9GAME believes that if you are a GTA games lover, you would not miss GTA San Andreas but do you know the story behind this action game?
Never mind missing UFO parts and the Mt Chiliad mural, the biggest mystery in Grand Theft Auto is why Rockstar refuses to release any of its remakes on anything other than smart devices. At first we wondered whether it was meant to be some meta joke about how unsuitable smartphones and tablets are for playing traditional video games. But no, Rockstar seem deadly serious about forcing a square peg into a round hole – and this time they’ve almost got it to fit.
Perhaps the strangest thing about all this is that if Rockstar were so interested in smart devices then surely creating a brand new game, one designed to work around the limitations of a touchscreen, would’ve been a far more sensible idea. They’ve already made bespoke games for the Game Boy Advance and DS (the sadly under-appreciated Chinatown Wars), and it’s not as if they’re short of money or resources, so limiting their efforts to HD remakes of decade old console games is genuinely bizarre.
They’re not even joint releases on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN, but since this is the last of the trilogy of PlayStation 2 era games there’s no point dwelling on all that now. Especially not as this third game does have a way around the intractable touchscreen problem: actual physical controllers. San Andreas supports Made-for-iOS controllers and their Android equivalents, allowing you to control the game almost exactly as if it was still on the PlayStation 2.
Of course that’s not how most people will be playing it, but using just the touchscreen there’s three new touch control schemes and contextual controls that stop your iPad from turning into a keyboard’s worth of virtual buttons.
When driving using a virtual analogue stick is probably the best of the three options and while it’s still difficult to be all that precise new checkpointing in the story missions ensures that none of them are impossible, even the ones with bikes. Combat fares even better thanks to a simple touch-based targeting system and a lot of auto-aim.
Visually the game betrays its PlayStation 2 origins instantly and compared to some of the more ambitious HD updates on consoles is very much a halfway house between a straight port and a remake. There are improvements though, with more complex characters models (including five-fingered hands!), better lighting, and a longer draw distance. If you’ve got a newer iPhone or iPad you also get dynamic shadows and reflections, as well as a more reliable frame rate.
No one’s going to be mistaking this for Grand Theft Auto V, but they may need a second glance as the two games are set in the same fictional state and Los Santos and the surrounding area is meant to be the same place in both games (sort of, Rockstar now consider the PlayStation 2 era games to be in a different continuity to Grand Theft Auto IV and V so they’re not exactly the same).
Although it’s physically smaller than the newer games San Andreas is still the biggest in terms of scope, with three major cities and all the countryside in-between. In terms of story you play the role of gangster ‘CJ’, who returns to the city in 1992 after his mother is killed. The early part of the game finds you trying to restore your gang’s past glories but quickly diversifies into stealing jetpacks and jump jets for the most spurious of reasons.
Grand Theft Auto IV’s more grounded (read: boring) missions were a direct reaction to San Andreas’ uncaring attitude to plausibility and realism but in hindsight San Andreas’ attitude makes for far more fun. From playing pool and basketball to burgling random houses and, for the first time, flying real planes it’s obvious that this was the inspiration for Grand Theft Auto V in terms of more than just location.
San Andreas is also the first time the idea of changing your character’s role-playing style stats emerged, although the more organic system in Grand Theft Auto V works much better than spending tedious hours (well, minutes) in San Andreas’ gyms.
The touchscreen controls are a compromise, but you’d have to assume that anyone downloading a nine-year-old PlayStation 2 game on an iPhone knows what they’re getting themselves in for. Besides, you’re just as likely to be put off by the frustrating mission designs as you are the actual controls. San Andreas betrays its age in terms of more than just the graphics and there’s only so much a checkpoint system can do to alleviate the finicky objectives and sudden difficulty spikes.
The driving and shooting work better than you’d think but they’re still not actively good, and never really were. Indeed that’s why Grand Theft Auto V was such a revelation, because at last the gameplay mechanics had begun to catch up with the quality and complexity of the game world.
No matter how popular they are at the time none of the Grand Theft Auto games tend to have much value once their successor is released, and as a result San Andreas is more fun as a nostalgia piece than it is a classic video game. But even today there are few titles so wildly ambitious and so densely packed with things to do, no matter which format you’re playing them on.
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