San Andreas 100% ?

I was looking through my gaming notes from before this blog, and my notes for GTA 3 San Andreas are very sketchy. I thought I did 100% on this game but I can't find any documentation. I just fast played GTA 3 Vice City, and I want more, so why not.

Now I'm reading through the FAQs, and this is starting to look like a lot of work. I haven't found a good guide yet, so I'm writing up my own brief 100% guide.

To-Do List

My to-do list, in chronological release order:

1994 System Shock (finish watching playthrough)

1998 Thief (if possible find 1999 Thief Gold; if unplayable find a playthrough)

1999 System Shock 2 (play or watch playthrough)

1999 Planescape: Torment

2000 Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption (maybe)

2001 Arcanum

2001 Civilization 3 (can get the Complete edition on Steam)

2002 Elder Scrolls 3 (or maybe just skip and go to next in series)

2003 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

2004 Doom 3 (just for sake of completion)

2004 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

2004 Grand Theft Auto 3 San Andreas (100% complete?)

2005 Civilization 4 (get the 2009 Complete edition; not on Steam yet)

2005 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

2006 Elder Scrolls 4 (maybe start here, skip 3)

2007 Bioshock

2007 Mass Effect

2008 Grand Theft Auto 4

2010 Civilization 5

2010 Fallout New Vegas (buy original release with gift card, but get the GOTYE rollup of DLCs later)

2010 Mass Effect 2

2011 Elder Scrolls 5 (after playing 4 and/or 3, by this time, I might as well wait for the GOTYE)

2011 Deus Ex 3 DLCs - maybe get now, maybe wait for a GOTYE rollup

note: GOTYE = Game of the Year Edition. GOTYE releases fit with the way I game perfectly. I like to play games that are at least a year old. By that point all the patches and add-ons have come out, and I can just buy one big rollup of the whole experience. This way I don't have to beta test buggy products. I also don't have to pay full freight for every money extracting add-on. Also by this point in the product's life, all the game faqs have been written, and questions answered.

I do miss out on the sense of wonder and community that builds up around a new product, and I have to avoid spoilers like crazy, but I think its a fair trade-off. I have so many good games in queue that I can easily distract myself while waiting. Sometimes I have to make an exception, though, like for Deus Ex 3 or Half-Life 2, and get them on or close to the day of release.

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series

The GTA games have great staying power for me; they might be the longest installs I have. When there is a new one I play it obsessively at first, of course, but I'll tend to come back and replay it year after year, for a few casual hours or to run through the whole thing from the beginning. Like most games, I play for the story first, then later I'll do the 100% completion grinding.

Most recently I played GTA Vice City, which is one of the two games between GTA 3 and GTA 4. The other one, San Andreas, deserves to be called 4, or at least 3.5, and GTA 4 should really be called 5; what a mess. This is almost as bad as Windows version naming. I like to see them listed out; from left to right: the year it came out, the year the story takes place, and my version of their marketing name:

2001 {2001} GTA3 Liberty City

2002 {1986} GTA3 Vice City

2004 {1992} GTA3 San Andreas

2008 {2008} GTA4

2010 {2008} GTA4 Episodes From Liberty City

I have finished the GTA3 games several times each. I tried to play GTA4 but couldn't get into it - it just didn't feel right. Something about the port, or the controls, it just didn't add up to the smooth playing experience of the recent GTA3 games. I haven't tried GTA4 in a year or two, but I will give it another chance eventually; I think I need to take the time out to learn how to use a gamepad. I'm not happy about that at all, as the GTA3 games play just fine with PC only controls. Meanwhile, I'm quite happy to play Vice City and San Andreas from time to time.

Steam just had a sale on all GTA games to date for just $12. This means no more hunting for discs in the attic every time I want to play GTA. I almost don't even miss game boxes anymore. They've been dumbing boxes down for years anyway, making the boxes, documentation, and goodies smaller and smaller. Long gone are the days of Ultima and Infocom, and even as late as Fallout, where the box and contents were part of the experience. There are still premium versions to be bought, but it seems more like taking advantage of fans rather than serving them.

stuck on the Startion

As a kid playing on the beach, I built sandcastles near the waves, and tried to hold them off as long as possible. Sometimes I'd be frustrated by a castle I couldn't finish, or a castle that was never assaulted by the water, but the most satisfying castles were the ones that were under frequent assault that I could keep going through effort and will.

And so now I play the Baracco Startion map on Starcraft 2 against the computer. I'm constantly tweaking the numbers and qualities of my allies and opponents, trying to find the zone where I can just barely hang on. I have no idea where the Startion map came from, but after various searches I have yet to find something that so approximates the Starcraft equivalent of my sandcastles.