I recently wrote about Need for Speed: Carbon, two times, one an original review, and then another which was a re-review. The reason I had done that is because in one of the courses I am currently taking at North Carolina State University is teaching me a lot about game design, the principals of game making, and basic game level ideas. Well I have already written a basic review about this game, but after playing a few more hours I decided I want to write another review about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The original review I wrote consisted of two parts, a summary of the game, and a section about game play. I decided I want to write a little more in detail this time, and I want to incorporate a new section. I will briefly discuss a summary again, I will talk in a little more detail about the game play and then will discuss some of the brief ideas of the design of the game.
Game Play
First off, for those not familiar with the Grand Theft Auto series or with my previous review, I would like to explain how the game works again. Players are gang members in the story who run through the city completing missions for your gang. Missions can be varied anywhere from stealing a car or items, burning fields of illegal drug plants, capturing headquarters of enemy gangs, or even spray painting bridges and buildings all around the city of San Andreas. There is an excellent variety of missions in the game and no two missions are repeated twice. Players also have the option of not going from mission to mission, and in between objectives can run freely through the city doing whatever they please.
As a player of this game, for many many hours now, I will say that it is very difficult to get bored with this particular game. Players stay extremely amused with the actions and reactions of everyone in the game, and how they all react to your every move. The stories of the game apply to the missions very well, and keep the players very entertained with what is happening. From a narrative standpoint, I was not very interested with being a gang member, trying to complete all of these missions of killing off people and other chaos. That was probably a personal option though, and I do still agree it enhances the effect of the mission’s excitement, making the game impossible to put down. Although this version of Grand Theft Auto doesn’t support online play, there is a lot of social interaction with the built in people in the game world. Every single person in the game world has a different action and reaction to everything you do, and this leads to a variety of different things one can do in free play. Overall the play of the game is extremely entertaining, and doesn’t get dull after a few hours of play like a lot of other video games do.
Design
So enough about the basics of the game, I want to talk a little bit about the game from a designers standpoint. First off, I love how every aspect of the game is different from every other second of game play before it. Creating a game with that much attention to detail takes a lot of work, strategy, and knowledge of programming to create. Putting this much attention into every detail allows players to play freely just as they would in the real world. It takes a very high level of design to be able to design a game like this, and I am very impressed with Rockstar Games™. All sorts of challenges are present in the game, which ties in perfectly with the story of your gang career, which present the player with many opportunities for enjoyment. All of the missions in the game also require the player to be skillful in a huge variety of ways as well, adding more challenge then a typical game would require.
Now all of the social interaction, as mentioned earlier, is not with real humans, but people designed particularly for the game world. All of their actions, emotions, and everything revolve around what the player is currently doing, although they do not show you any attention unless you call it to yourself. I love that aspect of the game and think it is setting a new direction for video games to go in the future.
I have seen many people play the more recent versions of Grand Theft Auto, and more specifically, GTA IV. This has the online, multi-player version that the first games of the series didn’t have, and is a great addition to the game. Players not only have missions they can go through and accomplish, as they follow the story. Players can also now free play by themselves, or with other real human players online. This just allows for more hours and hours of entertainment as one reeks havoc in the cities they tear through. Now I have not made it to the ending of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas yet, but I have seen it done a couple times, and would lastly like to talk about the ending. The story ends when all of your goals and missions have been completed, and you are left in control of the whole cities gang territories, and there is no other objectives left to complete. This alone would probably take 40+ hours of game play. With that aside, players still are left wanting to roam the cities and create chaos just as they would before. The only difference is players are free to venture anywhere they please in the whole map after everywhere has been unlocked. Hours and hours of entertainment can still come after the game is complete, and I think more games should make it a goal to make this happen more often. All in all this is one of the best games I have ever played and give it a 9/10!
add a comment 
|
Hey, Tony writing here again. This time I decided to expand my game analysis to something outside of my usual box, kinda. Instead of doing the typical racing, mainly Need for Speed games, I would like to write a little bit about a new game I just acquired, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. The game is overall pretty terrific, and I would recommend it to pretty much any game player. Just like usual, I will break my summary into two sections, summary and gameplay.
Summary
GTA: San Andreas consist of many aspects of gaming never seen before in the gaming world before the GTA series came about. In GTA: San Andreas players are gangsters who go through the fictional city of San Andreas completing a variety of missions requiring the player to steal items, kill other people and the authorities, and other miscellaneous tasks. The missions get more and more difficult as they go on, and as far as I have gotten in the game, all seem to start taking a lot of time and near perfection to complete.
Game play
The game play of this game was very realistic and left me feel very enthusiastic about continuing to play. All of the missions were so different from one another, I wasn't left bored with the missions, or feeling like everything was very repetitive in the game. These games are always very talked about because of all of the violence they represent and all of the trouble that is caused by them, and I do agree they are very violent games, but when in the appropriate hands, the game is nothing but pure entertainment. The story of the game (being a gang member, taking over the city by doing these missions) is very entertaining if you watch all of the cut scenes and do all of the side missions.
I do also like the multiplayer/online interaction of the game available on other versions (not on the ps2 console I was playing on). So far the game has kept me very interested in doing all of the missions, and the creators of the game have done a great job in making the game good for a variety of people interested in different things. Everything from the weather, time of day, and actions of people are always different so everything is always new in some aspects. The free play is just as good as doing the missions in the game as well, and leads to the game being even more exciting. Their was a very good flow with the story and progression of the game, and overall I would recommend this game to any fan of video games with the appropriate console and give it 9/10!!
add a comment
|
