G-pinions

So what does Nick think of GTA:SA? I mean, I know everyone is dying to know, even me, and I'm Nick. Well, I'll tell ya, it's pretty great. Pretty really great, so far.

What are some highlights? Great cutscenes, unabashedly vulgar, with a man I like to call Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson playing one of the characters. Swimming kicks ass, and driving a car off of a pier and living to tell about it rules. One of the new 'collectibles' (i.e. hidden packages) is covering up spray paint with your own gang's tag, so you can actually know which ones you've done already. The police A.I. can be ruthless; one cop even jumped off of a bridge after me, landed successfully, and shot me dead. The music is even better than Vice City (RATM, Soundgarden, Dr. Dre, anyone?), and the talk radio and commercials are laugh-out-loud, stop-and-fail-a-mission-just-to-listen funny. The new targeting system is a godsend, and being able to, say, target a car's gas tank with manual aiming is bomb. You can climb over and up onto things, such as fences, boxes, dumpsters, roofs, billboards, etc. People on the street yell things like "I have crabs the size of baseballs". The weapons are much harder to find, but a lot more rewarding to use, such as a shovel. Though most of the game has similar graphical quirks to Vice City, some of the lighting, grass and city views are really spectacular. Customizing your character's clothes, hair and tattoos is actually a ton more fun than you'd imagine, and makes each outfit feel somewhat like a whole new game. All of the workout mini-games actually work your fingers, and are more than worth doing. The BMX bike owns.

So, that's a bit for now. Tom and I are planning on putting a good 5+ hours into the game tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll have plenty more to report on soon enough. For now, another attempt at following that train on my motorcycle so that my passenger can gun down thugs on top of said train while I dodge oncoming trains, trees and exploding cars.