GTA: San Andreas Review - San Fierro Edition
[Be sure to check out the coverage of Los Santos on LAist!]
We loved the last Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. The eighties music and cars, the neon glow of faux deco, the massive amounts of senseless violence, simulated sex and cocaine references. We knew that the only way they could top it would be to move it to city a little more conducive to quality car chases, and they have - it's called San Fierro.
While LAist may see things differently, we all know that LA car chases are about quantity. How many Buick Regals and Z28s have we seen trashed on the streets of Los Angeles where it's easy and cheap to shoot? In San Francisco, it's about quality. Sure, getting your crane truck up and down the hills for the follow angles is problematic, but can you say money shot? We can.
So it was a little disconcerting that upon diving into the game for the first time we found ourselves trapped in Los Santos. Since Rockstar introduced swimming in this version (in previous versions, leaving land meant an instant, watery death) we figured we'd just swim for it. We probably weren't the first people, real or virtual, to try to leave the Southland via any means possible.
Unfortunately, after landfall in San Fierro our wanted level went up to four stars and we were immediately gunned down by police boats and helicopters. The reduce wanted level cheat didn't work either - so if you want to roam the streets of San Fierro in your Stallion or Buccaneer (stand-ins for the Mustang and Barracuda from Bullit), you'll actually have to play the story missions. Lame.
So we spent almost an entire weekend completing mission after mission with the help of walkthroughs from Gamefaqs.com (God bless them). After completing Green Sabre (and learning our boys from the hood had betrayed us -- the nerve!) we were notified that we could now visit San Fierro. Yay! We jacked a chopper, hit the freeway and rolled into town Easy Rider style. Once we passed Foster Valley we got on the surface roads and drove past the piers on the Esplanade; did some beach driving on Ocean Flats; cruised Hashbury looking for some kind buds; took in the view from under the radio tower on Missionary Hill; dodged cable cars Downtown. In other words, it was pretty much San Francisco, except in miniature and not nearly as messy or crowded with homeless.
There's a lot of nice touches to the game. You'll definitely recognize some of your favorite landmarks. Another sweet bonus to unlocking the San Fierro missions were cutscenes involving Officer Frank Tenpenny, voiced by Sam Jackson, smoking a bong with Peter Fonda as The Truth, a yoga-posing, pseudo-spiritualist green triangle farmer. Zero, voiced by David Cross, plays a dead-on nerdy electronics whiz. MC Eiht does a star-turn in the role of Carl Johnson, the protagonist, with a performance straight outta Ganton (this SFist was born in East Beach -- EBG represent!). Completing the missions of Charlie Murphy's San Fierro pimp Jizzy B gets you his fly pimpmobile and all the pimping missions you can handle. Hearing James Woods, AKA Mike Toreno, reminds us how much we miss him. Put him in more movies already! The man is doing voice work for video games for Christ's sake!
All in all, the game f**cking rocks (we give it four out of four dead innocent bystanders), but we wish Rockstar would have given SF a little more love is all. For instance, in Los Santos there's a Blob Records in Vinewood - with a dead-on take off of the Amoeba logo. But there's no Blob Records in San Fierro's Hashbury or Easter Basin. What's up with that?