Every time I look back at the old Rockstar games classic title I would always think how did they manage to make such perfection and why still to date is San Andreas the greatest GTA game of all times. Today I’m going to tell you Why GTA San Andreas Was So Amazing
“When I’m gone, everybody gonna remember my name, Big Smoke.”
Right, you are Smoke, with meme magic and the masterpiece that is GTA San Andreas, everybody will speak of your tale for generations to come whether it is your famous order or your dramatic moments.
To this very day, GTA: San Andreas remains the best-selling GTA and the best-selling title for the PS2. This provokes a much-asked question: what makes a video game that is nearing its 20th anniversary so perfect that everyone happens to know of it and has played it more or less?
The game puts us in the shoes of Carl Johnson, or ‘CJ’ for short. He is the game’s protagonist who starts out as a small-time criminal and a professional train chaser to make it big in San Andreas after he arrives, hearing of his mother’s murder.
Regardless of the Grove Street Families and his brother’s (named Sweet) contempt of CJ initially, he slowly starts to regain their trust after returning to the game’s setting having fled to Liberty City before the events of the game. In the beginning, the game has the player regain Grove Street Family turf from the antagonistic Ballas.
That is soon put to a stop by Tenpenny and his fellow corrupt officers who are co-operating with the rival gangs to bring the Grove Street Families on their knees. After this CJ has to spend a large portion of the game into being coerced into doing Tenpenny’s dirty work until very later on into the game where restoring the influence of the Grove Street Families is made CJ’s top priority one more time, having to start from scratch.
What really make GTA: San Andreas a classic to this very day could be many things, to its deeply fleshed out characters with complete personalities of their own, to the various activities you could indulge in, or perhaps you just did not have one, but three entire cities to explore in the fictional state of San Andreas.
You could wreak havoc with a myriad of weapons available in the game, modify all sorts of vehicles and round up money in a variety of ways guaranteed by San Andreas’ life of crime and even raid the game’s equivalent of Area 51, humorously parodied as Area 69. You could do all that with either Billy Idol, Tom Petty, Cameo or Ice Cube playing over the radio of your vehicle.
At a time when video games were nothing like what we have now (*cough* *cough* microtransactions), GTA: San Andreas was extremely ambitious and the ambition was perfectly executed on Rockstar’s end. It obviously had to pay off in the end and keeps paying off to this very day.
To not hear of this gem of a game, one has to be seriously living under a rock. The game’s lifespan has achieved immortality by inspiring various internet memes, fan-created content and being modded to this very day.
It is one of those exceptional games that are not too graphically demanding unless one has laden it with all sorts of mods and no video game collection appears quite complete without it. In case anybody has not tried out this game, now is the perfect time to dust off that old PS2 or PC, or even buy the remaster on PS4/Xbox One to live the legend itself.
For more GTA Related features keep checking Gameshedge.