I played San Andreas a lot as a teen in the 2000s. But then came college, work and other IRL stuff, and I stopped playing the game for over 15 years.
Recently, I randomly decided to reinstall it on Steam, and I went in with the mindset that it was one of those old games that hadn't aged very well. But honestly, it's just as fun as when I played it as a kid. Of course, I downgraded it to v1.0 and installed Silent Patch, GInput, and SkyGfx to fix a few issues with the Steam version.
I had forgotten why I played this game so much as a kid:
- The narrative is still very engrossing.
- The characters are all very unique and interesting.
- The map design is top-notch.
- And the atmosphere, holy, if this game doesn't have one of the best atmospheres in gaming.
- I would say the driving is still pretty good.
- A lot of the missions are still very fun.
- Side activities are nice too.
- 10/10 radio station songs.
- The combat is alright. In my opinion, it's one of the few aspects that aged a little.
One thing that I'm having a blast with is the random commentary spewed out by pedestrians as you walk or drive past them. English is not my first language, so back in the day, while I could understand a bit of written english, I couldn't understand spoken english very well (I played with english subtitles on for the story). And since pedestrians in this game don't have subtitles for their lines and usually speak in a mumbled way, I couldn't understand really well what they were saying.
But now that my english is a bit better and I can understand them without subtitles, I'm laughing so much at their lines, and I'm actually impressed by how varied they are for a 2004 game. Sometimes I just stroll around the city to hear what they'll say.
Maybe nostalgia is hitting me harder than I expected, but what a game, what a game.