Order - 37
Game - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
Platform Played On - PlayStation 2
Start Date (Part 1) - 01/01/2016 - 18:21
End Date (Part 1) - 02/01/2016 - 08:24
Time Taken (Part 1) - 14:03:02 (14 Hours 03 Minutes 02 Seconds)
Start Date (Part 2) - 04/01/2016 - 16:54
End Date (Part 2) - 05/01/2016 - 08:52
Time Taken (Part 2) - 15:56:59 (15 Hours 56 Minutes 59 Seconds)
Time Taken (Total) - 30:00:01 (30 Hours 00 Minutes 01 Second)
Saves - 64
Deaths - 18
Rating Out of 10 - 9
Difficulty Rating Out of 10 - 7
Your Worst Enemy - Some objects like trees and tall buildings don’t appear very quickly when piloting over them. This can often lead to crashes.
Settings - Controller and display settings at default, Radio volume turned down fully throughout, SFX volume turned down fully on occasion.
Definition of Completion - Achieve 100% by fulfilling all necessary requirements. Timer ends upon recieving the “100% Achieved” popup message.
Definition of Death - Deaths count as seeing the ‘Wasted’ text, regardless of whether or not I load before reaching the hospital. Being busted or failing a mission does not count as a death.
Interruptions/breaks - I stopped the game partway through due to tiredness and resumed play a few days later. As the length of play continued the game seemed to struggle to load areas as fast, leading to some split-second pauses whilst it buffered (this becomes the most apparent during the street races segment.)
Completed Before? - Yes
First Death - (Occurs at 04:20:51) In my haste to drive a motorcycle up Mount Chiliad I misjudged my speed and positioning. The bike fell over the side of the mountain and began to take a long fall downwards. Partway through this fall the bike collided with the side of the mountain, knocking CJ off the bike and causing him to freefall all the way to the ground where he died upon impact.
Lives at Start - Unlimited
Lives at End - Unlimited
Most Enjoyable Area/Level - Supply Lines…
Least Enjoyable Area/Level - Pimping Missions
Strategy - My overall strategy was to recognise that the game was going to take a long time to complete and that there was therefore a lot of time to allow CJ to make stats improvements, as well as achieve better circumstances. I left most vehicle missions (such as vehicle school, street races, The Chiliad Challenge, courier missions, etc.) until the end of the run. By doing this I improved my driving, motorcycle, bicycle, and flying skills as much as possible. For example, by choosing to complete the BMX challenge later on I was more likely to have acquired a higher BMX skill allowing me to bunny-hop onto the targets easier. Or by improving my motorcycle skill throughout the game I was less likely to fall off it whilst completing the San Fierro courier mission. I also put a lot of thought into the order of the missions and side-missions based off CJ’s location, for example whether he would be near to the next mission, or whether he would have quick access to a plane that could take him there. My overall target was ’Get there quick, complete the mission quick, get to the next mission quick.’ Here are a few various strategies I used throughout the game:
- I collected spray cans early on so that I had enough to spray the majority of tags. I sprayed all the tags early on so that I could have weapons appear in CJ’s house to eliminate travel distance to AmmuNation.
- I completed the fire fighter missions early to make CJ fireproof. This is the most useful during the missions Burning Desire and End of the Line.
- I collected landlocked oysters on each island as I progressed so that I would just have to collect the ocean/river oysters later on.
- I left learning gym moves until the end of Los Santos Pt.1 to allow my muscle to build up naturally so that I needed to train less.
- I completed the ambulance missions in Whetstone as there is a nearby hospital and the injured people only spawn in the town.
- I completed the trucker missions and countryside storyline missions in an certain order so that I was in a nearby location for the next mission.
- I used the restaurant glitch for completing Vigilante missions. I also unintentionally used a glitch to skip the second quarry mission.
- Because of the very high presence of Taxies and Cabbies in Las Venturas, I chose to complete the fifty fares immediately upon getting to the area. The reasoning being that since the taxi is the most likely vehicle present as I exit a building, it would quicker to have nitro available. The jump feature also helps for some shortcuts across Las Venturas
- I didn’t train the pistol skill to Hitman level because the Ammu-Nation gun challenge is very easy during the pistol round. It is only with the other weapons that the Hitman level becomes near-essential for purposes of dual wielding and reloading speed.
- I started off collecting oysters in an area that holds the fastest boat in the game.
- Throughout my time in San Fierro I stashed the cars needed for the export list before the list became available. It is my belief that when the export list becomes available the game limits the numbers of required cars on the street to increase the challenge. By stashing these vehicles early I try to ensure that I have quick access. I also have a suspicion that when a car catches fire and is subsequently abandoned, the chances of finding another car of that same type in the surrounding area increases. So if I’m driving a car to the export ship and I wreck it, I believe it is worth looking around the immediate area for a similar car before heading back to the spawn area.
- I leave the street races and stadium challenges until last because they are the trickiest and I wanted to improve my vehicle handling as much as possible until then.
Notes - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an all-round terrific game. It has great style, gameplay, and such an incredible amount of content and finesse that it would be near impossible to name everything I like about it. I can try though to name a few great things about it that come to the top of my head. There’s a great selection of music, it’s incredibly fun to drive around, the storyline is interesting, the weapons are awesome, the graphics are great, and all the added features (such as the casino, the stats, unique jumps, and insane stunt bonuses) add up to make a huge and impressive game. However there are occasional things within the game that I don’t like. Some features seem to have been recycled from others, or are just plain boring. For instance the pimping missions consist of merely driving back and forth for ages which becomes very dull very quickly. They are essentially taxi fares that don‘t record your progress. The gang wars also get repetitive. And there are far too many collectables (oysters, tags, snapshots, horseshoes) to make them feel fun finding. However, despite these flaws this is without a doubt one of my favourite games, and I sometimes forget this BECAUSE of the huge amount of content. It’s so easy just to remember the hard times this game gives you. For instance, having found 99 out of 100 tags and searching everywhere for that lost one to no avail, or trying to complete the Zero mission Air Raid for the billionth time in a row. But there is a charm behind it all. You know that the developers were putting as much content into their game as possible, so even when it outright bores you, you still appreciate it for its scale. But the parts that do rock, like most of the story missions, the street races, even the vehicle schools, they REALLY rock. And of course this is all without mentioning the best aspect of the game: it is a sandbox game. This, along with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, was probably one of the very first open world games I ever played. I remember feeling so excited after finishing the intro cutscene and getting on the bicycle, because I was then in a world that was entirely mine to explore. It felt so great knowing that I could steal a car and blow it up, or go and get a haircut or tattoo, or just explore the area at will. I was about 12/13 when this game came out and it was certainly the in-thing. Back in my day you were a nobody unless you could name nearly every vehicle in the game. I have many special memories of playing this game all day after school and at weekends.
I feel like I played this game well. I used the best strategy that I could come up with and tried not to rely too heavily on others. A lot of the time I would crash into things simply because I was busy looking at the pages of notes I had written up that detailed the order I was to complete things in.
I’d like to add that I chose to mute all music in the game for the purpose of avoiding copyright when the video was uploaded to YouTube. Occasionally music would not play through the radio but through the actual sound effects, so I had to know when to turn down the SFX manually. This occurred at Jizzy’s Pleasure Dome, inside the casinos, and during stadium challenges.
I made the decision to splice the footage together at the point were I take a break. This occurs around 14 hours and 3 minutes into the game. I did this, not to hide that fact that I took a break midway through, but to make the footage consistent. This is actually the first game for the game logs that I have not completed in one sitting due to its length.
State when Playing - I became increasingly tired given the length of the game.
Resources - The locations of the Tags, Snapshots, Horseshoes, Oysters, and Import/Export vehicles were found using this San Andreas walkthrough: http://www.gta-sanandreas.com/guides/missions/
The speedrunner Joshimuz (https://www.youtube.com/user/Joshimuz) was a useful resource for some strategies.
I also remembered many tactics from my time playing this game when I was younger. A lot of this information came from various FAQs/Walkthroughs that I had read online or learnt from friends who had read it online.
Links to videos:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWHHqRZ94dk Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYQgDU7M7nI Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-X-AFpVURM
