With its novelty gone, GTA: San Andreas is a goulash of gameplay elements done much better elsewhere.
Then I saw GTA III on PS2, and admittedly, I was hooked. It was a lot of fun simply walking the streets of this faux New York, terrorizing pedestrians by running over them and throwing grenades into crowds, then running from the cops. The radio stations were entertaining, especially the station with the Scarface music, the talk-radio station, and the hilarious commecials. I didn't care all that much about the missions, the story, or the characters, but it was a unique experience - Sim Criminal. Vice City came out and I liked that game, although not as much as GTA3, which by then had been sitting unused on my shelf for about 9 months; I have many of my favorite songs from the Vice City radio stations on my HD and iPod. But I also noticed that once I'd played through the main story on both games,I never really wanted to play either one again, even though I never completed all the side missions, this from a guy who's played through most of the FF and Zelda games multiple times. The novelty of free play- which for me was the big appeal - was wearing thin, the cities were looking increasingly fake, and the games were looking more like minigames crudely patched together rather than seamlessly integrated into the game as in Zelda. I didn't enjoy the fetch quests or especially the races at all. I felt that non-linear gameplay was highly overrated, and I itched for real challenges and enemies.
But still, I thought GTA: San Andreas would be fun - the idea of a whole "state" with three cities and vast expanses of desert, with real freeways in it was intriguing, and it was nice to see a game set in the western US rather than the east, so I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, I just wasn't interested in the game after 20 hours. I didn't really care about the story or the characters, I thought the character enhancement and costumes were just tedious, the missions the same thing over and over again, and better done in other games, the soundtrack was lame, and the gameplay, when stripped of the element of novelty, just sucks. I ended up selling the game before I even left Los Santos (Rockstar's off-label version of Los Angeles), and I now have the same opinion of the series that I did of the PS1-era games.
To begin with, the Nintendo 64 visuals. Admittedly, the low level of detail is a necessary sacrifice for size in this generation of games, and I don't expect Soul Calibur-quality character models in this game. The designers did do a good job on the color and lighting effects - Los Santos looks as smoggy as the city which inspired it. The game captures the ambience of cities west of the Mississippi - miles of Interstate highway and cloverleaf interchanges, no mass transit lines, and interstate freight railroads rather than passenger lines. That doesn't change the fact that the textures are muddy, and the buildings are flat, with their windows and storefronts looking painted onto the polygons. The character models are looking ugly and unconvincing now.
The sound was also a letdown. Good sound enhances the enjoyment of the game. For me, it was the radio stations that really made the sound in GTA - and kept me playing longer than I would normally have. Despite the fact that Rockstar hires mid-level celebrities for voice-overs, I've always felt that the voice-acting in GTA is never more than mediocre, with the delivery rather flat and sounding as if the actors were bored and doing the games as a little side-job, so the voice acting isn't really all that big a deal here. The radio stations were disappointing in comparison with the ambient 80's sounds of Vice City, which had the best soundtrack. I'm just not into hip-hop or salsa. I skipped past those stations. I like country and rock-and-roll, but most of the country selections were really old bargain-bin selections. Where were some real 90's country like Alabama, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, or at least old-schoolers like Hank, Jr. or Johnny Cash? Where were the hilarious, over-the-top talk radio and commercials?
A better soundtrack might have kept my interest up a little longer.
But the biggest problem is that I'm just bored with the gameplay. It just plain flat-out sucks. The "edgy adultness" never was a big deal to someone raised on Mortal Kombat. The humor is puerile and juvenile. What, I ask, is the big deal about the F-word in a video game? You can hear it in any R-rated movie. I work with people who use the F-word to describe everything from their co-workers to their McDonald's Big Macs, and I find it rather disgusting and childish. Heck, I heard the F-word all the time on the playground in second grade. Rocking cars and bored sexual moans are only interesting to little kids and aging virgins. I just don't care about beating up or picking up prostitutes anymore. Rockstar added a lot of character attributes and customization options, but these are more of a pain in the butt than anything. The missions, which were only OK to begin with, are stale now. If I want to race, I'll pick up GT. If I want stealth, I'll play Metal Gear Solid. If I want rhythm and dance, I'd play Dance Dance Revolution. And Dragon Quest VIII provides a more vibrant and interesting world to explore with more rewarding quests. In short, this is a goulash of gaming - a tasteless hash of gameplay elements done much better elsewhere. Maybe the PS3 incarnation will change my mind the way GTA3 did. Maybe we'll see a Texas-and-Oklahoma midwestern setting that is actually a fresh change from gangsta culture. Maybe Rockstar will come up with more inspired missions (right now, every game Rockstar makes, even non-GTA games, looks pretty much the same.) But for now, I just don't care about GTA anymore.