Time Theft Auto

San Andreas is arguably one of the best video games of all time, from depth of gameplay, to expert scripting and voice acting, to the simply massive landscapes and terrains you move through and interact with, but that’s not to say it’s not flawless. In fact, there are glaring flaws that often interrupt the enjoyment of the game and make you say “what the f?”

The worst two offenders: * Control skills: Why does every car spin out like it’s driving on grease? Well, duh. Your own gaming skills don’t matter—it’s just that your character can’t drive very well. That makes sense… in a precise shoot-em-up action game… * Unnecessary distances: A sample mission—drive 5–10 minutes (real time) through back woods to pick a friend up, then drive another 5–10 minutes back the other way to do surveillance. Once done, drive 2–5 minutes back to where you started to be able to pick up another mission. Mess up and have to do it all over again. Because my time is, um, disposable?

Thanks in part to MMORPGs and titles like GTA III, games are being increasingly designed for people with massive amounts of time on their hands, who can fully invest the effort of building up character abilities. Is this good gaming? I would argue no. If proper difficulty in game tasks can only be achieved by essentially crippling the player via undeveloped stats, then you haven’t actually addressed the difficulty, you’ve only hacked around it. Improved stats should be rewards for extended gameplay, not requirements. I’ve already looked into a San Andreas FAQ and noted at least one mission where the author wrote “You will need a lung capacity rating of at least 20% to pass this mission…this should only take you about 30 minutes of swimming to build up…” — case in point.

In any case, there is much to truly love about what San Andreas has done, but I would feel better about the future of gaming if titles required less “living” within games and respected our living outside the games better. Unfortunately, this is just another symptom of the problems that mediums which rely on teens as their primary consumers have to face — Go one way to simplify and lose your base “hardcore” audience. Go the other, and alienate adults while reforcing the image that “it’s just for kids.” San Andreas is walking the line between both for me right now: only time will tell if it pulls a coup and manages to stay there, or if it ultimately falls into the hardcore camp.