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GTA San Andreas Gets Release Date, Screenshots
An anonymous reader writes "Rockstar Games has been deliberately coy about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - it 'was announced as a Playstation 2 exclusive title' in today's Sony press conference, but 'that was the extent to which the game was discussed.' However, Rockstar just put up an official GTA: San Andreas webpage, confirming a release date of October 2004, and featuring the first three screenshots of the game, leading GameSpot to conclude that the game 'will be set in modern times (not the 1970s-set game some had said) and will have a heavy West-Coast gangsta flava' - they also say the site's splash screen 'changes each time the site is loaded'."
1) Yes, the game's poor traffic/vision/camera depth is caused by the poor capabilities of the console. It has everything to do with the limits of the consoles.
2) Scrolling is implemented because consoles don't have keyboards that allow you to quick-select particular weapons. GTA is an excellent example of converting the "right way" because the PC version is invariably better in all aspects than the console version of the game, and usually contains added functionality not available on a console. Maybe the keys will be more customisable on PC this time around.
3) Serious multiplayer hasn't been viable on consoles until very recently with X-Box live and so on. Even so, there's more work involved with online play than single play for games like this, so again we find that because the game is being developed for console, it isn't "all that it could be".
I'm personally apalled at the graphics. This is the third iteration of the GTA3 engine. Because of the console generation, game developers don't have any room to create the almost photorealistic environments you can see in a game like Far Cry. I'm not sure if this game will do well on PC when being matched up with DooM3 and Half-Life2 (both currently slated for summer).
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Maybe that bit of the map isn't done yet? That was my thought, seeing as it's the same engine and it never used to have draw distance problems.
the flash loads for me in firefox but the links don't work for me. I was able to see the screenshots in IE but since I don't have Outlook installed I couldn't click the 'join the gta mailing list' link :P anyone care to post the email address they're trying to open outlook with??