GTA San Andreas release 20 years ago today. - Your knee popped when you got out of your chair didnt it?

I'd say from a sense of scale, ambition, and general content it's the best.

Later games might do things better, like the dynamism and story of GTA IV and GTA V just flat out plays better, but as an overall package it's the best game (just takes a bit to get into if you're mostly used to modern games)

San Andreas is a masterclass in world design that's only rivaled by Red Dead 2, the story is well paced and still regularly referenced today, and the amount of content puts modern games to shame. There's entire minigames and systems I didn't even know about after my first playthrough.
 
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Vibralldo said:
I'd say from a sense of scale, ambition, and general ambition it's the best.

Later games might do things better, like the dynamism and story of GTA IV and GTA V just flat out plays better, but as an overall package it's the best game (just takes a bit to get into if you're mostly used to modern games)

San Andreas is a masterclass in world design that's only rivaled by Red Dead 2, the story is well paced and still regularly referenced today, and the amount of content puts modern games to shame. There's entire minigames and systems I didn't even know about after my first playthrough.
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Said it better than i could. I did replay it a few years ago, and it still holds up well despite being old enough to drink. All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!

The definitive GTA experience.
 
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SaltyFanta said:
*snip*
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R* was absolutely on fire during the early 2000's, as per the famous timeline infographic.
R* Timeline
In my opinion, this rapid evolution of GTA from III to SA was due to the PlayStation 2 having the perfect balance of hardware capabilities as well as limitations. R* was efficiently harnessing the power of the PS2 and RenderWare during that period to create games full of content as they didn't have too much to squeeze out graphics wise. This however has spoiled the general audience, which believed that every other R* game from now on would deliver the same amount of content.

Thing is, after SA, R* had to effectively start from scratch. They now had to figure out how to effectively harness the power of the Xbox 360, which did bring unprecedented graphical fidelity, but that would come at a cost of how much content you could add to the game as you were developing the graphics, because you sure as hell didn't want to look like a PS2 game in this generation. Not only that, R* had to develop their own game engine after RenderWare was bought out by EA. This has led to GTA IV feeling like a major step backwards, even though it was far from it. Gamers have expected the same amount of content as they got in SA and then some, which led to a major disappointment, and a feeling of stagnation.

I beg to differ however, as to me, IV was a result of the Houser brothers wanting to make their dream game that was more grounded and restrained than what they've previously made. As they were figuring out which direction to take IV's story and design, they've ended up watching a whole bunch of Eastern European movies for inspiration, including Brat and Brat 2, legendary movies which have strongly influenced them in a myriad of ways. Chances are, if Sergey Bodrov was still with us, it would be him who would receive a proposition from R* to be the main role and not Vladimir Mashkov. If you play IV from the perspective of those movies rather than the perspective of San Andreas, it all really clicks together. IV compensated for the lack of content with the rich story and atmosphere, and for that alone it deserves the same spot on the podium as San Andreas. It wasn't a worse game, just a different one, equally as good.

By the time R* was getting around to making GTA V however, that's when the series truly stagnated. Under the pressure of the initial reception of IV, R* really wanted to make the next gen San Andreas people longed for, but they've decided to still make it for the current generation instead of waiting for the next one. In result, as R* tried to bridge IV's visual and technological prowess with SA's content density and gameplay, they've fell flat on both fronts. The attention to detail from IV was toned down, Euphoria physics were dumbed down, vehicle damage was dumbed down, and in the attempt to make the handling more like SA after the backlash of IV's slinky handling, they've overcorrected and made V's handling even less realistic than SA's.

Then GTA Online came around, Shark Cards were introduced and the rest is history, over a decade of nothing until T2's execs realized it's time to bring something fresh. By that time, the people who made GTA what it is have left the company, and frankly, anyone still hyped for GTA VI is either naive or stupid, and it just so happens that 99% of the GTA community is downright retarded. No matter how bad VI is going to be, people will fellate it endlessly just because it's GTA.

At the same time, how else would people expect for GTA to "evolve"? To me it sounds like people just wanted San Andreas but bigger and better. That's not evolution, that's stagnation, and IMO this expectation was what ultimately killed GTA. R* wanted to take it in a different direction with IV, which would be evolution, but people hated it, they wanted more San Andreas. R* gave them more San Andreas with V, it was a step backwards from both SA and IV in many regards, but people gobbled it down, and perhaps both R* and T2 realized their fans are mindless retards which is why they've been serving nothing but Online slop for the past 10 years. Less effort, more money, no passion.
Super Hans v2 said:
3.0 demake
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Option 1: torrent the OG 1.0 HOODLUM release and install that instead of whatever R* shat out past 2004
Option 2: use a downgrader to turn the 3.0 Steam garbage into proper 1.0
Then, go through this guide on how to mod San Andreas and install mods from this list to get a proper experience.

You'll have to learn how to mod GTA from scratch, the fundamental basic is that you never attempt to mod or even fix anything that isn't 1.0, and that you always either use the HOODLUM crack EXE or the Compact EXE. MixMods is your friend, it should be more than enough to get your head wrapped around it all.
 
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GT:SA was my first GTA, and easily the one I spent the most time in. Incredible game that none of the others have ever dethroned in my mind. It's a shame that Rockstar shuttered the functional PC ports of the PS2 trilogy for the objectively shittier "enhanced" edition and even those older PC editions were "updated" just to remove songs from the radio. Way to make a great case for piracy!

For people that like development tidbits and interesting programming stuff I'd reccomend @obbeVermeij on twitter. He worked on GTA III, VC, SA, and IV, and has cool insights on all the technical quirks and workarounds they used to get the GTA's functional on the PS2's limited hardware. He also answers questions.
This was his 20th anniversary post, but if you search through his @ he's got a lot of interesting prior threads.
 
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San Andreas was always my favourite! As a poor kid who didn't have that many games and too much free time: San Andreas had so much content and such a sprawling map that I could have sank an infinite amount of time into it.
Recently replayed 3, VC and SA on PS4 (not the Definitive Edition, the originals before they were pulled from online stores) and ended up getting the Platinum trophy for SA (admittedly it's the easiest to platinum) it was such a nostalgia trip.
 
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