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camelliaSonata's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
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| [September 27, 2011 01:42:04 PM]
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As I play GTA:SA for what will hopefully be the final time, I keep find myself being struck by the strange juxtapositions of a "normal" life and violent gang warfare. CJ goes to get fast food... and ends up participating in a drive-by shooting. He goes to play dominoes with his friends... and ends up at a black-market firearms dealer, shooting at a car with his pistol held sideways. He gets sent to kill some members of a rival gang called Ballas.... and ends up buying new clothes, because his fellow gang members are annoyed that he doesn't wear green like the rest of them. The mixing of these everyday and violent situations reinforces the fact that this _is_ CJ's life, that killing and stealing cars is just as normal as buying a pizza to him.
I still can't get into the game. The missions seem randomly assigned, without a clear story thread linking them. I'm still disturbed by the ability to kill random prostitutes and steal police cars, even though I choose not to do these things. Ultimately, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas doesn't appeal to me enough for me to keep playing.
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| [September 25, 2011 01:20:35 AM]
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After lots of driving practice to get used to the controls, I played GTA:SA again. Although it remained unenjoyable, this time I could pay more attention to the game and its characters. It struck me that even though the player can make him do horrible things, CJ isn't a bad person in-game. He cares strongly for his friends and family, and wants to figure out what happened to his mother and regain his respect in his neighborhood. While on the surface he is a most stereotypical gangsta, he does seem to have another dimension.
The other characters, though, mostly seem to be walking stereotypes with little dimension. Though they have distinct personalities - Smoke is calm and tends to sound almost philosophical, while Sweet is the opposite of his name - there's nothing really behind them. They seem to exist to give CJ missions and characters to interact with. I'd be happy if they became more fully fleshed-out characters later in the game.
The last time I played, the scene that stuck with me most was during gameplay, when I had to run down the cashier at a pizza place to stop him from killing CJ and Sweet with a shotgun. This time, however, the scene I remember most clearly is a cutscene of CJ and the other gang members laughing and talking in the middle of the night, trying to decide which fast-food place to go to. Even though their food run quickly turns into a drive-by shooting, it is this scene of humanity that made the characters just a bit more three-dimensional and gave me a bit of hope for the game.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Sep 25th, 2011 at 01:21:32.
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| [September 23, 2011 04:53:21 PM]
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I have always had a problem with killing things in video games that are not actively trying to kill me. Outside of games, I also have a very strong respect for the law. This pretty much entirely explains why I did not enjoy my first time playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The story as I know it so far is interesting. The main character, CJ, returns home from the East Coast after finding out that his mother is dead. On his way home, CJ is unjustly arrested by two corrupt police officers who steal his money, claiming it to be drug money, and then frame him for the murder of a police officer which they are implied to have committed. This starts off CJ's quest to avenge his mother's death, and regain the respect of his friends and family in his hometown. Although I didn't play very far into the game, it stressed the importance of loyalty to one's friends and family.
However, I disliked the gameplay. I found it nearly impossible to not hurt people unnecessarily, which wasn't helped by the rather awkward and twitchy controls. Although I understand that part of what makes the Grand Theft Auto series fun is the gleeful mayhem one can cause, and the game encourages this sort of behavior with a lack of consequences for being caught, it just seems wrong to me as a player to run down pedestrians and steal cars when the NPCs aren't trying to do the same to me.
This entry has been edited 3 times. It was last edited on Sep 23rd, 2011 at 16:56:01.
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