Why GTA San Andreas is still the best open world game of all time
GTA San Andreas. Still to this day, one of the best open world games ever made. Personally, for me, it is still my favourite game of all time. What a game it was. With the upcoming remaster for the original trilogy, (Known as GTA the trilogy - definitive edition), and with me recently getting the platinum trophy for the original version of San Andreas, I thought it would be a great time to talk about this masterpiece.
Today I want to talk about the open world. Playing it back 17 years later, the open world still is top tier. With the open world design being so common in modern gaming, there’s still very few games that hold a candle to the open world of SA. Every location still feels unique and distinctively different from each other. Every location had a personality.
Today I want to talk about the open world. Playing it back 17 years later, the open world still is top tier. With the open world design being so common in modern gaming, there’s still very few games that hold a candle to the open world of SA. Every location still feels unique and distinctively different from each other. Every location had a personality.
Dark, often rainy, the middle of nowhere feeling pine tree countryside. The mysterious barron hot desert.
Orange smogy gang war ridden Los Santos. Rainy, cold, hip and bustling city of San Fierro. The hot glamorous Las Venturas.
Every place had *character* and a 'feel'. Just like Vice City and GTA 3, San Andreas was based on real cities but still felt like their own unique place with its own character. Something that is slightly lost on the HD era of GTAs in my opinion. Los Santos was Los Angeles, San Fierro was San Francisco and Las Venturas was Las Vegas. These cities were more closely depicted than GTA 3 was, but as mentioned still felt like their own place.
Little touches were added to give a place extra character and feel. On the PS2 version, each place had a coloured tint and a coloured sky box making it feel different. San fierro had a cold blueish tint. Los Santos had an orange tint with an orange sky box in the evenings. San fierro often rained but when it was sunny it had a cold blue tint to everything.
The limited draw distance was masked by a kind of smog/fog. A common technique for games back then. Each place had a different coloured smog in line with the sky box. The limitations of the PS2 version weirdly has a sort of charm to it.
Orange smogy gang war ridden Los Santos. Rainy, cold, hip and bustling city of San Fierro. The hot glamorous Las Venturas.
Every place had *character* and a 'feel'. Just like Vice City and GTA 3, San Andreas was based on real cities but still felt like their own unique place with its own character. Something that is slightly lost on the HD era of GTAs in my opinion. Los Santos was Los Angeles, San Fierro was San Francisco and Las Venturas was Las Vegas. These cities were more closely depicted than GTA 3 was, but as mentioned still felt like their own place.
Little touches were added to give a place extra character and feel. On the PS2 version, each place had a coloured tint and a coloured sky box making it feel different. San fierro had a cold blueish tint. Los Santos had an orange tint with an orange sky box in the evenings. San fierro often rained but when it was sunny it had a cold blue tint to everything.
The limited draw distance was masked by a kind of smog/fog. A common technique for games back then. Each place had a different coloured smog in line with the sky box. The limitations of the PS2 version weirdly has a sort of charm to it.
Then we had the music and radio stations. Each location seemed to have a few radio stations tied to it and themed around it. This was clear from the fact that most drivers in each location were playing certain radio stations. For example, when jacking a car in the countryside, most of the time K Rose radio station would be playing, the country music station. But in Los Santos in the ghetto, most of the time it would be the Radio Los Santos station, the good old 90s gangster rap station.
I vividly remember the "I love a rainy night" song playing, whilst it was a dark rainy night driving through the harrow pine trees of the whetstone countryside. That song captures the feel of the pine countryside so well. Each radio station captured a feel of a place. It was so good.
SF UR played classic 90s house which was based on San Fierro. Which back then, San Francisco had a big 90s house scene.
As mentioned before, Radio Los Santos played 90s hip hop capturing that gang-ridden streets of Los Santos feel.
K Rose was the country music station that made you feel like you were out in hick country in pine.
DST played rock that made you feel like you were in the desert. The horse with no name song on that station always comes to mind when I think of the desert in San andreas.
I vividly remember the "I love a rainy night" song playing, whilst it was a dark rainy night driving through the harrow pine trees of the whetstone countryside. That song captures the feel of the pine countryside so well. Each radio station captured a feel of a place. It was so good.
SF UR played classic 90s house which was based on San Fierro. Which back then, San Francisco had a big 90s house scene.
As mentioned before, Radio Los Santos played 90s hip hop capturing that gang-ridden streets of Los Santos feel.
K Rose was the country music station that made you feel like you were out in hick country in pine.
DST played rock that made you feel like you were in the desert. The horse with no name song on that station always comes to mind when I think of the desert in San andreas.
GTA 3 brought to the gaming world the feeling of a truly open world sandbox game where there were no restrictions on what you could do at the time. In SA, it was taken to a whole new level. The fun of stealing cars, mowing down tons of people, and just all-round messing around, as well as being able to do a variety of missions in a bustling city via Liberty City in GTA 3 was groundbreaking. Imagine now being able to do that in 3 cities and 3 connected countrysides. Now imagine a huge layer of depth via an insane amount of content.
San Andreas had an unbelievable amount of content. There was a feeling of always having something to do. Still to this day has the most to do in any GTA game.
You could get girlfriends who would provide different perks to your character. Like for example, not losing your weapons when dying. You could now enter multiple buildings. You could buy houses with a variety of different interiors.
You could play pool. Basketball. Play arcade video games. Yeah, video games within a video game. Unheard of at the time. Dance. Lo rider challenges. Play various casino games. All of this was an industry new at the time. Rockstar paved the way for many other games to include mini-games within their games.
Then you had RPG elements. You could hit the gym to rank up your stamina, muscle as well as learn different fighting moves in different gyms. You had driving skills and flying skills which would naturally level up but could be levelled up more from driving schools. Your skill level had to be high enough to then compete in the racing stadium events.
You had to eat food once in a while but could become fat if you ate too much. Thankfully it wasn’t annoying and you generally didn't have to eat frequently. The level of customisation on CJ was fantastic. You could shop at a variety of different clothes shops. Different barbers who offered different hairstyles. Remain skinny, get fat, get muscley. How you wanted CJ to look was completely in your hands. With all these things in mind, there felt like a real purpose to the money in the game.
Then you had the sheer amount of vehicles in the game. Not only were there tons of types of cars and bikes. But there are also tons of other types of vehicles.
BMX bikes. Planes. Various military vehicles like the hover harrier, fighter jets, attack helicopters.
There's even a jetpack you can use to fly around.
San Andreas had an unbelievable amount of content. There was a feeling of always having something to do. Still to this day has the most to do in any GTA game.
You could get girlfriends who would provide different perks to your character. Like for example, not losing your weapons when dying. You could now enter multiple buildings. You could buy houses with a variety of different interiors.
You could play pool. Basketball. Play arcade video games. Yeah, video games within a video game. Unheard of at the time. Dance. Lo rider challenges. Play various casino games. All of this was an industry new at the time. Rockstar paved the way for many other games to include mini-games within their games.
Then you had RPG elements. You could hit the gym to rank up your stamina, muscle as well as learn different fighting moves in different gyms. You had driving skills and flying skills which would naturally level up but could be levelled up more from driving schools. Your skill level had to be high enough to then compete in the racing stadium events.
You had to eat food once in a while but could become fat if you ate too much. Thankfully it wasn’t annoying and you generally didn't have to eat frequently. The level of customisation on CJ was fantastic. You could shop at a variety of different clothes shops. Different barbers who offered different hairstyles. Remain skinny, get fat, get muscley. How you wanted CJ to look was completely in your hands. With all these things in mind, there felt like a real purpose to the money in the game.
Then you had the sheer amount of vehicles in the game. Not only were there tons of types of cars and bikes. But there are also tons of other types of vehicles.
BMX bikes. Planes. Various military vehicles like the hover harrier, fighter jets, attack helicopters.
There's even a jetpack you can use to fly around.
At the end of the game. There was the challenge of conquering Los Santos. Gang warfare. Taking over all gang territories to be yours. A really great addition to the GTA series. It was truly mind boggling how much variety the open world of SA had, not only from its design and size, but because it was packed with content.
The sheer variety of the open world, the distinctive feel of each place and the role each city had on the range of side activities, the open world of San Andreas still to this day is a fantastic open world you want to get lost in. The world of San Andreas still holds up so well today. I still don't think after all these open world games, that anyone has topped San Andreas yet. And that truly is remarkable to still say that about a game from 2004.
The sheer variety of the open world, the distinctive feel of each place and the role each city had on the range of side activities, the open world of San Andreas still to this day is a fantastic open world you want to get lost in. The world of San Andreas still holds up so well today. I still don't think after all these open world games, that anyone has topped San Andreas yet. And that truly is remarkable to still say that about a game from 2004.