Hey there everyone it is SpooferJahk again with another Vadim M video production that I am voicing for you all today. It is no secret that Rockstar Games poorly maintains their Steam versions of the Grand Theft Auto games. San Andreas, sadly, is no exception, so let's find out why this version of San Andreas is the most panned one by the community of the game. But before jumping straight into the video, I want to remind you that there exists four different PC versions of San Andreas. The day one release, which is known as 1.0 but let's call it the, “First Edition”. Then there was the second release, where the developers managed to fix some of the old pesky bugs and, most importantly, they completely disabled the infamous Hot Coffee content. And finally, the fourth version is this Steam version, which is the main subject of this video. The saddest thing about this release, Rockstar decided to completely ignore the patched version while making and releasing the Steam version. It means what was already fixed in the second version, remains unfixed in the Steam version till this day. You will see some examples of this later. That's why I decided to split this video into two separate videos. In this video we will compare the Steam version with the retail versions. The second one will have me show you how to downgrade this fubared version to the day one version and make it even better with a few tricks. Without further ado, let's get straight to the comparison. In comparison with the first version, the Steam version received full 16:9 resolution support, so people could select, for instance, 1920x1080 for their screen resolution. However the con of this is that the developers actually broke the aspect ratio. As a result, the picture on Steam release looks kinda squashed in comparison with the patched version. Other than that, they made the subtitles and radio text sizes a little bit smaller. You can perfectly see this feature on the comparison below. Moreover, the Steam version received an exclusive support for the Xinput controllers, like the Xbox 360 pad. Previously you couldn't rotate the camera with this joypad and do other things. Unfortunately, instead of showing the actual Xbox buttons, the game tells you to press, for instance, the JOY1 button and etc to do the action. Here is a fun trick, try to guess what that prompt is for without looking at the button bindings in the options. What's sad is that the developers didn't add rumble support. Sorry lads, your Xbox controller won't vibrate if you crashed your bike into the wall. Furthermore, the game doesn't track the pressure you are giving to the triggers. It means, if you use them for acceleration, you can't make the car drive slower and so on. It is a shame, really, not exactly great for the plug and play joypad experience we are used to with modern PC games. The most interesting thing about the Steam version is, as of now, it is totally DRM free. It means, you can play it offline or send a folder with the game to your friend and they will be able to play it. Neat! Of course, you can't do such things with the retail version unless you use a no DVD crack and what have you. When you launch the Steam version for the first time, the "steering with the mouse" option will be enabled by default. I wonder how many people wanted to disable this as soon as possible? On the bright side, the Steam version at least has two brand new fixes, which retail versions are missing! The first one is, they finally fixed that pesky bug with the disappearing weapon icon while aiming and flying on a jetpack. Secondly, you can't make a disco like effect with some props by switching from a weapon to unarmed and vice versa. I guess these two fixes were number one on their priority list. Also, If you blow up a car, it doesn't shine anymore and is properly colored in the Steam version apart from the day one release. You can perfectly see this feature on the comparison below. Fun fact, this could be the only fix available from the patched version. Furthermore, in comparison with 2.0, the Steam version doesn't check the "IMG archive" file size anymore. It means that if you mod 2.0, it will crash intentionally upon launch. I guess Rockstar had it out for the modding community after the Hot Coffee fiasco. Interesting fact is, the older Steam version had this restriction enabled, but later it was removed as if they realized that we will find a way to break it anyways. I also noticed that the save and load screens were changed a bit, but anyways, it is up to you to say which one is better. We are finally done with so called "pros" so let's get straight to the cons. Trust me, there are lot's of them on display here. The most tragic thing of all these cons, is that the Steam version lost 18 unique music tracks with the list here of what was removed. I also made a playlist so you could listen to these cut songs if you want. The link with it can be found in the description below. You might be wondering, why were they cut? The answer is rather simple, the licenses for these music tracks expired and instead of renewing them, Rockstar felt it was much simpler to just remove them outright. Fun fact, in the retail versions when you had a bad date, the game would play a short clip from "Killing in the Name". Playing "Killing in the Name" Since the license is expired, they swapped this clip with the "successful" date music cue. So if you have a bad date on Steam, it simply plays a very out of place romantic tune. Playing "Successful date music cue" Nice try Rockstar, nice try... The next thing which the Steam version is missing is the "dirty car" fix. In the patched version, there was a chance to spot a clean car on the streets. I bet you have not seen these levels of shininess on the cars! The more you drive it, the dirtier it gets. If the car already has some dirt, you can make it even dirtier. You can easily compare before and after to see the differences. Moreover, the patch made it possible to clean the dirt away from cars by simply respraying them. See, It is clean again! Originally, this feature was completely broken on day one of the game's initial release... as well as on Steam. In these versions every single car is already full of dirt. You can't make it dirtier and you can't clean it. The next thing they did to the Steam version is that they disabled the infamous Hot Coffee content. That is no shock since this content caused a lot of shit for Rockstar, so it was inevitable that they had to remove it. Not only did they disable this feature in the game code, but also cut all of the Hot Coffee models and all of its associated animations from the "IMG" game archives. Sorry lads, no more Hot Coffee in the Steam and patched versions, just in the day one release. Here is another interesting fact, the retail versions run at 25 FPS, while the Steam version runs at around 26. They somehow broke frame time counting so it starts counting frame time too late and thus, the framelimiter locks at a lower FPS than it's supposed to. Here is another, albeit minor difference. The "Numpad 5" key can't be mapped when re-defining controls in the Steam version as well. It remains fixed only in the second edition of the game. As the old news article states, the first Steam update broke save games for some people. This gamebreaking feature made a lot of fans furious, because after the sudden update, they lost their hard earned progress. However the keyword here was "for some" and the truth is, it actually depended on the game region. For instance, originally Steam pushed the 1.01 version with censoring enabled for Germany. It means their old version used the first version's game scripts. Thanks to this, their new updated game didn't accept their old savegames, because their new version uses the second version game scripts now. In short, you can't use a V1 save on V2 scripts and vice versa. Since the rest of the world had a different San Andreas Steam build by the name of 3.0, which used the V2 scripts, the new update didn’t anything for them. In theory, it could affect more regions such as Australia due to their strict censorship, but sadly only know about Germany. h, and yeah, if you still have these old incompatible saves on your hard drive and you want to fix the them, be sure to check the tutorial below. Moreover, all of these articles state that with the same new update, players noticed that the game is missing several resolution options such as 1080p. Fun fact is, as you will see in the future, the old worldwide Steam version had neither 1080p or at least one of the 16:9 resolutions. But anyways, it means this bug was also noticed by Germans along with more regions possibly. Thankfully, with the second "r2" update, 16:9 resolutions were brought back, but gamers waited for it for more than month and sadly, it didn't fix the old save compatibility for affected gamers, which is shame. What is more interesting, the "r2" update didn't bring back 5:4 resolution options, which the first update removed. If you don't know, by having a square monitor, you won't be able to use the 1280x1024 resolution anymore, which was one of the most popular resolutions back then. What I can say? Either the developers don't properly test their shite before releasing it, or they do it quick and dirty. Just deal with it! As a result, the Steam version seems to be the worst version of them all. Not only does it lack the second edition fixes, which have been around for more than a decade, but also is missing a lot of the soundtrack and the ability to mod the game. I am really curious if the other second release fixes were banished to the void like; improved DVD streaming, improved dance timing and what not. What is most important, is that previously the Steam version had a different version known as 3.0, which isn't better or worse than 1.0. It's as if they did not care about releasing a GOOD version for the masses from the very beginning. I am a huge fan of R*, but this version is just a massive dirty mark on the legacy of this legendary game. Shame on you Rockstar, shame on you... If you want to fix the big "S" version, I would recommend you to install the SilentPatch, which doesn't fix everything, but fixes a lot of pesky things. At least, it won't suck so bad and you could enjoy it more than before. But anyways, in my personal opinion, would strongly recommend you to forget about this horrible release and downgrade it to the day one version and make it even better by using some mods and scripts. Not only will this will bring back some newer fixes from the list above, but also add an ability to mod the game and play the beloved SAMP modification.
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