f13.net

I need some help here.



I don't know how the reviewer said all that with a cock in his mouth. Gamespot was a little more reasonable (as they tend to be):



Can someone here please do a proper review? I don't actually want to play the game. I don't have dreams of being a black guy killing my own people to pimp out my wheels. But I figure someone out here does...or something.

I don't want to be an italian drug dealer, but Vice City is a great game. I'm all over GTA:SA....in six months when the pc port ships. I lived in both LA and SF in the early 90s,should be just like old times.

And the soundtrack has Amos Moses by the incomparable Jerry Reed. Can't go wrong! I posted the complete soundtracks over at grimwell.com, great track lists.

Years of practice?

I'll play it when it comes out on a decent console (X-Box) instead of the jaggy king PS2.

I read the Gamespot review and it sounds as if Rockstar has really outdone themselves.  

Although...



This has me a little worried.  Being that I'm playing in the WoW beta and with the other AAA titles coming out shortly, I'm going to be up to my neck in games with no time to play them.  The frame rate issue will most likely keep me from buying the PS2 copy and waiting for a PC port where I am sure the frame rate issue will be resolved.

BTW, I didn't know this, but in GTA:SA you can get a parachute.  Saw a video of someone playing: apparently you can climb to the top of sky scrapers and do some base jumping.  Sweet!

Kind of what I was thinking too, I'm sure a port is inevitable, and besides right now I have too many games to play as is.

Buy me a PS2 and you can have your review in a couple days!  It's sad that it's the only one of the big 3 I don't own, with all of it's yummy RPG goodness. I find it hard to spend money on something I find technically lacking even with the possibility of playing some sweet turned based RPG goodness looking straight back at me.

Well, maybe if my wife does something dumb and buys herself a $400 handbag I could turn it into "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? My turn" purchase.

It's basically Morrowind in the hood.

I'm picking this up as soon as I get off work tonight. Gimme a few days and I will drop you a small review.

/me has this pre-ordered.

Its release is on the 29th, but since I've never done the whole pre-order thing before, I don't know if I get it on the 29th, or it gets shipped to me on the 29th.

I will do a light review when I get it.

bah they've all sucked since GTA 1.

Preorders are already in Best Buys and EBGames. Oh, and Gamestop. So you should just be able to go get it.

I work at a mall, and our EB and Gamestop stores got the game in at 7 pm last night. Both stores were fucking madhouses. They were handing out numbers, people were yelling and screaming, it was insanity. EB had a line out the store and about 50 feet down the hallway.

I don't even like GTA.

I'll buy it if only to horrify and fascinate my girlfriend and/or visiting relatives. I hope there's one available after work.

When is the computer version due out?


ah, nevermind I have review copies of Pacific Fighters and Leisure Suit Larry on my desk... I'm sure they're just as fun. At least combined.

Soundtrack status?

I thought VC was okay-to-good, but I literally spent hours cruising around aimlessly on a motorcycle listening to 'Billy Jean'.

Damn, I'm feeling a bit envious here...Time to shell out for a PS2. So many good titles are coming out from here to Christmas. What the fuck do X-Box owners get?

Fable
DOA
Halo 2? Sure, I'll play it, but it's just a shooter. BIG FUCKING DEAL.

Only KoToR II stands up.

Here's the list:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/10/25/news_6111346.html

There is a new PS2 out. It is only 1 inch thick, and comes with the network adaptor. Its like $149.99. Not a bad deal. Specially if you buy it at best buy, and get the Extra warranty thing that lets you trade it in, for full price and get a PS3 when it comes out.

Nice



That brings me back

I've played 2 games in past month with this track (Def Jam, THUG2). A year ago not even many Hip Hop fans knew who Kool Keith was, let alone when Ultramagnetic released this. Now it's in my video games.



Best CCR song ever.

In the spirit of GTA, someone should have pulled out an Uzi and started spraying.

Any game that lets you do a drive-by to "Welcome to the Jungle" has a place in my cold black heart.

Heh, yeah...I was gonna slam that choice because I don't care much for GnR, but that track is perfect for this game. After all, wasn't it first released in a Dirty Harry movie or something?

Damn.. I might have to pick this one up for the soundtrack, despite my moral objections to it.

Hmm.. nah I'll just get the MP3s.   It'll let me avoid bugaboos like "Free Bird" and Rod Stweart.

Fernando's not DJing a station this time around?  NOOOO!

I hope we at least get some new radio spots for "Fernando's New Beginnings."

Yeah, it was "Dirty Harry: The Dead Pool" and who sung it in the movie?

None other than Jim Carry. Right before he was murdered.


How can you not like a band with lyrics like these? "Turn around bitch, I got a use for you. Besides, you aint got nothing better to do. And Im bored."

Yeah, but I'm a second-rate gaming citizen, aka: Australian. At least we get it at the same time as our imperial masters this time, woot!

EDIT: Spelling.

In the spirit of this "game" I encourage you to steal it (literally) and stick it to teh Man!

The uninspired song selections turned me off more than anything.

Every time I noticed a great track in the mixes, it was just such a poor and populist choice.

Take just a couple of good artists and sustitute better grooves and more appropriate rhymes:

Eric B. & Rakim: Casulties of War
Soul II Soul: Love Enuff
Bob James: Rush Hour
Barrington Levy: Robber Man
The Upsetters: Eastwood Rides Again
Depeche Mode: Fly On The Windscreen
Living Color: Auslander

Substitute any one of the Trax house numbers with:

Phuture: Acid Tracks

Fuck... Half of what made Vice City great was the soundtrack. Ah well hopefully they'll still make it really easy to import Mp3's, no way I'm listening to that soundtrack.

I agree. I like the soundtrack, it's got some really great songs on it, but Freebird was a silly choice. Great song, way too long. After I saw that, I went looking for American Pie, another bathroom break song from my days as a DJ. Call Me The Breeze would've been a better song. And Willie's version of Crazy is ok, but Whiskey River would've been better and more appropriate, maybe.

But I don't really see me loading in the mp3s until the second playthrough, lots of good stuff in this one.

Did I mention it has Amos Moses? He used to hit 'em in the head with a stump, you know.

I started playing last night, so its still a little early for a review.  I'll mention a couple things though:

The little control improvements really make a big deal to game play.
The game is fuckin huge!
No transition screens so far, other than entering buildings
You can kill hos with a can of spray paint (up to you if this is good or bad)

Oh, and trying to escape a drive by shooting on a BMX is teh suck.

It was James Carrey - Jim Carrey's evil twin.

You remind me of record store guys that need a boot to the skull. Get over yourself, High Fidelity.

Quick review after playing 2 hours.

Graphics, more of the same. Lots of really bright skys blowing out the dark colors.

Controls, Gah, this is one of my MAJOR gripes with the game. You can no longer use the thumbPAD to control your character. You HAVE to use the stick. This is huge for me, cause with the PS2 controller, I much prefer using the pad over the stick. Honestly, this is almost a game breaker for me.

Content, well, Fuck you nigga'. Lets go jack some nigga' pims for their heat and get me backs to finish off wit' mah hos'.

If you like ghetto culture, you are in luck. For every one else, it gets old REALLY quick. I think this is the first GTA game where I am actually rooting for the cop chaising me. The main character is such an idiot, I want them to put him in jail, or run him over. Hell, I have already killed him in a car fire multiple times. Nigga'. so, fuck dat ho' bitch.

All I can think of while playing, is teenaged suburban white kids all over America thinking how cool they are, and the outbreak of ebonics. *Shudder*

Other than that, its GTA, its fun. Ill do a more detailed review once I get some more time in.

Wow, that was unwarranted. You remind me of intolerant assholes who threaten people on the internet.

In other words, the 90s.

I'm having an angry week. I'll apologize later after my vacation. Still I don't like music snobs. It's probably one my biggest pet peeves listening to somebody in a record store get himself off on how much he thinks he knows about such a subjective topic. Then you get the whole "look down the nose at the people who listen to the mainstream, corporate driven stuff." It's music, people like what they like, and calling some of it lower class is just meaningless.

I also like Freebird.

Rap sucks. Learn english, sucka.' All you people that bought GTA:SA for the soundtrack deserve to die in a late 80s, early 90s tapedeck fire.

I thought you listened to techno? Does that have words? Hell, I may be wrong, when you listed most of the stuff for that radio idea I didn't know what genre 98% of it was.

Thank you for saving me 50 bucks.

Save yourself the trouble. Your opinion wouldn't have meant anything to me even if your characterisation had said more about me than about you. However, you're doing your best to derail this thread, so perhaps you are amusing somebody other than yourself.

My point was fairly simple. If you're going to laud the selection of music in this game, it is worth pointing out that the choices were not as appropriate as they could have been. Without thinking too hard, I came up with several alternate songs by artists used that better fit a crime oriented driving game.

I liked Freebird the first few hundred times I heard it. Same is true of Stairway to Heaven and Bat out of Hell or the opening of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th. Sometimes music is over exposed.

Point taken, I know most music in games makes me want to claw my eyes out usually. The sheer volume in the GTA usually helps that, although an mp3 option is always good.

Yeah, I don't derail often, figured I'd give it a shot. It's less fun than I imagined.

Are you trying to quit smoking too, Paelos?

But you aren't thinking properly. They aren't putting in songs that are supposed to fit the envirornment, they are putting in songs to fit the TIME, which is early 90's. The songs you hear on the GTA radio are the songs you heard on real radio during the early 90's. Obviously the classic rock station is a bit different since they can have a broader range, but the reason you aren't hearing more obscure tracks is because they didn't play those obscure tracks in real life very often. Although I will say that I miss 'Sister Christen'.

That said, the game is cool as hell. Those of you who are going to complain that it is all about a thug life, just get over it. That part is no different than if it was a 'white' dude making a bunch of 'white' comments. In fact, I think that a lot of the comments and stuff make fun of the situation instead of taking it seriously. However, I will admit that it would be much cooler if it was Tommy instead of CJ.

The game is absolutely huge and to do everything would take probably something like 100 hours of game play or more. If you just want to work on the storyline you are still looking at somewhere around 30 or more hours of gameplay. There is a definate distiction between downtown areas and the country and you can feel it. There is also a lot more traffic, although this actually one of my complaints because it just as busy in a small country town as it is in the city which doesn't make sense to me.


I absolutely love the game, but then I have loved all of them since the very first GTA. I would say that it is very similar to GTA:VC in gameplay, but there have been a few tweaks and various additions. I think that riding a motorcycle is a bit easier now than it was in VC. There are several new types of cars, as well as some old favorites. You now have to work up skill levels for a lot of the various weapons. You can work out, you have to eat food, you can date several girls at once. There are the standard extra type missions, like putting your gang tag over other tags, take pictures of scenery, collect horseshoes and oysters ( all like the tiki hunt/special packages hunt) as well as the unique jumps. There are the standard mission types: go here, kill this, escape the police and of course the various race missions. You can also swim now which means that you no longer drown when you fall in the water. You can buy your own clothes and mix and match various types.

There is plenty to do and I think it was put together very well. Besides the small complaint that it is perhaps a bit too busy in small towns, I haven't had a problem with the game yet. I am only about 1/4 - 1/3 through the game and I am very glad I bought it.

And now I go back to playing it because I am addicted to it.  It has been ruining my sleep schedule and I have been bringing it in to work with me. Hurray for having a night job with a TV handy and no real work to do!

Ok, big review comming soon. After about 15-20 hours of gameplay I have a few more quick comments.

1) The game is REALLY good.
2) I hate that my character is a moron.
3) I hate that my character is a Gansta' thug moron.
4) I REALLY hate that my character cannot for the life of himself manage to pronounce the "re" on the end of "sure". I am getting SO sick of hearing him say "fer sho". I want to throw my controller each time he does it now.

*VERY mild spoiler below*























5) It is really great when you get to race the main character from GTA3, and CJ complains that he wont speak.

Thats it for now.

Is it just my rusty l33t sk1llz, or did Rockstar kick the difficulty up a notch on this one?  Most missions whose spiritual predecessors I finished on my first/second try are taking me 3-5 tries now.  Maybe I need to play a little less SMT: Nocturne and brush up my twitch skills....

So, there were stations in the early 90s that played exclusively "rare grooves" which included limited DJ vinyl-only pressings, yet somehow were unable to find the airtime to play my selections? The songs you heard in the 90s on real radio were either on mainstream radio, in which case, scratch over half of GTSA's soundtrack, or on pirate radio (the early 90s were halcyon days for pirate radio in the Bay Area), in which case you could have my selections just as well. I'm not sure why you want to defend the choices so badly, but its a poor defense.

I've played it for about 10 hours. I'll probably end up doing a review provided I don't have to do any stupid shit like flying radio controlled helicopters with explosives like in Vice City.

The music is whatever you make of it. This is one of the few games where you can change the fucking station if you don't like it, or turn it off. I turned it to "X Radio", and was listening to Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, etc.

The main character is a moron though.

"Damn, gang banger bullshit is what got my mom killed, I think I'll go do some gangbanger bullshit to fix it!"

It's really hard to argue with a game that lets you do drive-by shootings in East L.A. with Willie Nelson's rendition of "Crazy" blaring on the radio.

It's kind of funny hearing Axl Rose as one of the DJs.  

Additionally, I think Gimmie Back My Bullets or Saturday Night Special would have been better Skynyrd tracks than Freebird.

Hell, even Gimmie Three Steps.  Then again, I have the Skynyrd box set, so maybe I'm just on crack.


Overall, I like the game, although I think some of the missions are harder earlier on than in GTA3 or GTA:VC.  I had to get my neighbor (who can 't shoot worth a damn, but can drive really well) to come over and complete one of them for me.  

Since others are talking about writing up reviews, I'll probably hold off until I've played more of the game.  

I will say that the AI for gang members following you sucks pretty badly.  They get run over a lot and don't really know how to handle terrain very well.  

I do like the AI for rival gang members during the gang war missions.  Taking over turf is fun and a bit exciting until you figure out some basic tactics to keep your ass alive.

I give this game 5 stars out of 5, so far.

For those of you addressing the issue of CJ's enunciation and sense of morality: Yes, there are a ton of people in LA who talk precisely like that and have the same skewed morality of "gots to shoot them to get revenge." Much more so during the 90's.

Isn't that more or less the story of the last two GTA games as well?  (Replace "mom killed" with "self locked up" or "drugs stolen").

Yes, but I think we all agree Scarface is a better movie then Menace 2 Society.

If you're talking about the Brian DePalma version of Scarface ... that movie is a fucking cartoon. They could have cast Bugs Bunny in the title role and it would be equally effective.

At least Menace 2 Society featured characters that could be remotely recognized as human beings.

So, as an example of shallow stereotypical characters to model your GTA video game after, Scarface is the better choice.

I had to sit through film appreciation with a prof who went to school with DePalma. I'm pretty sure the prof has a secret gay crush on him. After getting through the obligatory "Hitchcock is god" spiel, it was pretty much all DePalma for the rest of the semester. The guy even called Kubrick (one of my favorites) a hack.

DePalma used to be a genius, I think, but it's been hit and miss for over 20 years now. More films under his belt than Lucas, but he's the roughly the equivalent in his own little domain (call it what you will.."voyeurism" etc., etc.) -- once a master, but now a pale comparison to what he used to be.
 
As for Scarface, that was his downfall. If I only watch the first half (right up to the point that Tony kills Frank), then I think it's amazing. After that, it's just embarrassing.

San Andreas for the rest of us (http://pc.ign.com/articles/574/574015p1.html) on June 7th.

Huzzah!  Thanks for that update, I was wondering when they'd get around to the port.

JUNE? Fuck.

Bout the same as KOTOR II, right? Bastards.

Hmm. Xbox or PC? I am leaning toward PC.

Bah, I missed it by a month or two. I called April/May, based on previous pc ports of GTA titles. Good deal, got something to look forward to. Now I gotta go dig up my NWA albums...thanks for the update, Shock.

Im still playing it, and cant fault it. Right now ive stopped doing storyline missions and are completing some of the side missions in the game, the range and variety of which are quite impressive.

As for the ghetto/rap culture so predominant in the earlier levels, its more or less missing from the rest of the game.