enemy territory by icing three rival gang members there's even a little bit of strategy of finding the sweet spot of starting a gang war without pissing off too many cops and after doing so waves of gang members appear and surviving three waves tips the territory to the grove street family's side so at first i found these turf takeovers long and tedious especially because if you don't stay on top of things you can actually lose territory that you've already won which can i just say is a massive headache because they'll be on opposite sides of town and it starts to feel like zero progress is being made but after some time i found myself having fun and appreciating the shake up in mechanics thank god there are plenty of armor health and ammo pickups during these battles though because things spike significantly in the third wave weirdly the gang wars don't contribute to 100 completion but come on i'm the completionist y'all know that san andreas taught me green is my territory so i had to ensure the map was green as the emerald city baby let's go but this is where my main gripes about san andreas come to bear okay so every gta game has a 100 in-game menu completion meter in san andreas percentages are filled up by finishing story missions dozens of them everything from covert murder missions to armed robbery to drive-by shootings in a car full of homies almost every single thing breaks down into fractions of tenths of a percentage point that eventually adds up to 100 percent there are also side missions including gunning down rc airplanes and courier tasks where i had to deliver packages to different locations there are racing tournaments to finish in all three cities and the god-awful school challenges on land in water and eve in the sky in packages are out all the random collectibles are in there are 100 graffiti tags to spray in los santos 50 snapshots to take with the camera in san fierro and 50 horseshoes to find in las venturas i'm not sure i feel about the changes from hidden packages as these collectibles feel more like leg work for less reward there are also 50 oysters to find spread out over the entire state which i usually had to go swimming to find them and not to interrupt myself here but the fact that rockstar added swimming to this game is a feat unto itself rockstar put it in the game because being able to swim added even more playability and added just a smidgen more of immersion to the overall world there's even a trophy for making yourself drown perfect rock star style dark humor i did actually find it a little distracting in vice city that you couldn't swim in the ocean so i do appreciate that rockstar added this feature in such a welcome change from the instant death allegedly shark-infested waters so outside of the random collectibles there are properties to obtain and i even had to master all the different fighting styles muay thai kung fu and boxing i had to be careful about how i approached these missions because i couldn't do them unless i was at a certain level of fitness which you know kind of makes sense but also how awesome would it be to be a kung fu master and also like 500 pounds that would just be an immaculate feat to see in typical grand theft auto style achieving 100 completion in san andreas had its ups and definitely had its downs to put it lightly the story missions are inevitable and they have their own set of headaches the infamous follow the train mission is as annoying and as hard as everyone says it is i felt like i was reliving the past trauma of other bs story missions from other gta games from trying to complete just this one mission in grand theft auto san andreas what's really incredible and what made me start to feel actual despair is the amount of stuff to complete in this game that is there just for the sake of it like getting criminal rankings to 1 million for the most part i've always found that rockstar builds and rewards for doing things in their games so that half-assing things doesn't make any sense however in san andreas many activities or side quests or errands or whatever you want to call them don't always contribute to trophies or that in-game completion meter they are there because rockstar thought it'd be fun to include them as art director aaron garbett said during the making of this game there were no restraints if something vaguely fit into the game's world it was in for completionists this is a nightmare san andreas includes a hefty amount of role-playing mechanics there are skill progression bars on cj's mind body and arsenal which is way more involved than just increasing health or armor i had to worry about things like sex appeal or stamina which i could increase or decrease by doing different activities i spent way more time than i needed maxing out certain stats just to say i did it for you know no real reason however going full out on some things does lead to some positive results like dating every available romance option it may be tedious and annoying to do this but at least there are tangible rewards attached to this every woman has some kind of bonus for 100 relationship progress in the form of a unique costume there are also permanent beneficial rewards to keeping the relationship going such as letting cj walk out of the hospital for free and keeping his weapons after dying or getting busted let me tell you trying to date with multiple partners and being weird about it all i would not recommend just ask ramona flowers or scott pilgrim creates a lot of weird gray areas across the board so the formula for how to successfully date to 100 is super tedious and often a fragile balancing act success on a day is dependent on tons of different factors how muscular or how fat cj is at the moment which type of restaurant or eatery each particular woman prefers or not even how fast cj drives when your gal just wants to go for a joyride and as you might expect cj's dates call them on a whim whenever i happen to be in their general location of the game if i haven't seen them in a while compared to how relationships work in other big games that are more modern like persona 5 or hades i appreciated that san andreas at least makes a bit of an effort of making the player participate in an actual date instead of just reading dialogue but at the end of the day i ended up having to do the same few activities with all six women over and over and over again to slowly build up a meter to earn that companion's unique bonus and costume the rewards are sweet but completing each of these relationship tracks does not contribute to 100 completion or add any modicum of enjoyment aside from the one instance where my los santos girlfriend loved to do drive-bys in our dates right by her own house very funny very weird very crazy and that's the craziest part about trying to complete san andreas this is a game that really truly does not give a damn about how the player chooses to move throughout it if you want to spend dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of hours beating high scores in the arcade games or gambling or even playing basketball you can do that if you want to buy every single clothing item because you simply can't decide what you want to wear and you've got that dough that's totally an option even after spending hours grinding away at some dumb task or another because of how awful and herculean completing most tasks in this game felt i started to find it refreshing to move on to the next activity san andreas still has that unique gta tone that makes every little thing feel fun and funny to do once again writer and producer dan hauser commented on how the developers faced a challenge creating this game where they wanted to keep it as open as possible but still deliver a good story so playing through the story actually helped force me to experience a good chunk of stuff i may have passed over otherwise this is the real crux of my problems with san andreas it features a massive three-way split here between trophy requirements for more modern consoles 100 in-game completion and other random stuff that can be completed but doesn't necessarily reward the player in any way shape or form now this is maddening i faced indecision paralysis before but rarely on this scale i felt whiplash between completing things that were hard but absolutely necessary like the air raid mission and stuff that was simply extra but i felt like i had to do like burgling a cumulative ten thousand dollars to get infinite stamina and to be real there are corners of this map that i still feel like i haven't seen even though the game tells me i have there is so much present in this gta that makes everything feel slightly more immersive and helps the game stand out even in the modern day i love that you can shoot out individual tires on cars which is a change from previous gta games these small details add up to making san andreas feel like the most i don't know what to say realistic gta game i've played so far but i am mixed on the end result because eventually after something like i don't know 271 hours worth of gameplay came to realize i can do with a little less fidelity so here's what i mean by that okay so for every little thing i had to do i would eventually have to stop because the game would interrupt me with some random bull let's start with the unique jumps for example where sometimes i would just land in the goddamn ocean whether i succeeded or failed right that means i would lose my bike and i had to swim all the way back to land then i'd have to get something to eat because cj would get hungry and on the way to take care of that if you go inside of a restaurant and eat the bike would despawn now i guess the thing to have done was to go to a garage and save and put the bike in there but that's beside the point either way i have to get a new bike now so i try to find another one and on the way i might get wrecked by some random cop and then right before i get to the freaking bike i'd have to take a phone call from my girlfriend who's somewhere nearby and some of those problems they'd have with me are related to our location so i'd have to go ahead and handle that and i still haven't gotten back to the point where i'm trying the jump again my friends that's just the start mountain bike races that can only be attempted at certain times of day right i had to bike all the way to the start every single time i messed up the shooting range for instance where i could succeed in every single part until the final section where suddenly rng would take the reel and the npc would wake up and go i have god like reflexes and they would just gun me down with their shotgun so i had to start at the very freaking beginning how about this the mission where i had to stop rc helicopters from destroying four beacons scanning the sky with piss-poor camera in every direction to make sure that i would not get destroyed and do not get me started on number eight trucking mission you start off with four stars in a super hilly area with zero momentum surrounded by cops even with the mostly covered railroad track nearby it was downright miraculous that i made it through easily one hour spent on just this last part of an eight part mission that should never have taken that long and what else does grand theft auto have huh what does it need school i guess in the game there is school isn't that great i had to go back to school you might think school side missions easy right no getting gold in the boating flying motorcycling and driving school missions demanded insane timing and grueling precision on every level no room for a single piece of error or mistake here but the absolute biggest thorn in my side for grand theft auto san andreas was the city slicking mission i had to drive the entire city maybe 20 blocks there and back with the usual randomly generated cars and pedestrians without taking any damage under an incredibly incredibly strict time limit sometimes certain things would get counted as damage other times it wouldn't matter but the point is i never knew if i should keep going or it would be better to just restart needless to say my knuckles hurt my forehead hurts and there are a couple of new dents on my desk that weren't there before most of the sh just gave me existential dread why am i doing this what's the motherfu point will it ever end has it been two years or 35 minutes i don't know so a lot of you probably wondering hey is there any more and the answer is yeah there is here we go number one import random cars from across the vastness of the map and bring them all to the same ship area on damage two get first place in the boring ass nascar style races and hope you don't blow up and i know i mentioned it before but dating all the women and finding all the collectibles and of course maxing out my gambling skill pistol skills shotgun skill boating skill car skill flying skill bike skill and that's motorcycle and bicycle skills respectively by the way and i can't forget about the stamina and lung capacity that cj has spending dozens and dozens of hours getting criminal rating 1 million buying all of the properties flying a shitty ass rc copter that explodes easily or runs out of fuel taking snapshots of san fierro for some dumb reason in very precise locations ring collecting challenges some of which took me 30 or more attempts and of course taxi driving fire fighting being a paramedic and straight up pimping i'm exhausted video games am i right okay i know you just read the section header for this section but i promise this makes sense at least it does in my mind there are a million reasons to enjoy playing video games escapism is one i love being able to enjoy a power fantasy or to be entertained by characters i've come to know and love and then there's gta san andreas where i can roleplay a powerful gangster but still have to worry about getting so hungry but i have to stop murdering people so i can grab a quick salad as awesome and evocative as san andreas is there is a perplexing adherence to immersion and realism that ends up being distracting but at least big smoke got his munch on i'll have two number nines a number nine large a number six with extra dip a number seven two number 45s one with cheese and a large soap for a game that seems to promise freedom of choice at every turn there are several missions that cannot be completed until you meet certain physical conditions these hindrances limit the player's freedom to progress the plot sometimes it isn't even the player's fault for example there's the new year's eve glitch which prevents cj from working out and improving his fitness which in turn means i couldn't build any more muscle which ultimately can lead you to being locked out of certain things forever for the most part i loved how massive and sprawling the map was it's varied texture full of hills and valleys and i even stumbled across a ghost town of what i'm assuming is a reference to red dead revolver since this was long before red dead redemption was even released but all those wide open spaces eventually meant that standard means of transportation are vastly inefficient in a game where carjacking is one of the most important and frequent things that you do in the game it is simply the worst way to get around when you are not in the actual city i started to much prefer anything that could fly especially the jetpack which seems to undercut any sort of realism the developers were going for yes i could drive an atv all around the dunes but it's way easier to strap on my jetpack and zoom around to find collectibles and again i want to reiterate i'm impressed and satisfied with the world that rockstar has built props for creating extremely distinct and realistic environments especially for 2000 freaking 4. the developers had teams take thousands of reference photos of fashion architecture and natural environments all in the name of capturing and recreating a california inspired feeling and it hits those feelings for me pretty strongly considering i'm a la native but at the end of the day i think they tried to add too many realistic elements some they are able to pull off but it is just as often annoying as it is immersive rockstar should have stuck with better and less so bigger now okay perhaps i am judging this whole thing a little too harshly after all people playing this game when it first came out weren't thinking about all the stuff that i'm talking about right now they were too busy having their minds absolutely blown away because they could get a cool fade and run the treadmill and when you look at other high profile games that came out in 2004 san andreas totally stands out in its commitment to an engrossing player experience and i imagine gta san andreas was most people's turn on cheats and mess around for a few hours type of game in a year dominated by sequels to huge sci-fi franchises like halo 2 half-life 2. this sequel despite the tongue-in-cheek raunchiness and over-the-top craziness built into the formula feels grounded i can't be mad that san andreas was a massive extra helping of gaming experiences but i cannot say those experiences were universally delightful the entire time i spent almost 300 hours total in san andreas i seriously lost count i fell asleep grinding all the time i got all 34 trophies i did reach 100 in game completion i did every side activity found every collectible maxed out my relationships with every date of a woman in the game and i even lost several years off of my life getting gold in every vehicle school task i don't want to say that i didn't feel rewarded for doing so but that the things that did earn rewards and bonuses kind of felt canceled out by the things that offered all right so as an la native i feel like i can confidently say this even though it's probably not true so everyone at home if you're gonna get mad about this relax i'm just saying it for the analogy los angeles essentially invented the fast food hamburger chain system that we all know today right there are a million variations on the burger on french fries and drinks but it all started here in la obviously there is in and out but there's also this burger chain called tommy's it's like it's like the classic fast food hamburger joint right everything you could possibly want there's this terrible but amazing thing called a chili burger that they have there that you can't help but gorge yourself on completing san andreas feels like ordering the tommy's mega combo and forcing yourself to eat the entire thing by yourself it's admittedly delicious but feels so bad for you by the time you make it through the meal you feel awful there's almost zero redeeming value for eating i mean completing the whole thing and and doing so only makes me resent the stuff that i liked in the first place but at the same time if you're gonna play san andreas i feel like you're missing something from not getting a little taste of everything here on the menu look from a games history perspective san andreas is a must play to see what an open world couldn't look like would be almost 20 years ago is awesome to experience what rockstar thought was interesting at the time is great some of it is genuinely fulfilling and inspiring but there's simply too much my dudes completing grand theft auto san andreas will be fun and then funny and then frustrating and then annoying and then disheartening and then hilarious then exhausting and then sad and yeah for all these reasons i somehow someway give this game its completionist rating of finish it and i simply mean beat the game if you like the story if not have my permission go outside touch some grass you'll love it grass feels good i'm gonna do that right now [Applause] [Music] 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Channel: The Completionist

Views: 380,754

Keywords: GTA, GTA 5, GTA 6, GTA san andreas, grand theft auto, rockstar games, gta trilogy, gta trilogy remastered, gta online, san andreas, gta 5 online, gta san andreas, gta san andreas remastered, g4tv, g4, attack of the show, completionist, gaming, game reviews, gameplay, review, gta san andreas review, gta san andreas gameplay, gta review, gta gameplay, funny, funny moments, playstation, ps5, gta san andreas definitive edition, gta vice city, vice city

Id: LK_J23uar9o

Length: 34min 16sec (2056 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 12 2022