Wednesday 21 January, 2009

Tonight was my final night of playing San Andreas and this time it was a little different. This time I ended up playing with a couple of friends so it was a different experience altogether. Also this time I decided to not focus on the missions or trying to be morally good, I ran around and killed as many people as possible (which made the game playable). As I have previously stated this is the major problem with the game, the playability rises as the morals decline.

To start off this round of playing I decided to play from my friends save point so I was stacked with weapons and was wearing some ridiculous clothing with an afro. The amount of weapons I had made the game more fun, but took away any of the skill. Anytime a police officer would show up I would just blast them away with the shotgun which was usually one shot kill if you were close enough. After picking up a few prostitutes and killing them for their money I decided that my rampage needed to continue via ambulance (at which point I remembered you could do side missions in the taxis, ambulances, police cars, ect.). This added a whole new level of morality to the game that I forgot about in the previous two playings. Now I was able to be the police officer or the ambulance driver and save people. There was a choice in my hands and I was able to go either way with it without having to lose all of the fun in game play (the taxi mini game reminded me of a poor version of crazy taxi).

Now that this concept is out of the bag the game does seem to have two major options: good and evil. The evil still prevails the game considering you have to be to complete the missions and actually beat the game, but if you want to drive around being a cop saving people, you can. This small side of the game still does not make up for the other morally unjust portions considering they overwhelm the game entirely. Overall the game is a fun experience, but is only rent worthy. Children definitely should not be allowed to play the game but it is going to happen regardless, they just have to realize that it is just a game and that there is a difference between that and real life, otherwise the gaming world is going to continue to spiral downward into a pit of lawsuits and angry parents getting games taken off the market.

Do you think that by the end of the game CJ has done some good? Could it be argued that, perhaps from a utilitarian perspective, the outcome is positive despite the cost associated in getting there?