JsARCLIGHT

I thought that I was having that issue because I was playing the game back on my HDTV in widescreen (yes, for those who have HDTV's GTA:SA has a widecreen mode)... I even jacked the brightness all the way up to compensate for it but the image on screen seems very dark at times. I think it has something to do with the new "sun glare" effect they put in. If you notice, the times the game characters seem way too dark they are usually "in shadow" with a hard light source behind them. Plus add to that that the characters in this game are very dark... no that is not a racial slur, they are dark. Meaning they are dark skinned, wearing dark clothes and standing in poor lighting conditions at times. I noticed that when you are buying clothes in the stores and then walk outside "into the daylight" you can see the clothes better, the colors are more noticeable... yet at night and when in shadow your character becomes not much more than a black sillouette.

OK, I hate to keep gushing about this game but has anyone else seen some of the acting credits for the voices? Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn as the crooked cops are just perfect. Plus all the "hidden" voice actors on the radio stations like Ice T, Axl Rose, Chuck D and others just add some more class and help "sell" the game better. Has anyone parked and listened to the radio stations for a while yet? I plan to do that this weekend just to see what sort of comedy gold hides in those airwaves...

But being one of those good titles it means even though the game ages people keep buying it because it is one of the good titles. Games like KoTOR fade out because they are a bit too heady for most people to pick up and enjoy like a good shooter. Plus add to that that it took years for Halo to port to another system, PC at that. The only real way to play Halo for most people is to buy a $150 XBox or buy a $2000 computer. Most people will choose the first and then buy Halo. It is a credit to Microsoft that they had a game like Halo in their stable and that they only ported it to their "other console" the PC, forcing people to buy an XBox to play the game. I bet if Halo had a wide release across several consoles like many other big name blockbuster titles it's sales would have been much less... but that is speculation. It is always hard to explain the sales of "phenomenon" games like Halo or GTA... you'd think they would burn out eventually yet they don't. How many times can they re-release GTA and Halo? We'll see. (JsARCLIGHT puts down his re-re-re-re-released GTA super collector's first special edition PC package)

Can anyone tell me, if you have bought it, if the Unrated director's cut is actually that much different from the real rated movie? I was talking this morning with a co-worker who bought his unrated copy yesterday and he compared it to the all the other "unrated" movie releases (Old School, American Pie, etc.) and said what it did add was stupid things like a few more seconds of blood in some scenes that the MPAA most likely made them cut out.

One thing just now pointed out to me by a co-worker that I totally did not notice when playing the game last night (although in hindsight it should have been totally obvious) is that the new aiming reticle that appears for weapon lockons (the little green three point thing) actually changes color from green to yellow to red to black to show the health level of your target. I guess it is because I was shooting people and the whole "one shot one kill" with the Tec 9 kept me from seeing that. My friend also said you can "lock on" to people when you fist fight with them but I can't seem to get that to work outside of fighting the boxing guy... who you totally maul into a pulp easily. Then when you gain new fist fight techniques you can then really beat the tar out of people... especially if you guy is "ripped". One last coment on the changes in the game that I noticed: the weapon pickups no longer have the "halo of light" around them. Seeing the dropped weapons and cash of your victims is kind of hard now as they no longer have that ethereal green glow about them...

I keep finding more and more to do in San Andreas... Now that I have access to the car mods I find myself swiping car after car just to see what kind of mods can be put on them. I also just now started noticing all the various mini games that are hidden everywhere in the game. Basically any time you see an arcade game in the game you can walk up to it and "play it". The games may just be simple one screen old school fare but it's sad how much they suck you in just as much as the real game does. Also, having bricked a few missions last night I also like the new "advance time" function they added so you don't have to replay long boring sections of failed missions just to get to the part you screwed up on. So far, aside from the unfixed and still frustrating aiming system, this game keeps getting better and better. Word of caution though to the younger audience or the parents out there: they drop more cuss bombs in this game than any previous GTA release. I mean, these characters cannot speak one sentance without cussing. F this, N that... if you have a low tollerance for four letter words and racial slurs you might just get overloaded with this game. As Rod Flanders said: "Ow my freakin' ears!" As for Halo, you cannot deny the game's success but at the same time you can always say the same thing all the "Halo Haters" say: it's one of the only good early games for the XBox. I owned an XBox a while back and the only two games I had for it that I could tollerate were Halo and Gotham Racing... and the racing game got boring really fast. I myself equate Halo to games like Resident Evil 1 for the PS1... when the system came out you had a choice between a few titles, most of them stunk. But then there were one or two that were pretty good and those games sold like pants in the congo. Halo may be a fair FPS console title but you cannot deny that a major portion of it's popularity and sales come from the fact it is one of the few decent titles for that system, making it an almost "required purchase". Being a flagship title really boosts sales, just ask Mario.

I was going to stop by Beast Buy on my way home tonight and pick up the uncut DE DVD... ...but... I had a copy of GTA San Andreas in my passenger seat... could... not... resist.... had to go home and... play...

OK, I just spent the last three hours or so playing the game and here is my very early de facto review of the game (keep in mind I have only played for a few hours and the game is about 5% complete for me)... READ ON PAST THIS POST as I may inadvertently give out spoilers, if you want your play experience to be unbiased I would not read any further if I was you! Initial Impressions: Wow. Again... Wow. Visually the game is a step forward from Vice City... the feel of the areas and the "look" of things just seems "right". Several added touches to the game engine like the grasses, the much improved sun glare and night time light effects and the overall blending of the game's textures present a very cohesive package. I will say that this game is not the graphic leap forward that the makers promised... I will admit you can notice the "goosed up" elements but for the most part the game is Vice City on seroids in the looks department. All the negative things like draw-in and pop up still happen, sometimes glaringly so... but when you are just milling about without the world screaming down on you the game presents a very immersive picture. While I have only played for a few hours I already find myself getting lost in the city of Los Santos... I find myself winding the streets in a hot car going from the "hood" to the downtown district to the suburbanite areas and actually getting lost and having to access the pause menu map to plot my way "back home". I am chalking this up to unfamiliarity with the game map for right now though. The game feels huge... it may not actually be as huge as people claim but it sure feels dauntingly huge so far. The story is run of the mill so far to me, nothing to write home about... typical GTA fare with no real twists or turns yet. Thug Tomigotchi: The added "RPG" elements to the game are strange and somewhat foreign feeling. When you press L1 (which like old centers your camera) it also calls up your "Stats" window that shows your "levels" as well as the day. I've discovered that you really, really have to pig out in order to boost your "Fat" ratio and working out like three days in a row at the gym makes you almost uber buff instantly. The other level meters like "sex appeal" are a mystery to me though as you go get some tatoos or a new hair doo and the meter goes way up but then seconds later it goes way down again. What and how things affect some of the stats are a mystery and they are not explained very well. The Tony Hawk like clothing shopping is addictive... I outfitted my guy in what I thought were some stylish (albeit cheap ass) clothes and it made my sex appeal die down to almost zero. I guess a white man just can't dress a black man right. Initial impressions lead me to believe that while you have all these options to mod and deck out your guy almost everyone will end up doing the same things... buff him out so you can beat the living sheeit out of people and run him around so he can book like a olympian on foot. Also every weapon, vehicle type and other things I have yet to bump into have their own "proficiency meters"... meaning your guy sucks at shooting all of the guns and you have to "practice" to get his skills up before you can adequately take people out. In the long run that is what this game is about, the long run. The whole custom system of character creation is geared towards dedicating months of your life to this game... boosting skills and hitting the right "harmony" so you can beat the game. Certain levels even favor boosting your skills before you attempt them so you may find yourself driving around looking for things to shoot at like I am just so when you hit a certain mission you can shoot straight and no get killed. Gameplay Mechanics: A lot is the same and a lot is different. The basics of the game are the same... the control layout and function is almost identical with a few ecceptions. Subtle things like using the R3 stick to look around now rather than a herky-jerky cut to a first person camera simply pans around your guy and his little head moves to track the camera's look point. They moved radio controls to the D pad (which is nice as now you can change channels up as well as down the dial). They even added a feature to the menu that pre-sets the radios in your cars to your favorite station (I am currently rocking out to K-DST)... but that feature only works in cars you "own", meaning if you jack a car it's radio will be set to whatever the person in the car was listening to, but if you get out of that car and get back in it at a later time (like say you save your game, stash the car in a garage and come back to it "days later" in the game) the radio will remain set to what you had it on. There are also a few changes that are not meeting with my liking. For one, they touted the "new aiming system" as being far and beyond Vice City's system... guess what? It isn't. You still lock on to stupid things like innocent pedestrians when a gunman is ten feet away from you shooting you in the head and you now lock on to rediculous poo like car tires and such rather than a nice pissed shooter blasting away at you. In other words the aiming system is still frustrating as all get out... especially when it decides to switch over to the "new" manual aiming when you are despirately trying to kill someone who is shooting you and you end up dying while trying to line up a shot at him. I have died umpteen times tonight due to this ass aiming system... but that is nothing new. Another not so new yet somehow "new" gameplay element is the notion of roaming gangs around the city. Yes they are there... yes you can see them from a mile away... yes sometimes they will approach your guy and trash talk him... but only occasionally will they attack him. I have been able to lay waste to any who opposed me so far. Either the game is taking it easy on me early in the game or the other gangs are pushovers on the street. However while these random encounters seem far too easy to put down the actual scripted attacks on your person seem dauntingly hard... mostly thanks to that ass aiming system mentioned earlier. Vehicular Manslaughter: While only playing for a few hours you do encounter some of the new vehicle types... most notably the bicycles. While cool to ride around on and bunny hop all over the place the bikes in the game are pretty much worthless. You so much as tap a larger vehicle and you go flying. They are basically motorcycles with a tenth of the speed and no radio... plus the rapid tapping of the X button to peddal like your ass is on fire is annoying. Combine that with your stamina wearing out fast make bikes sort of a last ditch vehicle. On another note vehicle physics are a bit better in this game. Cars react and handle a bit more like real cars should, which includes spin outs, squealing tires on hard stops (along with plowing) and wild spins if you throw the car around too much. Supposedly as you boost your driving skills your car control will improve (there is also supposedly a driving school somewhere in the world) but as I have only played for a few hours I have yet to encounter it. All in all the "meat" of the game, the driving and the cars is improved... not by a landslide but by just enough to make it new and fresh. My Final Thoughts: While only having a few hours under my belt, my guy sporting combat fatigues and a face bandana running around like an urban commando I find myself getting sucked into the game all over again. Unlike the antics of the unnamed goon in GTA3 and the psycho Tommy Vercetti in Vice City the ability to custom out your guy has this strange ability to suck you into the game a bit faster. While the story is mostly pre-scripted and your guy's responses to almost everyone are out of your hands (so far) you still have this "along for the ride" feeling... but something tells me that might change. So far I like the game... a lot suprisingly. I mean, I just sat there... glued to the TV for three hours... cat curled up in my lap... all alone in the room with the lights out... wife away... it was almost a religious experience. I am not dissapointed... and for people who know me I really only like about one in ten games these days. For my money this game is a required purchase if you like the franchise and if you have never played a GTA game this one will suck you in if you like it or not.

Damn, If I'm having this much fun just reading the manual then the game must be the shiznit. "De Koch Fine Jewels: Shut that Bitch up... with ice!"

My copy just showed up here at work and now I'm antsy to go home and play it. So far the manual is waaaaay better than the previous two games. Plus the soundtrack is finally "something for everyone". I always felt GTA3's sound track was weak, very "techno heavy"... and unless you grew up in the '80s Vice City's sounds probably burned your ears. My radio will most likely be tuned to the talk station, K-DST (with Axl Rose as the DJ of all people) and Radio-X... the music of my childhood and my college years. Boss.

I myself am somewhat dubious of the subject matter this time around for GTA as well. It is obvious that for Vice City Rockstar simply ripped off Miami Vice, Scarface and a few other notable '80s movies for their story and content fodder and it appears to me they did the same thing with San Andreas. You can feel the Colors, Boys in the Hood and Menace 2 Society influence... heck, most of the character pics I have seen appear directly lifted from those movies. One character is just about ten pounds away from being Doughboy. The difference is that those movies were social commentaries with a moral at the end whereas GTA:SA seems to be just capitalizing on it... cashing in on the image rather than the lessons those movies taught people. In the game's defence (although not meaning to defend the game as it is what it is) this time around it appears they are trying to give the main character a sort of "reluctant criminal" feel to him. Making him out to be "forced" back into crime... I know that doesn't mean much but perhaps the game will allow the player to take a more noble and less criminal road to solving some of the problems in the game. Then again this is Grand Theft Auto we are talking about and all those pimps and hookers won't shoot themselves.

You got me... I'm an idiot when it comes to PC stuff. I'd think that if there is such thing as a PS2 emulator for the PC that will read the discs then why not? It's the same kind of discs as all the other games.

Are retailers actually expecting a mob for this release? I myself do not expect GTA:SA to put up the numbers Halo 2 will... I mean, GTA has a pretty hard stigma riding on it whereas Halo 2 (while also sporting a M rating) seems to not be seen as the violent kill-fest GTA is. I know a lot of parents at my office who swore their children would never get their hands on any GTA games yet they would buy Halo 2 for their kids. Another thing I just noticed (watching my little TV in my study here) there are two different edits of the TV spot... both are almost exactly alike except that one has a few cuts of more violent, gun brandishing action (that runs on the more adult channels) and the other has those clips replaced with less violent, more mundane clips (on the networks).

I just got the email that my copy shipped tonight and should be in my grubby mitts tomorrow at work. Seeing as I'm a huge fan of this game series and I know others on the board are and are not I'd like to get some feedback from folks on this new chapter in the pimp shootin', pedestrian hittin', car jackin', uzi sprayin', punk cappin' opus of crime. I myslef have heard so much rumor about the game from my employees and on the internet... the game seems to be almost double the scope and size of Vice City (if that is possible) and some people (to a degree myself included) think it may be a bit too overly ambitious. What does everyone else have to say? What have you heard? Will it be true? Have you got yours yet? Are you going to get it? Do you think the people that claim the game inspires hate and crime are right and I'm going to go jack an old lady's crown vic tomorrow under the influence of this game? Good? Bad? You're the criminal with the gun... or at least you will be after tomorrow. ... and while I thought the Vice City "I Ran" commercial spots had flair and style this new Guns and Roses spot for San Andreas just seems to capture the spirit of the game. Plus with the darn commercial running in super high rotation on local cable here I hear that darn song like every ten minutes now... must... kill... axl... rose...

With their good buddies George Lucas, Michael Eisner and Jerry Bruckheimer. Edit: OOOOOOOOOH I just remember the KING of all craptastic comic to movie movies: Howard the Duck. Peeee-yoooke.

Then I'm glad I stopped my list short then. You have to admit that stuporman 3 through whatever sucked dolphin though.

While I myself am not much of a superhero movie fan I have noticed a lot of superhero/comic movies not on your list that I would have on mine... where all the others left out because you yourself consider them "too good to be bad" or did you just forget some? Edit: Three comic/superhero movies I personally loathe but people seem to like that are NOT on your list... Batman (the first Tim Burton one AND the campy late 60's movie) The FIRST Crow (Brandon Lee blah blah blah blah the movie sucks) Hellboy (just didn't like it... Ron Pearlman is mostly to blame) I can name more but I'll only make people angry... not liking the "good" comic movies can make you a marked man around the internet.

I know this is just continuing to derail this thread but I have a slight bit of insight into the whole armor issue... when I was in the army in the late '80s I was in a recon unit attached to the 1st Armored Division and I was around enough armor to call myself an unofficial expert (having never been inside an actual tank though, that 1st AD patch on my shoulder was as close to tank treads as I got in my hummer). When that guy said tanks and armor roll around unbuttoned he is only half right. Yes, armor does manuver unbuttoned a lot... but when going into combat or when being engaged those tank jocks close up those hatches faster than you can say OH SH!T they're shooting at US! The point of armor is to be impervious to small arms and even some larger arms... riding around with your doors open is fine for point to point driving but in a hairball the last thing you need is a stray 7.62 round bouncing into that open hatch and taking out your driver or your commander. I know first hand that the helmets and gear tank crews wear (at least the gear they had back in 88 to 92) could not stop an assault rifle round and was basically only good for keeping your head from banging into all the sharp points inside a cockpit... you get one of those big tanks up to speed and you bounce around like a weeble in a blender in there. Remove the armor from the crew and you might as well mount the guns on a truck because leaving the thing open is akin to doing that. As for the whole "being able to see" thing you can see just fine out of the driver's seat of a M117 or M1A1 with the hatch open or closed... you have no way to look left or right really unless you get up out of your seat and looking behind is impossible anyway unless you are the tank commander or you stand up and pop the top hatch of the 17's. As for the Spartas tanks they are pure fantasy in the end... no real armored vehicle could ever do the things they do or be laid out the way they are. The open cockpits are just a nod towards the whole "chariot and centurion" thing the designers had going on as it poses more real world dangers than it does benefits. Comparing them to real armor is like comparing an F14 Tomcat to a Valkyrie... one is real and thus has definate strengths and weaknesses while the other is pure fantasy and can be and do whatever the writers and animators make it do.

I myself like games that allow the player to determine the character they are... to a degree GTA VC does that but the new GTA San Andreas is supposed to do that even better. Want your guy to be a big fatass? Done. Want him to dress like a dork and be whisper thin? Done. As for Geeks getting killed in HL, the way I saw it it was the skill of the player that saved Gordon... not his "skillz". After all, he's no Solid Snake. It's not like he's flip-kicking people, snapping necks and doing jujitsu stuff. I actually fondly remember dying like a tool tens of times in HL, mistakes that a supreme hardcore commando would not have made.

But Marines are Marines. How often when the crap hits the fan does there just happen to be an Ex-SEAL turned cook hiding in the ductwork that will take out the bad guys? Edit: My point was the cinematic and video game crutch of always having the hero be some sort of commando SEAL ranger delta force kill factory is just a bit too overused.

But the implication was that he was some sort of uber scientist headhunted by Black Mesa to be one of the few elite super scientists of the world working on next level crap... I don't exactly see a commando Arnie type handling test tubes working on a dimensional portal. Most of Gordon's "super power" comes from his special Ricardo Montobon Spy Kids 3D super suit... without that suit he is just the same as the other whitecoats walking around. The only real soldier in HL was the one you play in Opposing Force and even the security guard Barney you play in Blue Shift is pretty much Joe Everyman.

I don't know about others (other than Kin that is ) but I always sort of liked the whole "nerdy anti-hero" that Gordon Freeman was. I myself am a bit fed up with the musclebound chisel jawed mod hair ken hero archetype that seems to exsist in every game. Gordon, being a scientist, would have just been stupid if he looked like Tom Cruise and was ripped like Arnie.

Just like being told you have some disease, get a second opinion. Take the box to a local mom and pop shop or another chain that offers PC repair and get their take on it. If they tell you the exact same thing then you have your answer... if they tell you something different is wrong take it to a third place as a tiebreaker. If the third place says something completely different than that just means either none of them really know what your problem is, they are all guessing at the problem or they are all pulling your leg to get more money out of you. That is the danger zone with me and computers, I don't know enough to know who is right and who is wrong so I have to have a trusted set of people I take my home box to for help. In my mind computer problems are like car problems, if you don't know and and can't fix it yourself take it to someone you trust to do the job right and not bend you over like Gacy.

I don't know enough about computers to tell you if what they are handing you is a load of crap or not but what I do know about electronics and circuit boards tells me if it is a capacitor and they have a rough idea where it is at then you can definately replace it... you just have to find someone who has the skill and is willing to hunt down the bad bit, remove and replace it. Computers are no different than your TV, a radio or any other circuit board based electronic device for the most part and in truth all those things can be repaired to some degree... the problem comes usually with cost. In a lot of cases to hire a pro to troubleshoot your problem, get the replacement parts and do a quality repair job can cost you the price of replacing the item with a new one. That is super true of VCRs, DVD players and TV's (as I found out all too well). So for my opinion it stands that all things are repairable... the question is are you willing to pay to have it repaired or should you just toss it and buy a new one. My guess is the chance of finding someone skilled enough to do that repair job will be a steep task in and of itself and they will most likely charge you the rough cost of just replacing the part to fix it. Edit: now that I think about it would a blown circuit on a motherboard just cause the whole thing not to work? I would think that would be the case. I have seen my fair share of blown electronics and even if some stupid part of the board is blown out that does not directly affect the operation of the device it can cause the whole device to not work.

Feeling the need to just be a jerk when I and my team went to see the movie it was at a 12:30 show (first show of the day) at a suburban theater on a monday of all days... sad but true: we were the only people in the theater and for some reason we laughed even harder because we had no fear of other people wondering what the hell our mental problem was. My throat was sore leaving the theater from laughing so hard. In some cases it was that you are surrouned by people laughing so you laugh even harder for some reason.