Life Changers 10: GTA San Andreas

By Dene Benham

Strappin’, pimpin’, hoin’ (??!) and rollin’.


Life changers – imagine trying to pinpoint that moment in your life when it all changed. Well, never being one to shy away from a good bandwagon, I decided to skip past Doom, Baldur’s Gate and Barbie’s Ride and Race and look back at the game that changed the way I looked at gaming, and forward to the game that may just do it all over again - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The first thing for me about the game, and just maybe its most remarkable achievement, was that it lived up to the hype. I absolutely loved it; it made everything else seem half-finished and superficial and even now has left me sitting and waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV to do it all again.

Sure it had guns, cars, explosions and bad language, it was misogynistic and full of amoral, petty violence. However, it also had the best promotional clips ever, thrilling tasters played out to Tupac and Guns n’ Roses. But there was something else that made it special. Amid all the carnage, San Andreas had moments of calm. There was room for characters and reflection. If the money and women, the jets and casinos distracted you, you might miss it, but the story was there, and the story was great. I think Ice Cube, on one of the game’s stand-out tracks, may have summed it up. “No helicopters lookin for the murder, two in the mornin’ got the fat burger... Today I didn’t even have to use my AK, I got to say it was a good day.” Yeah, San Andreas, not just a good day but a good freakin’ week and it went a long way to making it a great year.

For me the music was a big part of the game’s appeal and success. It seemed that every moment in the game had its own anthem. Freebird was perfect for the desert, and the hilarious retro-country tracks made the truck missions in the Back-O-Beyond a real giggle. Also, Slick Rick, Ezy-e and Big Daddy Kane made me perfectly happy to start spelling gangsta with an ‘a’. If the soundtrack to GTA IV is half as good then the rumored ability to download tracks to your iPod will be getting a serious workout come May.

San Andreas was, and is, a game full of highlights, far too many to go into any detail here. The cameos of Ken Rosenberg, Catalina and Claude Speed were brilliant in-jokes while flying giant passenger planes and cat-fighting girlfriends were wonderful treats that made you feel that Rockstar was going out of their way to add as many hidden gems to the experience as they could. You could play the game all the way through without flying a passenger jet, but it was there and you could. However, brilliant surprises like flying back to a snow-covered Liberty City was an integral part of the game. I couldn’t believe it when that mission started to unfold. But there it all was – a flight across the country, a return to St. Marks Bistro and a Mafia hit. So much time and effort for one little mission buried hours into the game, all just for fans of the series.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I got the game on a Wednesday and started in Los Santos. Los Santos, in all its red-tinged, smog stained, corrupt glory. I met CJ, Kendl, Tenpenny and the brilliant Pulaski. I grew out my ‘fro, carved ‘Grove St.’ on my arm, got strapped and started banging. Life in LS was mean, but I got ripped and I got paid. I found out I could climb and swim, I bought a house, wasted money on pimping out a car and found a girlfriend. The missions were fun, but for the first time ever I didn't worry about pushing the game along. For a time I was perfectly happy hanging in the hood.

By the weekend I was in San Fierro and it was there I met my nemesis. A whole night trying to get past the driving school, trying to swim well enough to get to the container ship and those insane RC plane missions. But San Fierro was beautiful, while the fog rolling in it was the perfect place for Soundgarden and L7, the perfect place to take a breath and start looking to the future. It was in San Fierro where the story took on an optimistic tone that, together with developing friendships and a sense of cooperation and trust, made it feel like there was some real development to CJ’s character.

The big payoff though came by Monday with the revelations of Mike Toreno, the desert airfield and Las Venturas. I rolled onto The Strip with ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ thumping from the stereo. There really aren’t any words to describe the cinematic feel of the moment. I hadn’t seen it in a game before and I haven’t seen it since. It was there that the gansta look went to the back of the closet and I started dressing like a player. I made my first million in Las Venturas and I not only owned my first plane, I owned an airfield. It was in Las Venturas where I skipped back to Liberty to make the aforementioned hit, and it was in the desert where my favourite mission unfolded.

I’m not sure why it’s my favourite. It’s the mission on the airstrip where you chase the cargo plane, fight the bad guys, plant the bomb and skydive to safety. It may have something to do with the skydiving, maybe the different elements to it, perhaps the fact that it wasn’t too long, or too complicated, or too hard. But, in a game full of great missions and great moments that was my favourite.

By Wednesday it was time to think about going back to work, back to work in the real world. There was just enough time to head back to LS for some redemption, some retribution and a warm fuzzy happy ending. The last missions were pretty easy, but were still big and satisfying. And as with all the GTA games there was plenty to do once the credits rolled. As time passes I still go back. But, as with everything it’s time to move on. Or in this case back – back to Liberty City and GTA IV.

GTA IV has a lot to live up to. But then so did Vice City after GTA III, and so did San Andreas after Vice City, and they worked out all right. So bring on the atmosphere, the story, the characters, the fun, the violence, the music, the cameos, the cops and the cars – I’m putting in for that week off now.

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