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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'."
2) GTA is still preferable on a joypad, it has too many instantly required moves at fingertips to make keyboard/mouse play fully worthwhile. The time taken to find the correct key outweighs any advantage in having unique keys. I find even on PC games I usually just scroll through weapons using the mouse wheel, as it's quicker.
3) Only because it hasn't been relevant. Console games are still very much single player or group oriented, cheap and cheerful throwaway fun that requires no significant investment on behalf of the consumer, so it naturally follows that console owners would be less likely to have broadband, which is an absolute requirement for proper multiplayer.
Console game manufacturers are in the business of providing good medium term fun for the single or group together, whereas PC game production is more focused on creating communities to maintain long-term interest in the titles of the company. Internet access is a given for the average PC gamer, but not so for the console player. Given the general dearth of exclusive quality titles on PC's, and the long long timespans between releases, this ability to maintain interest through expansion and online capabilities is far more important than providing decent single player action. This can easily be seen in id software titles for example.
Because of the royalties involved console games are written to tighter margins and it's unlikely that producers would allow time and money to be spent on an online multiplayer option that is not required to sell that game. This is of course now changing as Sony and Microsoft have determined that it's a promotable feature now that broadband penetration is high enough. The fact that Nintendo are sitting on the fence only proves the point.
In my opinion, GTA is not even a particularly good example of a console being pushed to its limits graphically, so the relevance of comparing it to Far Cry (nice example of the only decent PC exclusive for months), Doom 3 and Half Life 2 is questionable. The latter two look impressive enough on the Xbox for me anyway. GTA is more about the quality of the environment, and the gameplay. Sure nicer graphics would top it off, but if they had to cut out any of the content to accomodate it (in terms of development time and deadlines) then I'll pass, thanks.
I was hopeing that they would do the early '90s grunge thing for this =)
I though GTA:VC had a very good variety of stations which was excellent, GTA3 radio didn't seem quite the same...but of course in GTA3 it was all 'fake' stuff and GTA:VC used licensed music which I thought was great.
I think what REALLY made GTA:VC so great was it had a solid story and the main character you played had a personality (I hated in GTA3 how the guy just walked around and people offered him jobs without him ever saying a single word)
If GTA:SA has a good story and well developed charaters, I might be able to overlook an over abundance of rap =)
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Pac Man was played by Gen-Xers. In other words, people who are currently working in cubicles and spending the weekends with their kids.
Raves are populated entirely by Gen-Y kiddies who have no idea what Pac Man is, let alone spent any real time playing it.
If you somehow tied Pac Man to listening to really crappy hair metal like Poison or LA Guns while drinking Old Milwaukee beer out of tupperware containers at 1990 college parties or playing Nintendo hockey in the dorms, then maybe, just maybe, you would have been on to something.
P.S. Pac Man didn't have repetitive electronic music, either. There were brief melodies during the little interstitial scenes, but the game itself was sound effects only.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Heh, I love how people rib on PC gamers for not getting to play stuff like GTA or Halo until months or years after release. They mercilessly rub it in our face. Then when we try telling them how much better the PC version is with cleaner textures, higher resolution, better draw distance, MP3 playlists, etc. they tell us to shut the hell up.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
It turned my stomach in GTA3 each time I heard a mafioso refer to a garbage truck as a "dust cart", or a parking garage as a "car park".
And let's not forget the level in Manhunt where DMA remids us to "please bin your rubbish".
Next...am I the ONLY one who's completely fed up with all this rap/hiphop 'gangsta shiznit'? I'm 21 and I am so fucking sick of this stuff its ridiculous. Is this how old people feel about young kids music today? Am I getting old? I mean, yeah, there's a couple of decent songs, any genre has that, but the lifestyle they sell is just as fabricated if not more so than the teenybopper pop lifestyle, but it just SEEMS more genuine 'cuz its from da streets'.
I can see why a game set in modern times might have this theme, but it most certainly should not have the entire game revolve around it. Ugh, way to ruin the game Rockstar.
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