I know.  You think I'm crazy.

To set things a bit straighter than you think... I like the GTA series.  I have GTA1, 2, 3, VC and SA.

Now you're thinking 'then what's wrong with you?!'.

There's nothing wrong with me. It's San Andreas. It's a s**tty game.

For those of you obsessed with the game, you don't have to read on. Go back to playing the rest of San Andreas and unlocking the Harrier jet, and finishing all the car races, plane races, spray painting, oyster collecting, and marathons.

Do you see why I don't like San Andreas?

Well, I guess I was a little off... calling SA a s**tty game is unfair... longwinded is more appropriate.

Personally, I am a simple gamer.  I enjoyed playing the quick missions in GTA3 and Vice City.  GTA3 was cool because the city wasn't too big and missions didn't take ages to finish.  Vice City was also likable as it followed the steps of its older brother.

However, I did not like the older games: GTA1 and GTA2.

The two parent games (1 & 2) were TOO open and TOO wide.

I personally had trouble finishing the missions (thanks to a wide city, and no map) and it's extreme-open-ended-ness quickly bored me.

You're wondering why.

You see, games have always had some form of authority over the gamer.  These came in the form of missions, commands and orders.  When most of us played Doom, our main satisfaction in the game came from the fact we ended the mission, or destroyed the Cyberdemon (sorry for the spoilder..).

Basically, the completion of authorised goals lead to our happiness.

However, with GTA1 and 2, there was no sense any authority.  We had missions, but there was no real satisfaction from completion.  There was no final boss.  No gratifying exploding torso of the Cyberdemon (sorry, once again).  All we got was a movie at the end, and we got there through collecting money.

Wow.

Some of you may now see a link between my annoyance of the older GTAs with San Andreas.  If you understand my annoyance, my previous hundred words were not in vain.  However, since some of you still don't understand I will go on.

Basically, the reason I don't like GTA: SA, is because it follows the gameplay of it's parents (GTA1, 2), not its brothers (GTA3, VC).  Sure, the graphics are 3D, but the missions are too longwinded.  The missions don't have any feeling of satisfaction and the goals are uninspiring.  Who really cares about spray painting in the 'hood?  Not me.  BUT, you need to spray them all to fully complete the game... and it's an objective in the game.

Also, to fully complete the game, you will need to do about a hundred more mediocre tasks.

THAT is what the game has come to.  TASKS.  It isn't fun to spray paint.  It isn't fun to collect oysters.  And it definitely isn't fun to play through the WHOLE game.  Several friends of mine stopped playing SA half-way through, simply because the missions were too overwhelming (I think it was when CJ had to drive for 5 minutes into the middle of nowhere to take photos of gangsters then drive back to his next mission... just writing it is long).

I don't know about some people, but I prefer to have fun and excitement when playing games... not do work.

Excitement from games is when you frag an enemy in Halo, when you hear that "Headshot!" in Unreal Tournament, when you hear the snap of your enemy's neck in MGS, and the adrenaline of jumping on mushrooms in Super Mario.

When I played San Andreas, there was little excitement, little adrenaline, and too many jobs to do.

These tasks in San Andreas were littered everywhere, and missions were equally boring + repetitive.

To think I was enthusiastic about the game to even have it preordered... a true gaming tragedy.

To listen to more gamer thoughts, stay tuned.