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Jan 19th, 2009 at 15:28:15 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
1-19-09
On my second playthrough of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I figured it would be a good idea to try out some cheats while playing. According to a friend of mine who had played the game in the past, a fun way to use cheats in this title was to combine the all weapons cheat with the super jump cheat. As I began this second play through, I found the cheat codes a bit daunting to input. Perhaps this is an effort on the part of the creators to deter cheating. To my surprise, using this cheat will incur damage when you touch back down on the ground. In a way, I suppose this makes a fair bit of sense in an ironic way. By leaving in fall damage with a cheat like this, you bar the players from being able to truly exploit it.
This, in effect, forced me to learn a way around the damaging qualities of this super jump, teaching myself ways of negating damage upon landing. This typically involved bouncing off of buildings, or finding a way to travel from rooftop to rooftop. This, coupled with the katana, made me begin to feel like I was playing some sort of ninja assassin game instead of San Andreas.
This brings me to an interesting standpoint for San Andreas. The developers have introduced us to this gang-infested and truly violent realm and culture. While playing this game, we the player, are allowed to believe that what we are doing is the right thing to do because the game will reward us for our actions. Killing allows you to acquire money, having sexual intercourse with a prostitute will recover health, killing said prostitute will give you back your money, and the list continues on. However, when it comes to the cheat codes, they are long and difficult to input, with game play drawbacks in some cases. This acts as a strange deterrent for cheating imposed by the developers of the game. This begs the question of whether or not the creators deemed cheating in their game ethical. The cheats in question are within the game, but not without side effects. Naturally, one could go ahead and input all of the cheats, but this would take a decent amount of time and attentiveness to the code’s input. As stated before, this bears some irony to it in the form of a game free from typical societal values and morals with the implication of a moral standing against cheating.
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Jan 18th, 2009 at 17:17:17 - Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PS2) |
1-18-09
Before I began playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a friend of mine pointed out to me that its plot was based on the movie ‘Boys in the Hood.’ He recommended that I watch this movie to fully appreciate San Andreas’ story. Granted, I don’t find myself really having the liberty to slow down and watch this movie. This game does strike me as a gangster movie, as my friend indicated, and I suppose this is one of the charms of the series that I never paid any attention to in past play throughs.
Sand Andreas seems very heavily driven through race and gang relations. This was gathered through playing the first three missions of the game and watching the various cinematics. While anyone will openly admit that gang affiliations, killing, and racial slurs and discrimination are bad, that appears to be the entire premise of San Andreas. We, the player, are immersed into the character’s life and lifestyle. We are introduced to gang culture and the morals that are tied to it. Granted, this appears to be a gradual immersal and not necessarily spontaneous.
You’re released from prison, and your character, CJ, immediately returns to his old gang buddies. As soon as you arrive, you’re almost killed by an old friend, not knowing who your character is. Most moral codes perceive killing as an abhorrent practice. However, in this gang culture, you quickly realize that killing is an accepted practice, and that you must kill or be killed by rival gangs. It doesn’t stop there, as the game begins to relate to you that you can build respect from your rival gang members by placing graffiti over rival gang graffiti and various other illegal activities. This game easily throws the player’s morals to the wind, throwing them into the midst of what is easily a lawless land filled with heavy gang violence.
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