GTA : San Andreas - Life's A Beach

Gay Tony

2010-02-23T23:38:00.002Z

Oh yeah I almost forgot to mention. I bought a 360 just so I could play the add-ons.

Ballad of Gay Tony is superb, tons of extra vehicles and weapons. the missions are sublime, and you can replay them once finished to better your score - a brilliant addition.

New radio stations, which are just as so-so as the original IV ones to be honest. They're not bad, but they're not exactly amazing either. Not VC material

Lost and the Damned is okay, not really any extras just a different story with different missions. They're good missions though, it's a little short and the whole gang management is a bit weak and doesn't really last too long. So a tip, don't go bulldozing in to finish the main mission before you've finished all the races and gang wars. Like I did.

ZTA

2010-02-23T23:28:00.002Z

Yes, what could be more satisfying than a gta style game but with hoards of zombies to deal with. Nothing really.

Drive cars, explore a large map, and handle player attributes for survival elements. Manage your health, energy, and strength. Harvest your own food. Build a barricade and call it home. And in all this, just don't get bitten.

The zombies move slow, so don't worry too much about them. no really, they're so slow you can just go on about your normal day to day routine. Oh and there's nobody else about in this city, so don't bank on making any friends.

Most cars work, you can try fixing the ones that don't. You'll need a decent mechanics skill though. You can earn this throughout the game by fixing smaller things.

Oh there's no weapons, well there might be a few shotguns about - but you'll need to find them first. And once you've used up the ammo, heck knows where you might get anymore.

You can always attack zombies with other tools, though it's risky. One bite and it's all over really. Best to just avoid em all.

A thing of beauty

2009-03-30T11:25:00.002Z

Just a note. Last night I loaded up IV and again just noticed how sodding gorgeous this game can be. I was looking at the alonquin island from the west side, at night time. Everything had a strange grey hue to it, but just so goddamn beautiful to look at.

And so Chinatown Wars?
It's simply amazing, one of the best gta games we've ever had. Brilliant missions, well thought out, exciting, lots and lots of secret and hidden stuff to do.
It's all based in the IV map of liberty city, minus the third island.

keep em coming rockstar

4YEARS

2008-12-08T14:07:00.001Z

Fuck me this site is four years old!

GTA IV, only 20 pigeons left to go and 1 unique jump. And then I'm done, and we can multiplay our socks off.

feel free to comment, lol.

Still posting

2008-05-15T13:46:00.002Z

for what it's worth..

65% now in GTA IV. Have been concentrating on the Stevie car missions and the Most Wanted List, which is almost complete.

Carmen's health boost trick doesn't work. BUG REPORT!

There's a distinct lack of driving missions in this one, shame. And the race missions suck and are way too easy.

GTA IV - second island unlocked

2008-05-01T09:47:00.002Z

After 16 hours of solid play now I finally unlocked the main island. Now the subway system is completely available to me, as the third island has no subway system.

Tearing my hair out last night trying to steal a car for 'Brucie', who's this fucked up steroid junkie who just keeps shouting and calling himself a WINNER. He's pretty fucking funny.

The combat system is great fun in this game, you get to hide behind almost any object in the game - and then either shooting loosely out or making darting movements out to try and target someone. There were two big missions which I did a lot of this, failed them numerous times.

I got lost on the subway system trying to change lines, ended up in uptown and then couldn't find the 'J' line (red line), and so I lost a date with LJ. When I rang him back he didn't want to know.

The views from a chopper are breathtaking, no draw distance you can see everything!

GTA IV - some more

2008-04-30T12:45:00.002Z

Right, where was I?

Before I go on I'd like to point out a few of my ideas that got used in the new game, breaking into cars, going through the windscreen, and hearing the radio when you're not in the car. yay

The latter idea is so cool and a great touch, ie you can still hear the radio from the car if you're stood close to it. Nice ambient moment.
Flying through the windscreen is something else, and as you can imagine heaps of fun.

There's no order to my rant so I'll just get on with it.

Vehicles are a great deal tougher, it can take an age to get a car to explode. And they don't seem to auto explode when they roll either. You'll get to see some terrific damage on the cars, one of mine had it's whole front squashed and the wheels were all pointing in different directions - thus needless to say it wouldn't go anywhere after that.

Lots and lots of vehicles to choose from, even at this early stage in the game. And they're all very realistic, even the trashmasters look like those New York ones. Trucks themselves are far better now, they feel huge and they handle a lot better than previous games - no more strange sliding about. Patriots which were modeled slightly on Hummers are now indeed exactly like Hummers (and there's police version too).
I ventured into the airport, much to the displeasment of the authorities, and drove around the runways in one of those cool big wheeled wagons, lots of police on my tail. Great fun.

The handling has changed a great deal. In keeping with this extra layer of realism Rockstar have made driving rather difficult, it'll take some getting used to. Cars take longer to gain acceleration, making collisions with other vehicles something even more to avoid. The hand-brake needs a more softly-softly approach too, or you'll find yourself 180 degrees facing the wrong way mostly.

I guess this is more real, I dunno I don't drive.

The map is a lot more condensed, there's not much open space like in San Andreas. So they've managed to cram a lot more areas within the city itself, ie on rooves and atop generally any structure you care to mention. You can now climb ladders, fire escapes, you can jump up to ledges and sidle across, swimming is still here, you can pick up smaller objects to throw, entering buildings requires no loading time, a lot more moves in combat system such as hiding and peering behind objects.

The subway system is now totally excellent, with different lines and more stations it all feels a lot more useful. There's even a friendly robotic female voice to tell you which station is next. You can change the view while riding them, even rotate the camera to see different angles. This also works with riding taxis, YES you can hail and ride taxis anytime you wish. It's just like being in New York it really is.

When you start, only two islands are open to you (out of 6), 3 main ones and 3 smaller ones, the first smaller ones requires a bridge toll to be paid but thats just a matter of slowing down for the barrier to open. Fail to do so will result in the local law interested in your actions. The first island is similar to Brooklyn, no huge skyscrapers here.

And check out the braking noise that the vehicles now make, ultra-real!

GTA IV

2008-04-30T10:38:00.003Z

Well what a week it's been, nay should I say what a month it's been.

The game is finally out now and shops pretty much sold out on the day. With barely an advert in sight, that was some marketing trick Rockstar managed to pull off there.

So how's the game. Simply put, it's tremendous. Okay, here's the long version...

(played on ps3 by the way..)

As with any GTA game the longer you play this the more you'll get out of it, if anyone came up to me and said they hated the game but had only played it for a couple of hours - they'd be brushed aside and any further comments sent direcly to the trashcan.

I've played this now for approximately 7 hours, solid. I'm still on the first island. Why? Am I shit at it? lol

I must have spent about 2 hours on the actual game itself, I find that getting to know the map, where important locations are, tricky road junctions, etc that's all very useful for future missions.

The main difference of course that anyone will notice is the graphics, amazing aren't they. But as we all know graphics don't make a game great, they are only the top layer of a game, supported underneath by the gameplay foundations. A perfect game has both, a shit game has only good graphics, an ultra shit game has neither.

For a start they've changed the whole engine, gone are the pre animated players movements and instead we're treated to on-the-fly collisions and interactions. For instance my guy tripped and rolled down a rugged hill at some point, if this had been a pre set animation the rolling would have been static and unconvincing.

My post will get long so I'll split it up, besides I need to eat right now.

There's a lot to talk about on this game. Don't go too far away!

Blogging in the new year

2008-01-16T11:34:00.000Z

I'm back !!

This will be my new blog area from now on. My main site Everythings is currently carrying my ongoing online graphic novel. Check it out if you wish.

On here I'll be performing my usual rants about video gaming, photography, fishing, programming, zombies, and moaning a lot.

Hurrah it feels great to be here again

CLOSE DOWN

2007-03-21T11:41:00.000Z

Closing down this blog now, you can read my further GTA adventures on my mothe site - QAOP Space

Will keep this available for archives until I've salvaged them all, probably be a while now.

LCS : Hidden Package ahoy!

2007-03-15T14:43:00.001Z

Having a blast playing Liberty City Stories lately, even with the lack of flying and swimming involved.

I found another hidden item last night, I have 18 more to find and they're sooo difficult to locate. This last one I managed to see completely flukely, looking upwards quite high up on top of a wharehouse roof. To get it I had to park an ambulance against the wall at the back of the hospital (on the third island). Climb onto the wall and then big jump across to the roof. That's what I love about these hidden packages on this version, most of them are hidden in a way where you really have to work out a complicated climbing route to reach them.

I managed to complete the Sanchez park course missions too, it rewarded me with a 'Manchez' a super-duper version of the Sanchez, but it only seems to come in red flavours. Nice though.

Think I've done about 12 unique jumps out of 26. Again, struggling now to find anymore. Also the rampages are well hard, some seem just impossible. I'll work them out though I'm sure. That's why I'm the master and everyone else is inferior, of course.

Loving this radio too, could be my second favourite now out of all the GTA's - Vice City being the obvious marvellous bestest of all.

Oh, and as a little bonus last night I completed the Go Go Faggio bike mission down on the docks, a fun little checkpoint mission where the pick-ups are really hard to see - they're just hazy yellow blobs. Don't seem to have been given any reward. Hmm.

Have I cheated?

2007-02-06T11:57:00.000Z

Well we'll find out at about 12:30pm today.

Here's the thing.

Lately I've been playing my San Andreas game (on PS2) trying to find those elusive final horseshoes (2 of). It's been kind of getting to me and I finally flumped last night and had a wee peek at a location map on the internet. Now I only picked one at random, that I thought I had and hadn't checked for a while. And there it was, un collected, outside someones house, next to the freeway.

Now here's the rule.

IF when I check my XBOX version of my game, which I collected about 47 horseshoes in total, that I discover that I've collected this horseshoe already then no way in hell have I cheated. I'm putting it all down to confusion between the two games and remembering which horseshoes I've picked up.

IF on the other hand it is also uncollected on the XBOX game then *sigh* yes I will be deemed a cheat. And also there lies the ponder should I cheat for the final horseshoe and final oyster ??

In thirty minutes time, all will be revealed......

VCS - update

2007-01-25T09:29:00.000Z

Not played much over the Christmas period, just starting to get back into it.

Managed to break through my brick wall missions, only to come into a couple more. Got through them, and now I only have one mission available, which I failed last night.

The previous missions were with Lance, knock out the police antennas and then clear your four star wanted level, after that I had to hovercraft around after Lance who was in a chopper dropping packages. One with the movie director to perform various stunts on the jetski. Then I had to shoot up a load of women in the pool area of a hotel, this took ages and was really hard. Next up was clearing the back stage area of bad guys for Phil Collins, again this was hard because of a time limit.

Now I'm left with a mission to take out a load of FBI snipers in a time limit task. Only attempted once and failed, surely won't be a problem though.

I'm loving flying the helicopters, pitty there's no radio in the huey ambulance and fire fighting ones.

It's also a shame that I can't play the PSP game for long periods of time, like the PS2 version. Maybe this is good thing for my eyes but the great thing about GTA is getting lost in it and having a whole evening fly by. If it's ever released for the PS2 I'll get it, I'll be a bit annoyed but I'll still get it.

The moon buggy type vehicle does indeed travel in water, which is great because the hovercraft is crap to be honest.

Got around 72 red ballons now, struggling to find those last 30. God knows how difficult it's going to be finding the final one.

And 'Canis Canem Edit' just arrived on my desk. Looks like GTA at school. Nice!

VCS: Take it to the bridge!

2006-12-18T11:37:00.000Z

Played some VCS this weekend, christmas time has been taking over and I've not had a chance to fart really in the direction of games playing.

Managed to complete the Compound Impound car missions, there were 4 levels in all. I'm not sure what I've been rewarded with though, I think maybe the All Terrain vehicle at my scrapyard site could be one of them. It looks like the moon buggy of the game of the same name. Actually just thinking about it, I bet it can go in water too.

I'm racing through the red balloon hunt, have about 60 now. Won't be long before I'm tearing my hair out looking for the last 10.

And I'm totally stuck on a couple of missions, reached a brick wall. There's one where I have to knock out the antennas on top of police stations, I just keep getting the shit kicked out of me with the four star wanted level. The other mission sees me ambushed by a shit load of girls at a swimming pool. Again just keep getting twatted.

Plenty of other missions and driving/flying stuff to do in the meantime though.

Great game!

Mall of the Dead

2006-12-01T10:59:00.000Z

Hells bells, there's a zombie mission in VCS. It's called Brawn Of The Dead and sees you helping out some film maker in the mall. At first you have to shoot lots of oncoming zombies with a shotgun, this was fairly easy. Next you must defend the record shop from zombies with a sword. This one was more frantic, but still passed it easily.

Seems I'm doing a few of these missions for the film maker, the next one was driving a stunt car through the town crashing into stunt explosive cars for action points.

Found a couple more sub missions. "Crash" has you driving a bus and trying to do as much damage as possible, I failed because the bus caught fire! I found another hovercraft mission, just a simple checkpoint one.

Now have 50 red balloons.

Gangs have started attacking my businesses, let me I say. Can't be bothered to defend them as it seems to be too much miver.

VCS: 24%

2006-11-29T10:37:00.000Z

i found a hovercraft and a checkpoint mission. The craft is slightly better than the San Andreas one, but it doesn't violently explode when smoking making it much less fun.

I forgot to mention about the Quad bike, that's new.

There's another Huey helicopter, an ambulance one. This time it doesn't have the swinging basket until you start the sub mission so you get to fly this one properly.

Well it crashed on me last night, and after I'd done a ton of CIA missions. Okay they're just collect-a-missions but still I was quite annoyed. I was in the middle of the boat CIA ones and as I stepped out of a boat my man character just went invisible and wouldn't move. bah!

"Everything counts in large amounts"

2006-11-28T09:19:00.000Z

I've already located half the red balloons now, they're easy! Yes this sentence is tripe, if you're worth your GTA salt you'd know this. I had the same experience with the LCS 'hand' items. Very easy to find until you get to the last 20 or so. Then it's fucking impossible.

Having said that I played LCS the other day and found another one! I also managed to get a few rampages done, some of the hard ones too.

For a hand-held game this game is huge. I thought it would be played down a lot because of the size but it's just as big if not bigger than the original Vice City. Here are the sub missions I've found so far:

Turismo - race games, I've found two meets so far, that could be all there is
CIA - compound impound, or something, this is your 'import/export' type mission. Nick cars and bring them here. After the fourth vehicle I nabbed it told me there was another place looking for boats. So I wonder if there's one for planes?
Land, Sea and Air - similar to the iron man contest on San Andreas. Checkpoint mission involving first the Sanchez, then the Jet bike, and finally the Sea Sparrow.
PCJ checkpoint mission - near the cop shop up town, it's huge and daunting at the moment. One for later.
Beach Patrol - commandeer the BF Injection on Washington beach and drive the paramedic around to casualties on the beach. Not bad and the good thing about this mission is it checkpoints after so many missions completed, so if I start it again it won't start right back at mission 1.
Fire Support - Woot! Pilot the fire chopper and drop water on fires to put them out, collect more water from the sea. A good new game.
Air Support - Cross between above and Paramedic, rescue casualties by helicopter. Another Huey chopper makes it's appearance here, great.
BMX Mall - can't remember it's real name. In the north mall grab the show bmx and do one of those missions where green checkpoints are 1 point and red ones are 3 etc. I like these.
Biplane checkpoint - Told you about this already, fly the plane through the checkpoints. Basic stuff.
ATV races - like the sanchez races on LCS based around one track but different routes.
Empire missions - Not so secret these ones, but still sub based. Attempt either repo-man, pimp, protection racket, drug dealer, and two others I've yet to unlock, to build up your empire and increase your earnings. You get paid at 4pm everyday directly (so no driving around to pick up your dosh like the original VC)

I'm sure I found a Sanchez checkpoint mission somewhere, but i forget where.

All the usual missions are here as well. Let's not even discuss Paramedic ones.

Vice City Stories : Just when you thought it was safe...

2006-11-27T13:57:00.000Z

Okay it's great, but you knew I'd say that didn't you. So first off let's gripe about it, and there are some ugly ones here so be ready.

Pop up. The scurge of all gaming, driving games in particular, is evident in abundance on this. It's affected a few of my mission attempts too, it's not just a visual nuisance it actually conflicted with my gameplaying at points. Like when I was trying to lure the cops into a wall only to realise that there was an invisible wall right in front of me and I got slam dunked into it. Not nice, much swearing to be had.

Blur. I was warned about this anyway, it's not half as bad as I expected but it's still apparent and when you turn around sharpish on foot the graphics can send you slightly dizzy. Especially in the fairground area, it's a bit trippy.

Radio Cut Out. Hmm, at first this didn't bother me all that much but it's happening a lot more frequently now. The radio just stops for a second of so. Very annoying, and might just be my disk.

Car Garage Problem. At first I thought I was mistaken but no, the garage in your house south of the second island eats up your cars. All the time. Very bad.

Control. Not much of a gripe, just not used to it. I can change it so the drive by's are easier but then I sacrifice my hand brake. hmph.

There's other little niggles that have happened to me at some points, but no more than what we got in the original games.

Now on with the game. Despite the above problems the actual game is fantastic, it's Vice City in your pocket ferchrisake!

You start the game on the second island this time, in the army barracks. You indeed work for the army, briefly. Soon you get kicked out for bringing a hooker back to the barracks. Then you work for Phil, remember the gun lover in the original. After that you work for Phil's sisters husband and then after you killed his ass you meet up with your brother Lance Vance. Of course the very same. Quite a few missions later you get to open up the original mainland. Hurrah! Thats where I am now.

So what's happened so far?

Well first off I'll talk about the new vehicles and any amended ones I've seen. Most cars are the same as the original VC, the Perinnial is more like the ones you see in LCS though, much better in other words. There's new gangs, and of course they have their own vehicles mods like always. The Cholos's have taken the Sabre, and painted it yellow. It's very neat in fact, but the Sabre was always a fave of mine. The Sabre Turbo is still here, parked in a car park near the airport.
There's a new motorbike - the Streetfighter. It's very mean as you can imagine, much like the 400 in San Andreas. The police bikes are also very cool. Instead of the Fagio we have a new weedy bike, can't remember it's name right now but it's a proper farty thing which you'll probably never ride more than once.
Special vehicles are amazing, once I'd opened up the second island all the flying ones became available and they're superb. The 'Little Willy' is just nothing short of magnificent and I thought I was dreaming when I saw this. It's like a mini copter, with cool guns. I've always wanted a Huey too in a GTA game, and I got one! Alright it has a fire bucket dangling underneath but who cares. You get to put out fires with it too. There's a groovy biplane at the airport, which includes a checkpoint mission.
Jet bikes adorn the water, very fast and a startling turning circle with the handbrake on.
There's a cool bulldozer now available, but seems to have an unmovable shovel, which is a shame.
The new flatbed looks nice, not much difference though.

Chunder storm

Like LCS the map has only changed in some minor ways. The airport is now a lot more accessable with two new road leading through to it, Vigilante missions were a pain in the original because of this but not now. Because of the way this new game plays there are a lot of little shanty type huts, they become apparent as you progress (you need to run your business from them simply put), they've replaced a few buildings.
The stadium area is slightly different, there's a huge building out front.
A few construction yards replace certain parts. There's a massive ship anchored that's now a big restaurant.
Starfish Island looks very different, less trees and more open.
A large fairground sits on the mainland where the original construction site used to be, with working ferris wheel called - wait for it - The Chunder Wheel ! a nod to of course you know what.

I'm into the Rampage system. You can now redo any rampages you may have competed, and they appear as slightly bluer than they would do if you hadn't done them. Very good idea and one which I myself suggested some time ago. *smug illusion that i'm as clever as rockstar*

Lots of unique jumps, really lots. Not a bad thing.

Swimming! Yes it's now a feature in Vice City and no longer will you die just because you rode your bike too fast into that fence. It's quite essential in this type of city really.

You can buy back all your items after being Wasted or Busted. Yes it's called buying a bribe, it costs $2000 which is quite a lot really, but worth it if you lose a lot.

Check out the cool binoculars.

What's the radio like? Brilliant to be blunt. Fantastic 80's tunes as usual, not established a favourite just yet but it's only a matter of time.

Hidden Packages? At first when I looked at my stats page I thought there wasn't going to be any but there indeed is and it's genius. 99 Red Balloons of course. Pop them to collect them, they're helium filled which means they'll always be stuck on a ceiling of something. Brilliant, and will see you looking up a lot searching for them.

This post is getting too long. I'll post again when I have a moment.

Vice City Stories - the 80's third coming

2006-11-22T14:18:00.000Z

Yes. Yes, and YES. I will be getting my PSP with VCS tomorrow. YESSSS!

So another installment of the GTA series comes my way, it was a difficult decision to buy the PSP just for this game but the prospect that Sony might actually be telling the truth that they're not releasing this one for any other system was too harrowing.

Very excited as you can imagine. Booked the rest of the week off work so no doubt I'll have finished it by the weekend. HA.

For those that don't know. Vice City Stories is the next PSP installment of GTA, another Libert City Stories type affair based upon the same map as the original Vice City on PS2. This time round though you play as someone other than Tommy V and it's all set in 1984 - 2 years earlier. I have no idea of the plot and of what improvements if any they might have made. This in turn adds to my excitement and am looking forward to the surprises. And of course all the new radio tracks!

I've still yet to 100% Liberty City Stories, fyi.

San Andreas (PS2) - slight progress

2006-10-16T13:47:00.000Z

I found an oyster at the weekend. This makes 48. On the ps2 version.

My Xbox game fucked up, the game save time has gone haywire, sometimes it doesn't save at all. I don't know whats going on.

So this means that I have to complete the paramedic mission all over again, and now with added chaotic drivers on the ps2 version. drat.

Can you believe I haven't 100%ed this yet?

When Peds Attack

2006-08-14T14:00:00.000Z

Addicted to turning on the Chaos Mode/Peds Riot/Peds have Guns/Peds Attack cheats and seeing how long I survive. So far I've managed about 20 minutes. See how frantic it gets when you get into a vehicle and panic when can't accelerate quick enough and then you hear that horrible sound of a missile launched at your car.

Also I'm back on the PS2 version. Fed up with all the bugs on the Xbox one. For some reason it hasn't been saving my games and it's also changing the date in some weird way, at the moment it thinks it's January. Stupid arse.

Oh yeah, and, GTA 4 Xbox 360 Announce by Peter Moore. Looks like the Playstation is getting pushed out for the next game, with Microsoft teaming up with Rockstar now. Still ages to go though

Liberty City Stories : "That's too fuckin fast y'dickead"

2006-07-24T10:16:00.000Z

So I found the hearse finally, it was parked behind the hospital in Staunton. After that I located the HellenbachGT easily in Shoreside Vale and completed the LOVE radio import mission. My reward? Well not much but quite usefully they've provided me with a permanent spawn of a V8 Ghost and a PCJ bike at my apartment in Staunton. Handy because this is the save point I use most.

Failing unique jumps and Rampages by the dozen at the moment.

But I am succesfully finding the hidden items. So far I think I'm on about 71. There's a lot that they've stuck in high places, so lots of climbing is in order. Sometimes you have to jump with the bike onto high ledges to reach packages, sometimes you don't even know they're there until you explore the ledge more. Very crafty and means you get to do some crazy exploring. A huge difference to GTA3.

I encountered a 'ghost' train the other day. I rode a bike up the stairs to the track on Portland and I heard the sound of a rumbling train and then stop, then the sound of the doors openeing. But there was no train there! Well it was, because when I tried to ride onto the tracks an invisible train seemed to be blocking my path. Then I heard it drive off. Kinda spooky.

Liberty City revival 2006 - the heat continues

2006-07-20T13:02:00.000Z

Found a couple of new missions last night. "Go Go Faggio" which is a ride around on the bog seat near Newport docks. The strange thing I found about this mission at first was the checkpoints, I couldn't see them. They look like this weird yellow cloud of dust. Anyway I failed this one a few times, quite hard indeed.

Another mission was 'AWOL' something, can't remember exactly. It was another like the '9mm mayhem' this time based on Shoreside Vale. I managed 11 kills. You need 10 at least.

I completed the RC Triad mission, where you need to blow up a hefty amount of Triad members with the RC car. This was great fun. Still cannot do the races though, these are friggin stupidly hard.

Completed a couple of rampages, one on Staunton near the shopping precint where I had to destroy cars with grenades. The shooting gangs rampages are really hard though as the gangs tend to have heavy automatic weapons that dispose of you in next to no time. Imagine a rampage faced with the army on the old GTA3 game, that's it exactly.

I've realised that this version of GTA seems to be all about the jumps. There's some amazing unique jumps here, you can even land on top of the cop station on Shoreside. That's really high fact fans. There's jumps everywhere, even non-unique ones.

Silly Weather

2006-07-19T12:24:00.000Z

OH momma!

Last night, from 5pm till about 8pm approx I played LCS non stop (quick break for a burger bite and coffee), completed most of the tour guide missions, found a few hidden objects - some tricky to reach ones too. Drove and killed the usual amount of stuff.

Never saved it in the 3 hours of play...

yes you guessed it, it crashed!

big buggers. So dinner time today I nipped home and completed the tour guides again, it has given me a bullet proof Landstalker. cute.

Some of those hidden packages are a bitch to reach, there's some trickery climbery type action needed for a few of those. And I still haven't worked out how to get the one in the construction site on Portland.

And where oh flippin where is the Hearse ?!

Liberty City update on general little things

2006-07-18T13:26:00.000Z

I found a new mission last night. By picking up the Sanchez near the car crusher on Portland I activated the "Scrapyard Challenge". Luckily Robert Llewellyn was nowhere to be seen and this mission just consisted of riding the Sanchez around the car crusher site in a 'kickstart' type way. Like the Stadium missions on both Vice City and San Andreas there are three different coloured rings you can ride through, red ones are more difficult and so are worth more points, green ones are easy and are only worth 1 point. I only attempted this once, was completely crap at it. Biffed. Moved on to other things.

I completed a few of the other Sanchez mission - the Bumps and Grinds dirt track also on Portland. I managed to succesfully finish 8 out of 10 so far. The ninth one seems a bit of a bitch. I really enjoyed this mission though, I love how the subway track is overhead and sometimes the train rumbles along as you're racing.

Did some of the "See the Sights Before Your Flight" mission too. Luckily you don't have to do all these in one go either. I managed the first 4 I think, the one I ballsed up on was the guy wanting his picture taken in the park so I just dumped his ass down at the ferry port.

On 59 hidden packages now, no clue as to what the 60 will present to me. I don't think I've checked around the houses on Shoreside up in the hills yet, there's bound to be one there somewhere.

Located the Import mission as well. It's right next to the Donald Love house, where you did the missions in GTA3. There's a sunken garage just to the left, the list is on the wall. You're collecting the cars for the Love radio station prize give aways. Anyway I managed to collect all but the Hearse and the Hellenbach GT. I have no idea where the Hearse is.

I'm really loving the radio station too. I think I'll download some of the songs for my mp3 player. I want the whole MSX mix but it might be a bit big.

Vice City: ghost tower

2006-07-04T09:15:00.000Z

So check out the ghost tower in Vice City. If you fly a helicopter over the East island, around the south hospital area, and face towards where the army base is you should see in the hazey distance a large tower block with a spire. Now fly towards it and when the West island is reached and after the loading screen is removed you should also notice the tower block vanish.

Apparently the airport was originally designed differently and the 'ghost tower' was part of that, someone forgot to remove it from the skyline graphic though.

Can you believe we're still finding things out about this game.

LCS: Side missions update

2006-07-03T15:46:00.000Z

A couple more side mission finds.

As I said in the last post, I finished the main story line at the weekend so now it's time to concentrate on all the other doings going on in the city. I'm on 53%, I think this is just about right for a GTA game although I think San Andreas may have been more of a 40% story line finish.

Found a new one last night. On Shoreside, near the airport. It's a tourism game. I have to drive tourists to famous landmarks around the city, take their photograph a few times with the landmark in the picture, then drive them back to the airport. I didn't manage one because as usual Cochrane Dam fooled the shit out of me and instead of driving to the bottom of the dam I travelled all the way to the top.

Finished the Taxi missions, I had to complete 100 fares in non-sequential drop off's thank god. This has won me a red taxi with a big engine, seems fair enough.

I know full well there are missions I've yet to find, but here is a list so far of what I know of and what i've yet to accomplish :

Firetruck
Paramedic
Vigilante
Salesman
9mm Chaos
Bike Salesman
Noodle Delivery
Pizza Delivery
?? Delivery (I saw the bike, forgot the food type though)
Trash Dash
Dirt Bike
Rampages (3 complete)
Unique Jumps (2 complete)
Hidden Objects (found 55)
RC Games (not sure how many, not done any)
Street Races (think I've done all but 1, not sure)
Avenging Angel (right I did 14 levels, don't know)
Slash TV (did level 4, again don't know how many supposed to do)

The only way of finding the other missions is just to keep trying all those parked vehicles, you just don't know what's out there. And where the fook is that Import/Export list?

And check this. The PSP version had a special 'snow' effect when you unlocked 14 levels of the Salesman mission. Apparently they've removed it from the PS2 version. WHY?!

LCS: Story Missions part II

2006-07-03T15:22:00.000Z

Just to let you know, I finished the main missions yesterday. The last 3 missions I had to do caused a bit of headache but the final mission was just a matter of stocking up on guns.

So continuing on with my look back at all the missions, which are by the way forever interupted with visits from my mothers hired hitmen. cheers ma :

After i'd killed Wayne in the Biker Heat mission I still only had Maria as a mission giver. The next one saw me having to drive her around looking for something to inject her with, she's had an overdose or something. Anyway everywhere we go to try and find her dose of 'zap' turns out to be wrong and also full of maniac bikers. Eventually i take her back to Sal's mansion, mission end and no money reward. At least that was the last of her missions anyway.

Back to Sal's for another mission now. First I had to pick up some back up from various locations in Portland, this wasn't hard. Then I had to get down to the docks and kill the dealers. All hell broke lose and Feds turned up and bullets flew from all directions. Luckily I think I spawned this one and managed to do it first try.

Now back to JD for missions.

Sal has been kidnapped, therefore I must save him. That's that in a nutshell. I was slightly confused at this one first. I have to initially tail a car, not too close as usual, then we find another car and we have to stop it from getting to the car crusher (because Sal is tied up in the boot). Best thing to do here was to get at the car right from the start, dragging the driver out before they can escape. Hearing Sal thumping about in the boot was funny. My first few attempts at this I tried chasing the car down which failed miserably.

The next mission I had to snipe a load of Sindacco's that poured into the street near Sal's nightclub. Eventually I realised that some of the hoodlums were staying hidden out of my sight so I just jumped down and took them out with the AK47. This went on for a bit but not much of a problem really.

Done that. Now I have to follow some helicopter which luckily for us flies over the roads and turns at junctions (?). Anyway one simple tracking mission later we find ourselves on top of a roof in Triad territory. I hated this mission, kept failing due to running out of ammo and the Triads on the ground kept taking me out, not to mention the heat I gained getting in my way.

Next mission was simple. JD thinks he's being 'made'. Drive him and some other dude to the meet point, there's a bit of an interuption from some cars and bikes but nothing I couldn't handle. Get to the scrapyard and JD gets shot in the back of the head. Now I must get rid of the blood stained car, in the sea. No probs, straight down to the beach where we can let it roll into the water.

The V guy makes a comeback. He apologises for treating me like shit. So I have another mission with him now

He's asked me to meet him on a big ship, so away I go. I arrive and I enter inside the ship. As I venture down below deck I enter a huge hall, and shock horror it's a trap. V man has ambushed me with a load of chainsaw wielding maniacs that are coming at me from all angles. The weird thing about this mission is the camera angle, you're forced into a third person over head shot which you can't alter. Anyway this one took a few attempts as well, the maniacs come thicker and faster and then at the end you have to fight V man himself, who takes a few bullets. Once completed I can return here to play the 'Slash TV' mission, more of the same but in level format and I have to wear the 'overalls & hockey mask' to play it.

It was about now that I thought jeebus surely Staunton Island should be open by now. But not yet baby.

First I have to take out a load of Diablo geezers down in their territory. To help me there are some of Leone's men too, actually I think I'm there to help them but whatever. The Diablo's just keep coming from all angles, I have to make sure all of Leone's men don't die. This was a close call if I remember well. Did it first time though.

Is Staunton open now after that sweaty task? Nope

Now for another Triad mission. Head over to the Triad warehouse (you know the one you blew up with the Trashmaster in GTA3). This time someone has already blown it all up and it's burning away. I have to grab a load of cash before it all goes up in smoke. A case of dodging the flames and finding your way around here. Not too hard but a little unnerving at times.

Our final mission for Portland Island is driving Sal to visit the mayor in Staunton. Unfortunately the cops are all over the ferry depot and start chasing us as we turn tail. Heading for the bridge I have to jump over the ramp to land on the second island. Drive to the new safehouse and that's it. Our house is located on the opposite side of the road from the old one, down the alley next to the carpark.

Second island now open!

...

One thing with all this re-visiting Liberty City malarky, although the game is very good and highly enjoyable it's also reminding me of what a whopper of a game San Andreas is, and how I can't wait to jump back into that.

LCS: Side Missions

2006-06-27T10:03:00.000Z

Figured out the Avenging Angels mission. I have to be wearing the outfit first, then I have to meet another Angel on the street and talk to him to start the mission. It's basically a vigilante mission but instead of needing a cop car to proceed, you need another person to help you. It's pretty good fun, you have to take out huge gangs of hoodlums on each level, including the occasional motorbike gang. I think you can have as many Angels on your side as you want, didn't manage to find out.

Another mission I found was the Dirt Track mission, a standard Sanchez based circuit race in a small park on Portland. There are 10 courses in all though, I believe this could be where I get the Manchez if I pass them all, only done 3 up to now.

And yet another mission I found last night. Something about a 9mm, forget the name of it now. I boarded a hog in Portland, it was sort of hidden in a back alley and looked suspicious. The mission consists of another person riding the bike while you shoot in first person mode various cars around the city. Was quite good fun, until I accidentally shot my driver in the back of the head.

*Infuriating Mission of the week*
Salesman. This is badness. Very very badness. This one is going to take some time. I don't know how many levels I need to get through this but OMG it's frustrating. You need to sell 4 cars on each level to different types of customers. You do this by taking them for a test drive around the city, driving a certain way to increase the sale meter. The 4 different customers are: Sunday driver (drive slow), Off road (get on the hills), Speed demon (go as fast as possible), and Maniac (kill pedestrians). Each level is the same, although on level 4 my customer asked me to respray it as he didn't like the colour, also you can't have too many dents in the car. The worst part about the mission is that the ped killing customer can give you 2 stars, which adds cop chaos to the whole thing. Also the speed demon is a git, and stops the mission immediately if you crash. Madness.

I also attempted the Slash TV game, which was great fun.

And there's also an alternative Firetruck game, called Karmageddon. Basically cause as much pile ups as possible in the firetruck, flipping cars, killing peds, head on collisions, anything goes.

Some of these side missions are really hard, I can see 100%ism being something of a hefty challenge on this one. But it will be done.

LCS - Getting Around

2006-06-26T15:31:00.000Z

A brief post about the vehicles, which I've negelected to mention so far. I want some pictures of some of the more fab ones. This will have to come later.

Rockstar have done a number on most of the existing ones, there's only a few which will look familiar to the veteran gta3 twizzler.

Existing cars, not touched up
Patriot, Mule, Pony, Barracks, Firetruck, Banshee, Stinger, Infernus, Taxi, Cabby, Coach, Enforcer, Rhino, Stallion, Diablo Stallion, Esperantos, Idaho, Mr Whoopee (i've not seen yet but will probly be the same). Line Runner

Existing cars that've been revamped:
Perinnial - possibly the worst car ever to grace the GTA world, but hey look now, it's actually quite good! Yay
Manana - actual contender for worst car etc, but once again they've improved it. It now looks a bit sporty, still turns on a sixpence mind.
BF Injection - only new difference is the snazzy new chrome work
Sentinel - almost the same, there's some sligh difference though, especially with the Leone version which is, oooh, JET BLACK!
Kuruma - a slight overhaul, still looks like something from Robocop.
Yakuza Stinger - again just a nice new polished chrome look here
Yardie Lobo - slightly less bulky than the gta3 version, looks good.
Ambulance - erm, more stickers on the back it would seem.
Police Car - a couple of stripes down the side, they do make it look really cool though. Just no radio unfortunately.
Landstalker - longer, bigger. More impressive and less likely to roll.
Columbian Cartel - the only car i think which they have worsened, now has a matte blue paint work instead of the cool shiny one in gta3, has weird lights at the front too.
Cheetah - looks similar but again it's the colouring which somehow makes this look more special, you can now get it in cream! Super cool.
FBI - just seems a bit different to the last one, maybe not that better.

New cars (so far that I've found opening all 3 islands)
V8 Ghost - Superb, in every way.

Deimos - Amazing looking thing, especially from the back.
Forelli Exsess - gang car, nice looking standard family car.
ThunderRodd - hotrod type thing, hundred times more attractive than the hotrod car in San Andreas
Sindacco Argento - a cool hatchback thing, always white. decent.
Campaign Rumpo - special van with megaphones on top.
??? - I'll add the name later, a really mad looking corvette with chrome pipes and sidings everywhere. Fantastic.
Hellenbach - this was the car I picked up early on and it was fab, some type of mustang thing. But now I've yet to see it again.

and of course, all the bikes are here now. The PCJ is really cool, it's paintwork somehow makes it look plastic but I think this improves it. I hear a rumour that a newer version of the Sanchez lurks somewhere as a reward, called the Manchez.

I believe there are no choppers to fly, I don't know if the Dodo is going to reappear. There are plenty of choppers willing to attack you though. Also I've noticed the airplane that lands and takes off randomly at the airport can now kill you, big time.

GTA; LCS - My Story Part I

2006-06-26T13:45:00.000Z

So how did the fozmeister get to grips with this game then?

There were so many missions on the first island, it seemed like it was going on forever. Nine hours of straight play later and I get the green light to make the jump to Staunton. How did it all happen? Well it was two days ago and a lot of alcohol and football has passed this gta fanatics brain portal so bear with me as I completely forget everything I've done so far.

I turn up in Liberty City as some kind of marked man I think, I've done something bad and need to make amends. My safe house is now where the half demolished building was in gta3 (near the pot-holed road). I can actually walk into the house and wander around, like SA. I get to save and change my outfits here. There's also my usual garage outside.

The first missions are too easy, especially for this seasoned player, okay I did have to re-attempt some of them but usually it was down to bad mission planning or trigger happy citizens upsetting my flow. The usual in other words. The guy who's providing me the missions at first by the way is a 'V' but I forget his full name. He's a complete prick and treats me like shit, but work is work.

At first I'm killing dealers on the street, simple enough. Then a mission at the old Diablo den which is now a construction site, again killing some dudes and stealing my first mobile phone. At the end of this task I was given a cool car which it seems hasn't turned up ever again.
This is where I see a hidden package too, now they are these small golden hand trophy things. This one is stuck on a roof, I have no idea how to reach it either.

More car chasing and car crushing ensues, a lot of pay'n'spray action going on too. And then my next mission provider arrives, my ma !

I had to undertake a photo taking mission, some dude in a gimp outfit in the sticks, and take it back to ma.

Then I do a race mission which unlocks the underground street races (the twist at the end of this mission was that after I'd won I had to run down the idiot racing me, he was driving a cool hotrod though). The street races come in the form of various phone boxes ringing around the city, there's some on each island.

Then a mission inside the good old sawmill, you remember the one. Inside I have to chase down this dude and kill him with only an axe, but i have to creep up on him. After that little bit of trickery I get out and the cops are all over my ass!

Then my ma wants me dead, I think I'm a bit of a failure in her eyes. She hires a ton of hitmen who all suffer the consequences. nuff said. But oh no the mission doesn't really end there. Even when not on a mission you'll get the odd hitman trying to do you in, you'll be notified when one is close by though so that's nice.

JD becomes my next caller, but he will only see me if I wear casual clothes. First mission is driving around getting money from hookers, and kill a pimp. Doddle.

I'm introduced to Salvatore, who owns the mansion on the hill. Goes by the name of 'Sal' to his friends though.

The first of the slightly hard mission comes up about now. It's all about a casino. I have to stop these dudes getting in and they keep turning up in different cars. One of them is even a bomb and I have to prevent it from going off outside the casino. I failed this one a few times before sussing it out. This was also the first time I felt a bit new to the area, as the mission is held in a place where I've never really 'hung' out. Cool though. A bit sweaty after all this so far, time to do a bit of exploring.

The map of the island is almost the same as before other than a few changes:
There's a ferry port where the tunnel used to be, it's actually quite a large new area with a construction site on the shore too, all very new. There's a bunch of picketters flying banners and signs outside the ferry gate though, all the transport guys are on strike. Clever way of preventing you from getting across the water. Also Callaghan bridge has not been built yet, there's quite a cool construction site on the bridge, check it out.

Diablo territory hasn't been built yet, that's another construction site, and quite interesting too. A Barracks truck sits here as does one of the RC toy trucks, a really tough race which I've yet to get first place in.

The docks are slightly different too, two new frigates sit there and it all seems a little bit shifted around.

The diner down at Callaghan Point is some kind of donut shop, with a new sign outside.

The China town district seems a bit more decorative too, more banners and stuff.

The building with the glass windows in which you can usually smash through, is now boarded up

Back to the game:

Oh god this stupid next mission called Blow Up Dolls. I have to get a specific car, as it needs to get past some guards, fit it with a bomb, drive it into a garage, get out, blow it up. Sounds simple doesn't it? Well it is really, which begs the question - why did it take me a million frigging attempts to complete then?!? I just kept fucking it up in daft ways, kept getting too close to the bomb detonation. Aargh!

I'm onto Sal's missions now, which are always cool in that there's forever a handy Mafia Sentinel or PCJ900 sitting outside his house.

After a brief visit with the transport union leader, which doesn't go well and I get attacked by a bunch of picket liners with petrol bombs, we're well on our way. So instead I try a different approach, lure the strikers with prostitutes! Six of them will do, this was fairly easy.

A mission where I just have to scare some dudes is done.

A new face, Maria she calls herself. My first mission with her is shopping, little did I know she was shoplifting. A few cop chases sorted and I take her to some dealer, who invariably kidnaps her. Great.

After rescueing her ass again she gets in trouble yet again and becomes first prize in a street race. I must win the race. Which took me a couple of attempts. And then the stupid bitch wants me to kill Wayne, the guy I just raced. I struggled with this one, I have to fight his guards and then chase Wayne on his bike. I kept losing his though and I didn't have a machine gun to shoot from the bike with. Anyway I did it but now I realised that Wayne was actually driving a bullet proof bike, which I didn't pick up. That was the only time it appears in the game. Drat.

Okay this post is getting long again. I'll be back with more soon.

Liberty City Stories - review from hell

2006-06-26T12:58:00.000Z

There's lots to talk about today, lets take a big deep breath.

For anyone buying this for the first time and expecting more San Andreas jiggery pokery, you're going to be disappointed. This is more of a GTA3 bonus pack for the PS2, if you hated the first one you're not really going to get on with this either. For the rest of the GTA loving world though, read on...

You play Toni Cipriani the main character, this time around with a voice (played by Daniel Mastrogiorgio who's also done a ruck of other voice over roles including the previous Warriors game), making your way through the grime that is Liberty City with the usual GTA mission story line of meeting new gang leaders and helping them sort out their many gang warfare problems.

It's all cliched 'New York on a disc' scenario, exactly like GTA3 to most extents, where the town is ruled by crime and bent cops. The grittiness that I loved in the original Liberty City game is back, with bells on.

One other thing right from the off to realise here is that originally this was a PSP game, what that means for you is that the missions are slightly shorter than normal tailored for the portable game player. You'll definitely notice this with the first island missions, although there are a heck of a lot of them.

It's slightly more colourful too, which I think is a plus and it doesn't distract from the gritty atmosphere of the city. Better draw distance, shiny chrome effects, more road textures, faster frame rate. It's all noticeable good stuff in the visual department. A treat, if you like.

I was half expecting a rather half assed attempt at a cut down radio selection but it appears nothing has been left to chance with the audio either. The music is amazing and manages to run superbly parallel with the Liberty City noise. Most of the original stations are here with some new ones including an eastern flavoured bollywood channel. I've already established my favourite tunes from all stations.

I played the game for 9 hours straight on Friday night, eventually unlocking the second island. After a dozen more hours of play over the weekend I've managed to get into the third island. With lots of completed missions under my belt I've clocked in at 43% so far. Pretty impressive, I'm guessing I'm not far from completing the main game, I really have no idea to be honest. There's heaps of side missions to cor at, check out what we've found so far:

Dustbin man! Trashmasters now give you an R3 game.
Car/Bike Salesman! test drive the various cars in certain ways to impress the customers, very similar to the girlfriend driving missions in SA
Noodle Delivery Boy! I almost did this, level 10 and returning to base, I fell off my bike and time ran out. Ouch.
Slash TV! On a large frigate, chainsaw wielding dudes come at you from all angles, you must be wearing the hockey mask outfit to play.
RC Bandit missions, I've found 3, 2 races and 1 blow-em-up game.
Street Races! Dotted around various phone boxes.
Rampages! Are back, yes this is good news.
Other Pizza delivery game, not attempted this yet.
Avenging Angel! Not sure where this is, but it told me I'd unlocked it. Some kind of killing crims game. I have to wear my avenging angel outfit to activate I think.

and the usual Firefighting, Vigilante, Taxi, Paramedic, games are all here.

I've yet to find the import/Export place this time, I know it's here somewhere though.

Yes outfits. Like San Andreas I get to choose my clothes, this time the process for changing isn't quite so laborious with the going in and out of the wardrobe animation which sent millions of trouser changing gangster wannabees to sleep all over the world. Anyway this time round all you do is enter the safe houses and walk into the shirt icon, then cycle through the outfit choices with the analogue stick, simple as that. So far I have attained:

Casual - what you start with.
Mr Leone - (nice, my favourite, swanky looking Scarface suit)
Avenging Angel - grubby green outfit to fight crime in
Dragon Jump Suit - skin tight bright yellow number, hmm.
Goodfella - basic gangsta gear
Wise Guy - again
Limo Driver - or 'imperial guard from Empire Strikes Back'
Tuxedo - white jacket with black trousers, very James Bond
Underwear - naked apart from love heart boxer shorts
Sweats - tracksuit jobby

Thankfully the similarity in the micro management with San Andreas stops there, no longer do we have to eat and work out to stay alive. Simple health icons are again the norm now, thank god.

All in all it's great, just GTA3 with knobs on, but what great knobs they are.

Right, I think I'll come back and post another entry as this one is getting long. My next entry I'll blather on about what missions and things I've done so far.

Liberty City Stories - lands on our desk

2006-06-23T15:17:00.000Z

Well, it's bloomin well arrived. Shall let you know later tonight what it's like. Yet another GTA poster for the living room wall.

Liberty City Stories slips from our grasp, slightly

2006-06-15T09:43:00.000Z

They've gone and put back the release date here in the UK, to 23 June. This sucks because a)I wanted to waste my entire weekend playing this, b)the US already have it so why do we have to wait?, and c)I just really really really want to play it!!

Probably having a GTA fest on PS2 this weekend anyway as the PC is being a big turd.

Liberty City Stories within our grasp

2006-05-24T09:55:00.000Z

They're releasing Liberty City Stories for the PS2 next month, pre ordered mine already.

To think I almost bought a PSP especially for this game, what a waste of cash that would've been.

I also hear they're doing a Vice City PSP game, which is nice.

This will give me something to do in the meantime while we wait for the big guns.

Damn, it might be bad news.

2006-05-11T15:08:00.000Z

I think it's going to be Europe, at least London anyway. Search the web, there are some clues floating about.

GTA4 - Let's get started

2006-05-11T13:39:00.000Z

First off let me state that I have no knowledge whatsoever of how the new game will look, where it will be set etc. All we really know is that it's probably going to be tailored for the Xbox360, and then maybe down-played for the PS3 slightly. So I want to just rant a bit about what we could expect, good and bad points, where they could go wrong and how they could improve it. We've heard it all before and we did the same thing with the impending wait for San Andreas, but it's all good fun innit.

City/State/Country
So far we've had, New York, Florida, Los Angeles, San Fran, Las Vegas, not including the original top down games. We could add London to the list. They've not done a London 3D game yet, we could be seeing a redo of Getaway, but I'm not sure I care for an English theme. I wouldn't actually have a problem of them redoing one of the cities they've already mapped, perhaps a larger Vice City map? They already redid New York/Liberty City. I don't see how they could improve on the San Andreas maps though. Chicago is somewhere they've yet to map, set in the 70's or earlier would be interesting. Perhaps they'll move from the US and try other countries, Japan is an option especially graphically. How about South America? Mexico?

Timeline
The year that the game will be set in could depend a lot on which city/cities they are going to choose. For instance the Florida Vice City was key for being played in the 80's because it stole a lot of cool ideas from Scarface which was set at the same time. San Andreas played around the 90's and the hip hop vibe around LA at that time. Liberty City might be an exception here, there really isn't a specific date in New York's calender that would have to fit, it was kind of a mish mash, but it worked though. They haven't done the 70's yet?

Soundtrack
Rockstar will most likely be looking for a decent soundtrack theme, where the music easily reflects the mood and era of where the game is set. I'm sure they'll be using the same voice talents of Lazlow and co for the radio stations, I just hope they include better talk stations than San Andreas. If Rockstar were greedy licence monsters I would foresee a game that's set in more modern times purely so they could encapsulate as many more recent bands as they could. I hope they don't do this, recent bands are shit.

Micro-Management
Get rid of the micro-management. I really don't care for having to eat occasionally, there is nothing wrong with a simple health bar and picking up heart icons when needed. This is already a working formula in many games!
Also what is the point of having to improve your skill levels for various activities when once you've maxed them they never go down? How important really was it to have large muscles in SA? Not at all!
The clothes shopping was okay though, even if the process of walking into the changing room was programmed rather poorly made it all tedious. I regularly changed CJ's outfit and it gives the game a more personal feel. Keep this for the next game.
Haircuts and tattoos were pointless though, barely noticable on the game character graphic.

Existing Problems
I hope they make the missions harder, and we want more missions which involve driving. The on-foot sections in San Andreas were way too easy with the improved control method, plus these games should be all about the sexy cars and cool vehicle handling. So less 'wharehouse storming' and more car chases please.
How they'll set out the missions is anybody's guess, this will more than likely depend on the theme of the game. For instance Vice City used Scarfaces idea of taking over the city, buying new property to open up missions etc. San Andreas went back to basics and used a more linear system. Liberty City actually punished you if you didn't pay attention to what you're next missions were and you could end up assasinating one of your current mission providers! It would be nice to return to the property purchasing method. This way replaying the game is more valid as you can choose the order of how you want to play, returning to more difficult missions later on if you wish.

I would like pick-ups to go back to having an auro-graphic around them. San Andreas actually looked a little cheap without it, lost a bit of class in my opinion. This is a small but essential point. And please choose radar blip colours more carefully kthxbye.

More vehicles! More vehicles with abilities, like the dumper trucks and tow trucks. The large vehicles in SA felt a bit weedy to be honest I think this was down to the poor collision effects. How about one of those huge crane trucks with about 18 wheels! I don't think we need to dwell on the next gen cars as I'm sure Rockstar are more than capable of keeping up their excellent top standard here.

Improvements & New Stuff
So what will the next game have that all the other games couldn't provide. This is a question that will be murmoured and pondered about until we start seeing those first screenshots trickle in. I will speculate highly here:

Vehicles. I've already mentioned that I want a mobile crane. San Andreas really did a number on what was available, there isn't much left to cover but here are a few more of my desires:-
Formula 1 car
Lancaster Bomber, with bombs and guns.
Space Shuttle
Submarine
Tanker Ship
Chin-Uk
UFO
Hand glider
Hot Air Balloon
Skateboard
Pogostick
Unicycle
..yeah i'm kinda losing the point a little now.

We could be seeing more destruction possibilities, building might be more damageable, more damage to vehicles like losing a complete roof! Maybe they'll disperse with the 'destruction of the car once it's upside down' rule, giving you the option of trying to upturn you're car back onto its wheels.

Okay, so here's a rapid fire round of daft things they might include:
Locked cars, ability to pick the locks
MP3 portable player, not ipod though as Apple are nazi's
Piggy backing on a fellow gang member, to reach higher areas
Robbing pedestrians, without killing them
Leaning out of a car door while driving, to pick up items
Carrying bodies
More fighting moves, flying kick, head butt, slap, roundhouse kick.
Digging, if the scenery was more interactive, also including ability to drill through walls, to see through other side
Chopping large trees down, could be used to make barriers against cars
Climbing trees more
Ability to crawl, under cars etc, perhaps to plant bombs
Braking fiercely when going too fast, results in flying through windscreen
Ability to telephone up gang members to come and help you out
More sports games, like golf, football, baseball etc
Rampages return
Snow!
More spare parts for cars, including lots of silly novelty type add-ons
More events happening randomly around the city, for instance you could have road works here and there just without warning. forest fires, fallen trees, earthquakes, tornadoes, riots, terrorist attacks.

..and let's not get started on what the online option brings us. More speculation and stuff soon!

16 months of anticipation!

2006-05-10T12:52:00.000Z

Rockstar announce GTA4 for October next year, but probably won't be any details for ages yet. Still, nice to know it's in the pipeline
Rockstar Website

Apparently, a voice on the internet tells me that it will be smaller than San Andreas and also online.

Well it's about time they had an online option, I just hope it's not solely online but I can't see that happening.

The map size thing doesn't bother me, I still play and enjoy the other GTA's and they're tiny compared to SA. As long as they get rid of the micro management and keep everything else running along the same lines, I will be happy.

I'm loving that fact that I can still get 'giddy kid' excited about the announcement of new games! Bring it on!

I started up GTA3 again at the weekend, how bloody crazy fool am I ?! I didn't really get that far until I was gasping to reload up my completed game and spank the shit outta the cops. I've found some great vantage points for holding up in. The carpark on the second island, there are some cool spots around there. Like just inside it where you can just snipe the police as they que up to walk around the carpark barrier. The army are just nuts though.

Multi-Theft

2006-04-05T13:57:00.000Z

2 more horseshoes have been spotted, in two areas that I was *positive* I'd already found before, I must've confused it with the XBox game. So only two more to find now.

I attempted the Paramedic mission again but around about level 8 I squished one of my patients and it was all over.

I managed to shoot down one of the computer piloted planes with a bazooka, the Beagle is the best victim for this as it's the slowest. Have you seen the video on the internet where the guy tries to do the big jump in the desert (the one with the wooden run up that goes over the near the dam), if not then get over to youtube or google video and check it out. The ending is hilarious.

Was also looking at all the unique stunt jumps that people have recorded, they get a bit boring though and most of them are modded on the PC versions so that they don't fall off their bikes. Yawno, where's the challenge in that?

More interesting videos are of crazy random shit happening, glitches and stuff like that. There's a few vids of GTA Multiplayer, for both Vice City and San Andreas, extremely interesting indeedy.

There's also a guy, Stephen Shoulderhead I think is his name, who's recorded all the San Andreas missions as he's completed them. This is amazing and is ideal for anyone looking for hints and tips if they're stuck on any particular task. Check em out.

100 Tags - one step closer to judgement day!

2006-03-16T16:50:00.000Z

Welly welly welly welly well.

It seems, brothers, that I've found my last tag. Although listen up, because there's more to this story than at first you may think.

I had in fact actually discovered and sprayed all 100 tags some months ago, in fact it was well before I'd even started playing the Xbox version. We could be talking about a year here. The trouble is my stats showed 99/100 sprayed. How so?

Well.

It's because

The programming is shit.

(for this particular section of the game)

The rest of the programming is okay though.

See my previous post. Luckily it was only about the sixth or seventh tag that I re-sprayed that gave me the 100 mark.
So I now have a steady supply of Ak's, Nines, sawn offs, and molotovs back at the Grove Street abode.

I've discovered some very strange areas where cars do bizarre things. For instance, on Los Santos there is a road way underneath the runway, it's the entrance road for the airport. The part just below the north runway towards the very west part (mark it with the marker and then go underground) you will notice cars drive down a hill and then sometimes they get 'sucked' up into the ceiling.
Another area is again on Los Santos to the North East area, where the train track goes over the busy freeway junction area. It's absolute chaos here and sometimes you will see vehicles fly over the railway bridge and then just disappear!

Oh dear what can the matter be

2006-03-13T20:11:00.000Z

Oh deary deary me. Life is looking grim.

Assisted kindly by my, erm, assistant it would seem that my final tag is a complete mystery. My assistant has informed me that he has searched every single tag on my map, using a map printed from the web, and I seem to have covered them all. So it would appear that I have to now go around and target every single one to make sure they are completely sprayed over. I'm really really looking forward to this.

On the brighter side of things we've been enjoying much destruction and mayhem in the game generally. I'm a great fan of the Majestic car at the moment.

"Some kind person"

2006-02-23T11:42:00.000Z

Sporting new clothes at the moment. A tight white sports jacket and some dark slack trousers from Victim. Also got myself some hiking boots, I thought they might help with climbing steep terrain but not really noticed any difference. And don't forget my red beret.

So here I am looking like some sort of guardian angel. Another day in the hood.

Some kind person has stolen the paintjob I had done on my Slamvan. It was parked securily in my garage back at the Grove too, seems nothing is safe these days. So now it's like pure white, instead of the firey blue and red that I had done from the Lowrider garage. I still have my chrome bull bars and wheel covers though, plus the nitro installation that I added. I'll probably never drive it around here though, too many speed demons ready to dent your fender.

The Ballas are still trying their luck down near the rail track, near the airport entrance. Will those fools never learn? Took a couple of buddies down there to sort some trouble makers out but the chumps got wasted by my own hand grenade. I sorted the rest of the trick or treaters out though with some smooth sniper skills. They been roughing up the gas station area too recently, nothing I can't handle.

Enough of that.

Top Cop

2006-02-22T11:22:00.000Z

Check out terminator cop. First off, he and his mate crash their cop car just north of Las Venturos main city.
They both manage to get out and avoid the explosion of the car on the road.
They both then decide to walk off to climb the sandy bank (which is rather steep).
As they climb up they reach another road on top with steep banks on both sides.
The lead cop walks into the road and gets hit, rather heavily, by a large truck.
He flies through the air landing some way down the road.
He then stands up.
A Walton truck then smashes straight into him but this time the cop stands firm and becomes embedded into the trucks trailer.
The Walton truck struggles to free itself from this abnormal cop, but eventually does.
The cop starts to walk, as if nothing had just happened, towards the opposite bank.
(It looks like he's heading for the city btw)
As I follow and the cop heads down the bank, explosions ahoy on the road as many a truck plows into the Walton truck and the second cop is a gonna in the road chaos.
I head down the bank to see where the first cop has gone, he's still walking.
A surviving truck from the pile up has been forced to drive down the bank, heading straight for the cop.
The cop stands firm and the truck stops dead right in front of the cop.
The cop continues to walk into the ciy, the truck manages to get back onto the road with a polite honk of his horn.
I follow the cop into the city, where he succesfully blends back into society to fight another day.

Bedlam 2006

2006-02-13T16:57:00.000Z

Playing Hour Stats :
Vice City = 370
San Andreas = 323

Blimmin heck! So thats 15 days on VC and 13 for SA, non stop!

Anyway, enough of that.

I've been playing an absolute stormer on San Andreas over the past month, on the PS2 of course, not actually accomplished anything to increase my percentage mind but nonetheless it's been a wild ride.

Besides the endless pile-ups on the freeways I have actually been up to other stuff.
(But the pile-ups are great aren't they?)

In fact...

Pile Ups

The key to a good pile up starting is locating an area where computer vehicles are going to be travelling at trememdous speeds.
The other factor involved is an enclosed space, the tunnels are good for this. If you try it on the freeways in Las Venturos the cars tend to get flung up the bankings and therefore miss being involved in the explosions. Best places I've found have been the two main tunnels on Los Santos, near the airport and the double tunnel heading out towards the countryside on San Fierro (west of the map). Also the far west, north-south running road on San Fierro with the bridge just past the mountain. Where the beach starts to develop just past the bridge, that's the spot!

All you really need to do is be present around the areas and cars will soon begin to collide with each other at stupid speeds. Cops will usually get out and start shooting at whoever banged into them, thus you may get a lucky fuel cap shot there. The quickest way of a fire starting though is when the vehicles are travelling so fast that they end up fusing together with the car in front, you'll notice this happening when sparks are flying and the flames from the engine lick really high.

Try not to be tempted to get involved, once the cops get involved it's all over as there's not place to hide. You'll get health knocked off you for sure, it's almost impossible to avoid being hit completely by anything in the accidents - like lunatic drivers, exploding cars, occasional crossfire. It's all good fun though.

Which reminds me...

The Vortex

Another great 'toy' in the game is the Vortex hovercraft vehicle, while tricky to drive on land (though incredibly useful if you think about it) it has a neat little bonus ability - it explodes wildy when on fire. And I mean wildy. You really cannot be standing around too close to this thing when it goes up, you will be dead, no question about it. And forget being anywhere near the vicinity if you have less than half health, again you will be dead straight away. Not only that but you'll be thrown a pretty hefty distance with the force of the blast. Or should I say 'blasts'. Yes it doesn't just explode the once, I've seen these beauties go up about nine times, this will be lowered if the blast was caused by another vehicle next to it, generally it's chaos if the Vortex explodes on it's own merit. Another warning - the explosions will start almost immediately unlike other vehicles where you get about 4 seconds run away time the Vortex will vomit metal and fire about 1 second after thick black smoke appears. And the smoke really is thick and black, like on the aircraft when they get damaged.

So the best way to destroy one is a lot of collision and then a roll-and-jump while the Vortex is still moving. If you're really brave you can try the old turn it upside down trick, I've seen spectacular results from this but with the slow animation of Carl climbing out underneath it almost always results in certain death as you just cannot get away in time - but if you can manage to jump-and-roll just before it stops then you might stand a chance.

The ferocity of the explosion is so great that any cars within shouting distance will instantly explode, thus trying to pull this off without corking it yourself is really hard. But well worth it.

Criminal

2006-01-25T14:04:00.000Z

You cannot die or get arrested in the midst of a blow out with the pigs in San Andreas otherwise your criminal rating will be punished. This means that a completely new strategy is needed now for the sieges, a way of either staying alive or simply a quick run into a pay'n'spray or a save point.

I'm thinking of going back to the PS2 version purely because the colours look so much better. Also I miss the carnage on the freeways, I really do. This would mean I'd have to replay the Paramedic mission all over again.

And..

Wait for it.....

Bubbling under .......... GTA4 for PS3 anyone?
*faints*

R.I.P. Chris Penn

2006-01-25T14:00:00.000Z

Yes indeed, rest in peace. Chris Penn of course played the voice of Police Officer Eddie Pulaski. He was found dead today at his home.

Officer Eddie Pulaski: Get outta here, you grease-ball bastard! Stupid Mexican... [to Officer Hernandez] Oh, hey, sorry.
Carl Johnson: Any last requests?
Officer Eddie Pulaski: Yeah... can I fuck your sister?

Vandal

2006-01-08T22:03:00.000Z

Found 2 more tags yesterday, now only 2 to get. Strange how I found them almost within a few minutes of each other as I've been looking for all four tags for like almost a year.

Rockstar not one to encourage such antisocial behaviour

Tried again today, no luck. But I did manage to have great fun with the Vortex hovercraft vehicle. It seems that the Vortex has a tendancy to explode quite wildy when it's on fire, which as you can imagine only means more fun for the rest of us.

Oyster #49

2005-11-07T10:07:00.000Z

Has been got. Fairly unconvinced that I didn't pick this one up before but then there you go. It was located way down south in Los Santos around the docks region, right at the entrance.

So then a rather half heartedly snoop around for the last one was conducted for about 10 minutes before as usual complete mayhem erupted and so me, cops, and the rest of the world just got our asses kicked.

I'm getting better at sniping police choppers out of the sky these days, the trick seems to be to aim quite high up above the windscreen. You won't be able to bring them down if they are right on top of you, the chopper needs to be either some yards away or at least fairly level with Carl. I just wish they'd stop exploding in my face.

A very nice hidey hole to cause trub from seems to be your house in the hills, the mansion in Los Santos. Not the Madd Dogg one, but I've yet to try that so it might be okay, but I'm talking about the other one on stilits. Cops try to drive up the hill and fail so you can pop them off from there. If you wander too far past the swimming pool though the cops will get you in the end as they appear randomly from the woods.

SNAPSHOT!!

2005-10-24T09:31:00.000Z

Snapshots? Done em all mate. No probs. Great thing about this is that I get a shotgun, grenades, and a sniper rifle back at my San Fierro garage, with lots of ammo too.

So where was it I hear you ask. I'm not sure I could tell you actually, I was so excited and surprised that I'd found it I bombed it back to base to save my game. All I remember is it was quite high up next to a skyscraper, near the Pier 69 area.

I spent the rest of the game trying gang warfares, right on the corner of Los Santos where the beach meets the dock lands. You know where I mean, there is an outlet pipe that you can hide in. Anyway no gangs were turning up to fight me so nothing ever kicked off.

I watched Gremlins after that. Yow.

HORSESHOE !!

2005-10-22T22:14:00.000Z

YES! I found another ONE! That makes 48 now. This one was on the airport runway, sort of, just to the side. I found it while on a madcap chase from the police and my car went right through it. If I'd have blinked I'd have missed it probly.

Completed a hefty amount of some more unique jumps tonight too, I forgot to check what my total was though sorry. Will look tomorrow. Going to spend the rest of the night watching Manhunter and eating Ferraro Rochets.

Boi

Feel the 'noise'

2005-10-18T13:47:00.000Z

Life in GTA has been ultra quiet lately, mainly due to developments in my other blog Population You. The last time I remember playing was Friday, or maybe Saturday afternoon. I don't believe I found any hidden items but I did complete numerous unique jumps. I'm trying to narrow the gap between 'found' and 'done' jumps. Currently it's 4.

That was until I got caught in the frenzied loop of :

"Shooting a cop/someone else who pissed me off"
"Cause explosions, pile ups, mayhem in general"
"Wanted level slowly but very surely starts to rise"
"More cops get blasted as the evening draws in"
"Choppers start to feel the 'noise' and health drops"
"Run away! Run away!"
"Busted or Wasted"
"First person you see, shoot"
..repeat until bored.

Still no sign of them

2005-10-09T11:04:00.000Z

Nope not a jot. Not even a sausage.

I played this fooking game until 3am on Saturday night and I just didn't find one of my still yet to find hidden items. Admittedly I spent most of the time just playing gang warfare but I thought I would come across at least a tag.

Had a dream last night that i still had over 20 tags to find, what a nightmare? Also in my dream the game morphed with 'Alien Trilogy' and I remember shooting some face huggers along the way. That'll teach me to dust off my Saturn. Any yey wow I was informed that my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga was gold dust so I checked on Ebay to see what prices they were going for. Around the 80 quid mark no less! wow indeed.

Paramedic Gets Ass Whooping!!!!

2005-09-30T19:51:00.000Z

So hurrah I just completed the Paramedic mission and quite frankly am a little bit pleased with myself for this. I did it on Las Venturos near to where Barbara meets you at the cop shop. It's really easy here because the only time they position awaiting patients outside the town is just straight down the long straight road. Did it in no time.

But

Now I'm a little bit upset because I just realised that I've still not done the shooting range mission on the XBox, damn this cross-platform game playing.

In summary here is what I have left to do:
Shooting Range (4 x 3 levels with different weapons)
1 x Courier Mission (Las Venturos)
1 x Snapshot
4 x Tags
2 x Oysters
Some Horseshoes but I forget how many.

I'm worried about tags, I have this feeling that I only half sprayed one of them when I ran out of paint one time. And I read somewhere that it's impossible to go back and spray the tag fully once this has happened. I will literally kill every inhabitant of San Andreas if this ends up being the case. I MEAN IT!!

Solution

2005-09-28T19:51:00.000Z

I may have found a solution to my Paramedic problem. You can alter the radar so that it only shows the blips, I will try this out soon. Although this still doesn't get around the fact that it's the most boooooooooring mission ever.

Last night I found one more snapshot, I don't even really know where it was as I zoomed from a long way away. I think it was near the garden centre (which I have definitely looked a million times before). So now that's 47 found.

I've now completed the sub casino missions too, there were more of them than I remembered. Here is a brief break down of events:

Photo opportunity - I don't know if that's what this one was called but it sounds good dunnit. This was the one where you charm your way past the receptionist to get into the National Records office so that you can photograph the blueprints of casino. In this mission you talk to the receptionist (playing dumb that you didn't know it was illegal to get access to these blueprints), she falls for your undersight claim and buzzes you into the offices. Here you go upstairs to create a fire and get everyone out, take the photograph, and then shoot your way out the building. Escaping back to the Four Dragons with a three star wanted level. Not too much of a challenge, good fun though.

Key to Her Heart - One of the workers at the casino is a female, she will have a key card that you can steal to gain access to certain areas. I had to follow her car without spooking her, which led me to a sex shop (where I learned she was into domination, I bought a gimp outfit) and then followed her home where I had to wait for her normal gimp to arrive, kill him and take his place. So after this mission I didn't have the key card but I now had her as a new girlfriend. The plan was to work at her to get the card. I had other ideas, read on...

Dam and Blast - Again, not sure if that was the title. I forgot to watch the intro to this one so not sure what the whole reason was for blowing up the dam. Gaining access to a plane, flying above the dam, parachuting in, stealthly breaking into the back door, planting charges, escaping. Not a problem, it offers you a knife to complete this but I found the silenced pistol much more fun and effective.

Cop Wheels - Aaargh. On the PS2 I had no effort completing this first time round, why the pain now? Okay on this one you have to steal four police motorbikes dotted around Las Venturos and stash them on one of those ramp trucks, the truck is actually on the move on the global freeway that surrounds LV so you have to catch it up. My first attempt I'd completely forgotten about how you get the bikes. They are parked up with the rider usually stood nearby, if he sees you coming up he will make a break for it. I also completely miss timed trying to find the ramp truck and spent a good five minutes on only the first bike. Failed. The second attempt was just a joke. Started off well, managed to steal the bike outside the shop with no problems, only one wanted star gained. Raced around the freeway, had the truck in my sights then .. WALLOP! The junction where the Strip joins the freeway, cars turn off here without thought nore car for other road users. I was knocked off the b
ike with a massive thump. Got back on. Knocked off again almost immediately. Eventually got back on, a bit more trouble with drivers on the freeway, knocked off AGAIN. Finally caught the truck up, parked it. Next bike was at the hospital, this one I can never sneak up on and he always mounts the bike. So I drew my gun and attempted to fire at him. Unluckily I hit the gas tank of the bike and it exploded. Failed.
Third and final attempt was text book, apart from the slight palaver at the Rock Hotel where I'd by this point gained a few wanted stars and struggled to shoot the cyclist off his bike. He'd have gotten away an all if it wasn't for the huge pile up of cop cars and other traffic blocking his escape route. Success!

Military Fuels - That's certainly not what this mission was called. It's the one at the military fuels factory with the helicopter magnet thing. It said I needed a military vehicle to enter the area, stuff that I thought. I parked a ramp truck outside the gate and after lots and lots of failed attempts managed to bike it over the fence. Shot upon by soldiers straight away, sorted them out, got to the helicopter pad, shot down the two gunships, picked up the van with the magnet, dropped it off at the airstrip. No fear.

So now I needed to get the key card off that girl, I think her name was Millie but dunno for sure. The game wanted me to wine and dine her to a level where she would just give it to me. Yeah right like I'm going to bother with that. Called for her. "Take me to dinner Carl". BLAM BLAM BLAM IN THE FACE !!! She was pretty tough and put up a fight in the end. Phone rings. It's Woozee,
"How's it goin gettin the card Carl?",
"Erm, slight problem on that front. Millie had an accident"
"What do you mean?"
"We were out on a date and things got heated. Millies dead man"
"Oh Carl, nevermind. You'll have to break into her house and steal it from inside"
"No problem"
So that's what I did, and there it was just lying there next to all the bondage equipment.

The final mission was the heist itself. The plan was to disguise myself as a croupier, gain access to the back area, let the other guys in through the back door, get the money and stash it in the van they brought, escape by parachute from the roof. And this I did, with no bother. It's a long mission with a lot of shooting and running up and down the stairs, similar in style to the Vice City bank job mission (but nowhere near as hard to escape at the end).

After this I bought myself some more property, just a few places left on San Fierro to buy now. I have the cash so this will be done soon.

****UPDATE****
Okay just had a play at lunchtime, bought all the property now. Noticed that I have in fact not done hardly any of the flying missions at Las Venturos airport. Just completed Barnstorming and WWII. And I tried the courier mission with using the 'blip-only-radar' method, seems fine. It is slightly harder not being able to see the roads but I know most of the city layouts so well now it's nothing major. And, AND, Denise the stupid bitch has just dumped me BY PHONE!!! How shit is that? So mental note, when Katie or Barbara ring up (and the message comes up on the screen "so-and-so is ringing you, press L button to answer"). I will not answer the phone. Usually it just says your phone is ringing when they're calling to arrange a date.

SUCKS!

2005-09-27T20:50:00.000Z

Paramedic missions SUCK on this game, why are they so goddam long?? 12 levels of that boring shite are just too much, I got bored to death by level 7 and also I couldn't see the blue markers on the map at all. RUBBISH PROGRAMMING !!!!!!!!!!

Other than that I've been loving the game and I've completed a bucket load.

Trucking - Not really a problem, the mission where you carry illegal goods to the docks on Los Santos was the only niggly one. Once the police stop you and you lose your trailer it's all over I'm afraid.

Quarry - No problems whatsoever, finished first time round.

Stadium missions - Wow I finished these first go as well, apart from the destruction derby one where I didn't realise the markers were on the scanner. Did it next go though.

Freight Train - Easy peasy lemon squeazy.

Taxi - Modded my cab to black for this, and by way of completing it I learned a bit more of the map on Los Santos

Mountain Bike - The mount Chilliad missions, finished these suckers. I always seem to start these mission badly and fall off the hill all the time. But as you reach the finish line you can still usually catch up with the other racers.

Fire Truck - Well this one was a sweaty adventure. I attempted it on Los Santos, and all the bloody vehicles were around the dock area which was really awkward at times and I struggled to locate them sometimes. Did it though, with ample time remaining.

Valet - yeah doddle, nothing to it. Even parking the car crapply won't punish you all that much.

Import/Export crane - Collected all the cars for this now, last car to get was the Euros. I thought I remembered this car being something special but it was crap.

BMX - Yeah just cycle around first until you get your skill upgraded to do a good enough bunny hop and this one is really easy, it gives you loads of time.

Pimping - which I think I missed off my original list of things to do. My first attempt at this failed because I ran over a customer. Not my frigging fault he just dived in front of me. Pillock.

So what does that leave me with now? I still have the sub casino missions to do, I think that might be about 4 missions. Hidden items of course. One street race, one flying race. Paramedic. Oh and the courier missions which won't be too hard.

Finished my session last night with a barrage of cop killing. Using multiple attack types such as the chainsaw, shotgun, hydra plane, bazooka. Great fun, and relieved by stress of failing the paramedic mission attempt

Cave on Las Venturos

2005-09-11T00:50:00.000Z

Check this cool find out. This picture shows where on the map on Las Venturos I am, I'm on a cliff side on the river to the dam.

I've found a cave, that's also sort of a tunnel

Here I am inside the cave, the exit comes out on the same bank side of the river but just a bit further down.

There's a police bribe inside.

I thought that was a pretty cool find. I found it on my huge hunt for oysters of which I now have 48.

I also finished a great deal of sub missions today. Hot Ring, Kickstart, BMX, lots of import vehicles found, Golded bike school in about five minutes. Golded boat school quick too.

I've spent too long on this game today, my head is mashed.

Xbox vs PS2 - and the winner is ...

2005-09-10T17:12:00.000Z

Things I've noticed this lunchtime after playing both the Playstation2 version and the Xbox version back to back are :

Colours on the PS2 version seem a lot more vibrant, I think this is due to the blurry effect it produces. The Xbox picture is a lot sharper but can look a little diluted sometimes because of this.

Draw distance for the horizon is further on the Xbox by a long way, the PS2 draws a lot of haze close in.

CJ seems to run a bit slower on the PS2

There's just so much more detail on the textures on the Xbox

The control system is just far superior on the PS2

And the biggest point, which has in fact pursueded me to play the Xbox version over the PS2, is that the computer controlled vehicles are way too erratic on PS2. They appear to judder because they're all going too fast and on the highway it's just pile up after pile up instantly. It made driving around almost unbearable how did I put up with that for so long

Yes before this knowledge I was very close to reverting back to my PS2 saved game but now I've come to my senses again.

Found about 4 tags in the space of a minute last night, was kinda lucky but they all count.

I got trapped under the playing surface graphics at one point as well, and I couldn't find my way back out for ages. It started when I jetpacked into the railway tunnel near the military fuels factory on Las Venturos. I was flying high up on the tunnel ceiling when a train came in, the tunnel is very tight so the train ended up pushing me into the light fitting graphic. I was stuck for a moment but constant jet pack acceleration caused me to squeeze between the tunnel roof and the ground above. So I was now inverted in the gaming world. I travelled about a bit exploring and seeing vehicles and pedestrians walking about on invisible roads (you can see through the ground) until I came to the pyramid hotel. I tried to get back into the world as we know it by dropping into the water and swimming under the sphinx. It didn't have it though and once I'd dropped my jetpack I just fell to infinity and it put be on the pavement outside the hotel. Strange how it fixes itself like that.

Of interest too is that the magnet crane cannot pick up helicopters
(and probly therefore planes), I tried with the Leviathon last night. So I ended up landing the chopper on top of the crane, getting out, and then trying to walk up the crane arms. Unfortunately the chopper was parked in the way and after about 10 minutes of trying (and some strange noises coming from the crane) I fell to my bloody death as I missed my footing. Somehow it was all good fun though.

Finished level 1 of the Train mission, I'm hoping when I revisit the
train it will put me straight onto level 2.

Completed the San Fierro stadium mission without much fuss, took me a while to realise that the checkpoints appeared on your map though. tsk. I now have a bloodring bangor spawned outside the stadium which has a nice roll cage and fancy stickers to boot.

Driving Academy

2005-09-06T15:47:00.000Z

Why didn't they incorporate a function whereby when you travel through the toll bridge kiosks at Gant bridge you are automatically deducted a toll fee (say about $50). That was surely an undersight ?

So I'm rushing home at lunchtime, a quick visit to the cash machine (oh hurry up people in front of me trying to order cheque books from an ATM) and then a lunch purchase from the garage (sausage & bacon bap, bbq flavour hula hoops, and an orange drink). Then I dive into the house, wading through the mail at the front door, switch on the Xbox and sit down to enjoy my Driving School Gold medal attempts.

I already have the full Silver collection, this enables a Bullet car outside the test school. The Gold would be much harder, once completed I would have access to the Hotknife hotrod type car. I knew this was going to be painful.

Indeed it was. But I did them all but one.

The 360, handbreak turn, and cone crazy weren't too bad.

The real doozers were the 90 degree park, pit manouver, and still yet to do 'City Slicking' and even that was a close one if it wasn't for those damn taxi drivers.

I was surprised at how quickly I did the Burn and Lap, the jump and flip, the 2 wheel, and the police car tyre popping one.

The controls on Xbox once again proved to be a nuisance for the reverse spin mission, in the taxi. I had to change my view to the action-cam in order to see behing me for this one as trying to press the rear view buttons while reversing and turning at speed was just never going to happen.

But I think I attempted the 90 degree parking task about 100 times, and I don't think I'm exaggerating either. There was some anger management going on in that lounge I can tell you. Basically you have to hand break turn into a parking position between two other cars (a very narrow gap) and land 90 degrees to the angle you approached at. Very easy to over shoot, under shoot, hit the other cars, spin the car, smash your control system to smithereens...

There's this Magnet see...

2005-09-06T10:47:00.000Z

I was playing around at the San Fierro docks the other day where the crane magnet sits. I had a few wanted stars on my ass and cop cars were hounding me as I thrashed about trying to elude them on my NRG bike. The funniest thing happened. I sped off unwittingly towards where the magnet hung, it was pretty low to the ground, and I had a cop car right on my rear. As the car went under the magnet, yes you've probly already guessed, the car became stuck to the magnet but preceded to accelerate and went swinging into the air. rofl big time, it was like a scene from Smokey & the Bandit.

So here is a cool funny thing to try:

First you need a fast car and fit it with a nitro or two.
Next drive down to the docks at San Fierro (where the export sign is) and enter the magnet crane, now position the magnet so it's about a metre off the ground and right at the end of the docks next to the sea.
Get back into the car and drive back down to the entrance, where the barrier is for the train track (you could even go through the fence)
Now turn around and face where the magnet is and put your foot down with full nitros engaged.

Watch the fun!

You have to be careful that you don't set the magnet too high because if you do the car will not swing down and touch the ground (which is kinda fun tho but wait..) and you will not be able to get out of the car and you'll be stuck. I did manage once to wriggle the car free and crash it around using the left and right controls.

You can even use the magnet to pick up cars that have crashed into the sea. How cool.

GTA San Andreas : Xbox update

2005-09-06T08:51:00.000Z

Getting back into this at the moment, just so you are up to date I am playing the XBox version of San Andreas now instead of the PS2 one. I got upto 97.5% on the Playstation before I finally converted over, I'm just a sucker for nice graphics.

You'll notice that I've removed the stats panel there (go on, have a look!) to avoid confusion and besides I don't think I'll be returning to the PS2 game (tho the control system is far FAR superior to the xbox). I will create a link over there to a much more favourable looking stats page soon. (for soon see 2 years)

Anyway the game, what's been happening. Well I haven't actually played much in the way of missions lately or even finding any secret stuff tho I did go on a bit of a hunt for the horseshoes recently. I found 36 in one sitting, but then I had to go out to the pub, I haven't returned yet and the longer I leave it the worse it will be and I'll forget which ones I've already picked up. So getting back on the horseshoe front is urgent & key. Also tags, messed up here too. On the Playstation I managed to find 99 of them but revisiting the search on Xbox seems to be a bit of a bitch and I've only located 90 at the moment and struggling with remembering the rest (tho I did see one last night, didn't have me spray can on me unforch).
Snapshots. Yep you guessed it, fowled up on these also. Seems I just don't remember where the hell they were on the PS2 and places where I *thought* I'd seen them just aren't valid at all. So in a bit of a biff with these right now, they can bloody well wait for all I care.
Not started on the oysters yet, will hopefully do these in one go soon.

Stuff I've yet to do anyway: (not too sure about what I need for 100%)

Casino Side Missions - You know the one, robbing the Mafia's casino. I will be leaving this one very late just so I still feel in the game while I attempt all the other stuff. (see, always thinking aren't I)

Paramedic - Yuk! Never liked these ones, last last last

Fire Truck - On Playstation they weren't too much trouble, however with the Xbox's tricky control system this might be a bit more of a git

Taxi - Doddle, will do these as we go as I can stop and start them freely

Quarry - Not even attempted these, I remember the final one being tricky trying to cross the road with a Dumper truck. Most of them were fun tho

BMX - I don't even have the bike skill yet to start these, once you get a decent bunny hop skill tho these aren't anything to worry about

Mountain Bike - Again not enough bike skill to even start, these were a pain!

Street Races - Finished all these but one, the 'Freeway' race on Los Santos. Funnily enough this was the same little devil that proved a troublemaker on the Playstation, I think it has something to do with the car being A COMPLETE JOKE!

Valet - yawn yawn, will get around to these soon

Fighting Styles - Not a prob, only 1 more to do anyway

Courier - The ones on the bikes, a bit tedious to be fair.

Car Import Export - Can't believe I haven't finished even the first wave of these yet, usually I'm all over these. Could tonight be the night? Perhaps.

Freight Train - Just plain forgot about these until I just started making this list, easy peasy and quite a chilled mission really.

Driving School - I got Silver in most and a few Golds, I know I don't have to do these for the 100% but don't think for a minute I'm leaving them out as that would be the workings of a crazy man.

Bike School - See above

Los Santos Stadium - The one where it's just a race, finished it on PS2 but remember it being really hard. Shit I'd forgotten about the stadium games.

San Fierro Stadium - This one is the destruction derby event in the bowl, but this time you use guns and there are 'repair' icons to pick up. Not too bad

Las Venturos Stadium 1 - The kickstart type event where you trial ride all over the place picking up points. Very enjoyable, such a game in itself. Rockstar you, um, rock!

Las Venturos Stadium 2 - Aaaargh!! NO I REALLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONE AGAIN?!! The race on the Sanchez. Bad on so many levels. Rockstar you suck!

Trucking - Fek me this list is never ending. These were fun until the very last mission, surprise surprise. *starts crying uncontrollably*

Is that it? Oh and the hidden items of course. The unique jumps don't count to the 100% but of course they will be done too. omg just look at the length of that list of missions, lol this game flippin rules.

Summer Holiday

2005-08-09T09:11:00.000Z

Back from my Greek hols and spent most of my lazy weekend on good old Vice City PS2 version. Completed stacks of missions and of course enjoyed myself thoroughly. See the love juice ooze from my face as I once again fall in love with the PS2 control system. Or perhaps not.

The gaps in between playing time were filled with, naturally, episodes of Miami Vice Season 1. Do I have a life? You'd better believe it!

GTAface

2005-07-22T08:33:00.000Z

I watched the movie Scarface for the first time last night, was amazed at the whole GTAness. Not only is this basically Vice City:The Movie what with the Florida settings and the gang storyline but most of the music you hear is from the GTA3 radio station Flashback. Bizarre.

I've been spending some time on getting tags at the moment, have managed 85 and starting to struggle remembering anymore. It looks like I'll just have to get lucky with the rest.

And I've already messed up finding and completing the unique jumps, bah!

Secret sex scenes found coded in San Andreas

2005-07-21T10:53:00.000Z

It would appear that the game is in the news again. So how the hell do I get to see these scenes on my Xbox or Playstation? Seems daft to get all flustered over what are going to be scenes that only super-hackers will be able to find. Strange rating system in the US, and I'm a bit shocked that it's not already rated an Adult Only game anyway, it is here in the UK.

Follow my leader

2005-07-19T10:40:00.000Z

Went crazy street racing mad last night. Have now completed them all but one, also not attempted the flying races yet but they're not much of a challenge as they're not time based.

The only street race I have yet to complete is Freeway, on Los Santos. Strangely enough this was the same race I had trouble with on the PS2, mainly down the the fact that *takes deep breath* THE CAR IS SO BLOODY TWATTING AWFUL TO DRIVE!!!!!!

Smiled when I completed Little Loop tho, this was another shitty race on the NRG bike. There was a hill which when accelerated up would make your bike perform random wheelies and somehow ~~due to shit programming~~ you would always fall off.

Enjoyed the Bandito race immensly and laughed as I completely fluked the go go kart race on San Fierro. I was in third position for most of the race and I got lucky taking over second place. Then almost before the final stretch there's a quick straight dash down a narrow alley, complete with trash cans. See me knock the poor first place positioned fellow into the unfortunate path of a green bin. Yo! Winner!

RC Twat head

2005-07-18T10:13:00.000Z

I finished the story missions yesterday on the Xbox. Once again here is a summary of the missions I completed :

Grove 4 Life - Just some normal gang warfare missions. Sweet gets in the way, so I had to leave him for a bit. No problems with this one.

Riot - Not really much of a mission, just drive Sweet back to the Grove through all the street chaos. I saved the position at this point to a new memory slot, just so I could come back to Los Santos in chaos every now and again. I also stole The Truths camper van on this but after the mission finished the van disappeared from my garage

Los Desperados - Cesar needs my help to clear some suckers from his gang area. I had a few problems with this one, occasionally I'd miss killing one the bad guys and they'd be hiding in a doorway. At close range you can be killed pretty quickly I discovered that this was indeed frustrating and inevitably so did my neighbours.

Before I could attempt the final mission I had to take over a certain amount of gang area. Sweet then gives you a call when you're ready.

End Of The Line - I stole the Riot van from this mission, and stored it in my garage. It seems to still be there. Hurrah! Anyway, you have to steal the Riot van, smash into the building, run over a few Ballas, then you have to make the rest of the mission on foot. Proceed up through the floors killing bad guys. This one takes some time but it's not too difficult. You get to meet Smoke and kill him in the end, he's not all that. Tenpenny turns up and torches the place so you have to escape dodging and extinguishing fires, while still shooting at baddies. It can get pretty dark too but you get some night vision goggles, but I preferred not using them as you can't see the fires too well with them on. After you escape the burning building the mission doesn't end there, Sweet chases Tenpenny who has now nicked a firetruck. Sweet jumps onto the swinging ladder on the back while Tenpenny drives off forcing you to give chase in another car. After a while Sweet's grip on the ladder starts to give and you need to position your vehicle (a handy convertible) underneath him to catch his fall. Phew. Then Sweet takes the wheel and still in chase of the firetruck you need to shoot off the hounding police cars and gang members. A not too challenging gun fight later and Tenpenny crashes the truck off the Grove street bridge. We all gather around him while he appears to die. Mission done. Game done.

I've still got heaps to do, over 40% to do in fact. And that doesn't include certain parts of the game that I want to finish, like unique jumps and the school golds.

As I was feeling pretty chuffed last night I decided to buy Zero's shop and attempt the 3 missions there. These are probably the hardest things in the game (well maybe apart from City Slicker driving school gold achievement), but I managed to complete them without too much bother. There were points when smashing the Xbox controller through the window would probably have been the preferred option. Anyway here they are :

Air Raid - Standing on the roof of the shop with a gattling gun, shoot down the toy planes that are determined to drop their bombs on Zero's antennas. I never really understood how this one worked, and completion of it was a bit of a fluke, the signal meter doesn't seem to match with what is going on and I've failed it with still having a fairly decent signal level. The trick is not to fire wildy because then the screen just vibrates and your aim goes all over the show. Finished after 3 attempts.

Supply Lines - Using the toy plane shoot the crap out of the couriers who use vans, push bikes and motorbikes. They shoot back and your plane appears to be a bit crap because it catches fire pretty quickly. This one is pure annoyance if only for Zero's horrid cry when the plane explodes. The people on the motorbike caused me the most trouble, they seemed hard as anything.

New Model Army - Not that difficult, in fact not at all, just long winded. A cool model landscape set up in some warehouse, use the chopper to pick up/drop stuff to help the model car reach it's destination. A shame this place cannot be revisited.

Once these are done you get the shop as an asset and you can attempt the supply lines mission whenever you like. I was a bit disappointed that you can't get access to any of the other remote controlled stuff after this, not even the RC Bandit. A GTA game just isn't the same without that.

Over 60 tags done and still the Casino sub mission to do. I think I may leave this till the very end because that way I'll still feel part of the game. Time to hunt the hidden objects me thinks.

Holler!

2005-07-13T10:11:00.000Z

Lawd I'm loving this game again right now!

Okay, the following were completed yesterday evening:

Fish In a Barrel - Not a mission but just a cut scene, I think I just completed a sort of 'section' of the Casino missions for Woozie.

A Home In The Hills - Big shoot out down at Madd Doggs mansion, basically to rid Big Poppa from the residence. Parachute in with a few other triad members (who are not bad at helping out really) and just shoot the shit up. Then after you've cleared the mansion chase down Big Poppa in some pink shit Windsor car. By the way he drives a Phoenix car which doesn't seem to be a car that appears much in the game, the only other place I've seen it is in one the of the street races in San Fierro. Anyway finished this one with ease, and attained lots of ammunition in the process.

Freefall - back to the Mafia casino for these missions. This one is pretty daft and ridiculously easy. Fly a plane above another plane, then a cut scene shows you parachute down and climb into the plane. Then in a first person shoot out mode not too dissimilar to Time Crisis, pressing a button to hide around a corner and shooting the bad guys that pop up from behind various chairs. Easy goddam lemon bloody squeazy.

Saint Mark's Bistro - Fly to Liberty City! Yes! And it's snowing there. Well you don't quite get to see much of the city but there's a nice cut scene which shows the outside of the bistro and the snow on the roads. Cute. Anyway, fairly easy although I did first attempt this with absoloutely no weapon and got my head blown off. Shoot the men, leave. land the plane. Sweet.

Vertical Bird - Whoa was this one tense. The mission from Toreno is to steal the military jet (much like the Harrier Jump Jet) from an aircraft carrier in San Fierro. I like the dialogue on this one between Carl and Toreno, funny. You start off in a boat, a very nice speedy boat btw, which you have to park near the back doors of the boat and sneak in. So I swim in and you get given a silenced gun and a knife so I suspected that stealth was order of the day. Forget it. The stealth on this game just does not work. I crept around for about 10 seconds and hid behind a crate but still somehow the engineer spotted me. So there I go just killing everyone wildy, this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for bad programming. Stole the jet and then I had to take out the enemy planes. When I played this on PS2 I remember the other planes just crashed into the scenery, this time however I thought it would be fun to destroy them myself. After a few accidental collisions with antennas etc my plane was pouring out black smoke. Targetted and successfully destroyed the other planes though in a spectacular display of aerial prowness over the Garner bridge. I was then informed that some boats in Las Venturas needed wiping out, wasn't sure if my poorly plane was up to the job though. After many a u-turn and retry I killed the last boat but now my wing was really hanging off and black smoke was everywhere. All I had to do next was land the damn thing. Using my hovering skills I ~~blindly~~ skillfully set down the bird into the red corona mark on the abandonded airstrip. Oh but then I had to taxi it into the hanger, and strangely the plane didn't really like slowing down. I reckon one touch from something and I would've been a gonna. Can't believe you thought I wasn't going to do it. Mission success!

High Noon - Okay back to Las Venturos, another Tenpenny mission. This time we have to kill his stupid ass partner. He escapes in a Buffalo car and drives all over the island. I had a Bandito and I knew it wasn't going to last. How did I win? Well simply divert the dumbass into an alley, grab him out of his car, and run his shit over. DEAD!

The following couple of missions were back on Los Santos, where we encounter the Ballas gang once again.

Home Coming - Sweet is now out of jail, I go to pick him up. Take him back to the Grove, he's a little miffed at how things have turned out. So we take to the streets and wipe out the crack dealers and the Ballas people from the Grove. With my new special friend the MK4 this wasn't such a problem. After this mission though I changed friends and started with the AK instead. Grove st was ours again

Beat Down on B Dup - More gang warfare, this time back in good old Glen Park. Can those sorry ass Ballas and then turn your attention to B Dup's house. Blam!

So I now have the Madd Dogg mansion, where there are missions still, and the Grove Street where more gang warfare missions need to be completed to fully retain my status in the hood.
I attempted the Cut Throat Business mission where you chase OG around Los Santos but I accidentally jumped my hovercraft on the pier and couldn't get off in time, he escaped.

Woozie Missions

2005-07-12T13:19:00.000Z

Lots and lots done, just take a read of this.

Black Project - Easy peasy lemon bloody squeazy, plus it gave me a nice assortment of toys to play with after the mission. I love this mission actually, just a good blast em up and the Area 69 base is quite a cool place (a shame you don't seem to be able to re-visit it). So I disabled the SAM sites this time round, my flight on the jet-pack was trouble free.

Fender Ketchup - I can't believe I failed this one first time, it's just so easy and stupid. Basically drive around with some guy strapped to the bonnet of your car and scare him until the scare-o-meter reaches maximum. I ended up wrapping the car around a tree first time. doh!

Explosive Situation - Crikey another easy one that I failed first time, it's becoming a scary habbit. Go down to the quarry, nick the dumper truck, run over the boxes of dynamite, nick the dynamite, escape on the sanchez bike up the conveyer belts. I managed to completely miss the last ramp on my escape and drove straight into the awaiting vans of nice men with large guns. hmmm. Done now though.

Green Goo - Good fun mission. Fly the jet-pack over the speeding train, shoot the army guys, land on the train, shoot the crates, nick the green goo (which made a cool shiny green effect when I picked it up). Particularly like the part where the train goes into the tunnel and you have to wait on the carriage due to the low roof.

You've Had Your Chips - Well I attempted this one first off with no weapons of any kind, which was dumb. I ended up running around the building trying to chainsaw through the walls. Anyway, get to the factory, kill the bad guys (which there are lots and they are all nasty men), destroy the fake casino chip making machines, escape.

Don Peyote - The meeting of Macca and Kent Paul, the two English guys in the desert. All I had to do was pick them up (bugger to find them initially) take them back to the casino. Along the way though I had to stop the car while Paul got out and puked up. Then I had to pay a visit to the snake farm where some crazy locals tried to bust me up, I changed their mind.

Intensive Care - Grab the patriot car from the hospital, locate the ambulance with the right guy in (there are three to choose from although I suspect it will always be the last one he is in). Nick the ambulance, drive back to the meat factory.

The Meat Business - So I have to drive the record manager back to the meat factory, another shoot em up level. I remember when I played this on the PS2 Rosy got himself locked in the meat freezer, no such problems this time round and I finished this one with no bother.

Madd Dogg - Save silly drunken Madd Dogg the rapper from jumping to his suicidal fate by positioning the truck under his fall. Then drive him to the hospital. The first time I tried this I managed to tear the shit out the truck on the way to the hospital, which I didn't realise killed Madd Dogg stone dead.

So then after all this I decided to start on my school missions. I managed all gold in the Flight school, all silver in the boat school, and (wow shock omg) all silver in the driving school. Obviously I will want all gold everywhere but that was pretty good for first attempts. Although I really really fucking hate the circle-airstrip-and-land level on the flight school.

Completion of the driving school enables the stupid brothers to ring me and tell me about the street races, and the car showroom. I bought that. This then enables more missions at the San Fierro garage:

Zeroing In - Chase the bitch in the pink car around San Fierro, track her down with the gizmo in her car that bleeps a signal every so often. Do the PIT thing on her so she gets out and nick her car. Doddle

Test Drive - Great mission. You and Cesar nick cars from the other showroom, drive around San Fierro like madmen, avoid the cops, dodge a few skips and other random positioned obstacles. Good fun.

Customs Fast Track - Tedious really, get in the crane at the docks and check out each of the crates. Find the right car and shoot some bad guys. ho hum

Puncture Wounds - Strange, you get to lay stingers out on this mission but there are no stingers from the police in the whole game. Anyway this was just so easy it's not worth talking about.

The car showroom became my asset after these missions.

Then came Tenpenny, a random mission from the north of Las Venturos:

Misappropriation - Now I couldn't remember this one at first, I grabbed a Hunter chopper for the hell of it and flew to the marker on the map. As soon as I saw the 'ghost town' I remembered what was going down. See me splatter the place with missiles and machine gun fire. Oh wow. The chopper with the dossier managed to get airborn. See me give chase and ooh crikey did he get a walloping. Watch the pretty bird explode over the dam and the dossier fall out nicely onto the road. Job done.

See I am just so great, I even managed to finish the Vigilante missions for the sake of it too.

"Not right now, I got some business to attend to"

2005-07-01T13:04:00.000Z

Missions done last night (and this lunchtime):

Toreno's last stand - I think it was called, it was all down at Pier 69. Long drawn out intro for such a basic mission really. Snipe a few Ballas, get on the pier and take out a few more at close range. Get to the end of the pier and take out T-Bone (Jizzies mate) and then get in a boat and take out Ryder.

Woozie - Can't remember the final mission name, it's the one where you start in a helicopter and shoot at the boat. The chopper is taken down by a missile and you have to get on the boat, you start with just a knife. Kill all the baddies hanging around the containers. Rescue the immigrants. Kill someone at the end who tries to confront you with a katana, shot him in the face.

There was one last mission on San Fierro from the garage, that saw you having to motorbike around and take down a helicopter with a rocket launcher. This was annoying trying to catch up with the chopper and getting off my bike and wasting rockets into thin air as the chopper flew off. Until I realised that you need to get out really close to it so that it stops and attempts to shoot you, then you can take your shot.

So I opened up the last island, Toreno calls me on the phone to meet him at his ranch. The first mission is just a timed test in the Monster Truck car, blasting around the countryside of Las Venturos. Came second in all but this was sufficient to pass the test.
Next up was a little mission back with Cesar, I had to ride my motorbike next to a moving truck and Cesar had to jump from the bike to the truck. Easy peasy.

The next mission i had to destroy a load of choppers with a rocket launcher, again fairly straight forward and nothing too challenging.

So I bought the abandoned airstrip, triggering off the pilot licence mission.

I managed to get at least silver and gold in all the missions almost first time. The only annoying one as usual was the circle airfield and land, just kept missing those damn coronas! Also due to the wank controls on the XBox I struggled slightly with the shooting of the targets with the Apache one, but after my third attempt I got gold.

So then the missions start properly at the airfield.

First up was the flying of the plane under radar detection. Now this one used to bug me but I finished it first time now, staying close to the water whenever I could. No problem

Stowaway - Some guys are loading a plane on your runway, as the plane starts to take off you have to ride a motorbike up to the rear hatch that's still open. Dodging the barrels that conveniently fall out this one proved no problem either, just stay to the right of the plane until the last second. Boarding the plane you have to dodge the barrels rolling down towards you whilst fighting with the occasional baddie. Get to the front of the plane, plant the bomb, nick the parachute, get the hell outta there! I noticed on this one too that the plane flies amazingly high, I was parachuting down for ages.

Black Project - ooh you little rascal. Sneak around the Area 69 base, get into the facility, shoot hundreds of soldiers, nick the 'special project item', fly out, DODGE THE GROUND TO AIR MISSILES !!! AAARGHH which I didn't do obviously.

"Yeah, but they're using bikes this time Homes. They go cross country"

2005-06-30T14:49:00.000Z

Still persisting with my rerun of the game on the XBox. Here's what I done recently:

555 We Tip - was where I left it last time I posted I think. No trouble with this really although it took me a couple of attempts as the time limit can be quite tight if you dent the car on the return journey.

Deconstruction - Destroying a whole construction site because the workers were hassling your sister was indeed hilarious, and I finished it in one go. Bulldozed the portacabins and then pushed the foreman into the pit and covered him in concrete. Wow I'm GANGSTA!

Jizzy - Had to run some errands for Jizzy B, these missions were all fairly easy and just involved a bit of driving. There was one involving stealing a car from the car park at the airport. All simple stuff.

Mountain Boys - for Woozie. Good mission, although does feature a tedious intro where you have to hang about with Woozie. Lots of shooting and finishes with a nice bit of a drive and chase. Took a few attempts

Amphibious Assault - the first of the swimming missions involving the large boats anchored off San Fierro shores. Easy one this first one, just a bit of underwater swimming, climbing onto the boat and a ridiculously impossible stealth part which I just never bother with. Shoot everyone (ignore the games request to sneak up on people and knife them). Plant the bug. Go home.

Ice Cold Killer - Wow did I hate this one! The game tells you at first that you must sneak up on Jizzy to get some phone number from his phone. Now it even gives you a silenced pistol and you have to break into the club and sneak about for ages, but, HOW THE HELL DO YOU SNEAK UP ON HIM?? I attempted this one loads, either getting shot in the club or losing Jizzy when he drives off. In the end I just rammed his car, made him stop, dragged him out the car and shot him in the ass. Horribly tedious mission.

Zero is now awaiting to be bought, the remote control toy kid. That will be next. Also I have a Pier 69 mission to attempt, I remember this one being the muvva of all shooting missions.

And successfully robbed loads of money from the San Fierro couriers, both Patriot and Motorbike ones.

2005-06-24T09:32:00.000Z

Beautiful Place?

2005-06-19T22:21:00.000Z

So I finished GTA3 again today (and a bit of yesterday, oh all right it was mostly yesterday and I just finished the last mission off this afternoon). I left the game unsaved with just the killing of Catalina mission undone, so I can just come back to it time and time again and skin her skanky ass.
And it was great fun! To do it all again in the space of probably less than a days play, obviously not including all the extra missions but I did pick up the 100 hidden packages. Such a superb game.

Also played San Andreas on Xbox a lot today, phew big fat sweaty summer session for GTA. Managed to accomplish a fair hefty amount too. I am now well into the San Fierro missions. Not really failed much, was struggling with the Combine stealage though at times.
It plays sooo much better on Xbox, I cannot stress this fact enough. No more does it blur when you reach high speeds. The traffic actually seems to behave a lot more on the highways, less clumsy pile ups. This just might be a fluke though I'll have to play more. There is better anologue accelleration on the Xbox controller, although the look-behind view buttons are a nightmare.

Just failed the 555-we tip mission coz I crashed the car into a Police bike. Yikes

Let's Blay!

2005-06-16T09:00:00.000Z

So I've started properly on th XBox version now, played for a good couple of hours the other night and completed a few of the early missions. I've got as far as opening up OG Loc at the Burger joint, Big Smokes second mission, the Low Rider dance meet (horrible, just horrible).

I really dig the shadows on this version, they follow the path of the sun light around and when you drive your vehicle underneath them they map over the surface really cool.
And I love OG Loc, shame I have to whip his skanky ass later on in the game. "I'm GANGSTA!" rofl.
Surprised at how easily I competed the 'Robbing Uncle Sam' mission, where I have to get Ryder into the military wharehouse and load up the van with crates using the forklift truck. This one usually aggrevates me but I did it first time round.
Not looking forward to a few specific missions that I can remember, robbing Madd Doggs mansion, rescuing Denise from the burning building, some of Catalinas missions, and oh no! Zero!! The worst of the lot.

It's gonna be a loooong weekend I can tell.

San Andreas on XBOX!!!

2005-06-14T12:40:00.000Z

Well what is it like I hear you all scream?

It's pretty damn good actually.

First thing, it loads rapidly! Not that the PS2 was any problems but the increase in start time is noticeable. The game itself seems to run fine, I didn't notice much frame loss compared to the PS2. Draw distance has indeed been improved upon but only ever so slightly. I still have yet to test the 'tree-pop-up' while flying a plane. This was disastrous on Playstation resulting in many a plane crash in the mountains. Let's hope this has been sorted for Xbox.

Graphics are where the improvements are at though, as to be expected. Cars are smoother on the surface (sometimes this can look a little icky though doncha think?) just like in Vice and Liberty. There's a substantial difference to the whole look of the game, road textures are much improved, weather effects give more realistic haze and we now have a rather nifty looking shadow element to objects whereby the shadows actually follow the direction of the suns shine. This makes for some impressive tree line views, call me a hippy but I do love these little extras that Rockstar put in.

Alas again the controller for the Xbox lets things down slightly again, but it's not as bad really as Vice and Liberty. The drive-by camera angle buttons have been changed to the black & white buttons on the right and I feel this is better than where they were on the analogue button. Although looking behind you sees you having to press both buttons at once, this is a little tricky and rubbish to be honest.

Unlike Vice City and Liberty City though I think this one has been successful, the key factor being that the original two games needed no improvements and were fine as they were - thus being let down on Xbox by it's shoddy controls. San Andreas on the other hand struggled greatly at times on the poor old PS2 and I truly believe the Xbox is the system for this game to be played.

We shall see how things pan out anyway.

Oh I played the game at lunch time and explored instead of playing the missions. I realised that I couldn't save the game until I had completed the first mission though, the bmx riding one. I failed it.

And you thought I was an expert? Pah!

Bananas!

2005-06-10T09:54:00.000Z

Thats what happened last night. Complete mayhem. See me and a gatling gun full to the brim with ammunition get on just fine, we make a great couple. I know how to treat her and she knows what I want too. That being ultimate death to all law enforcement, and citizens who get in my way/dent my paintwork/say the wrong thing etc.

So my criminal rating went up slightly due to the enormous amount of police helicopters that I took out. My three hold up points were - on the fairground peir (on the roof of the last building), the lighthouse peir (this one wasn't totally succesful), and finally on the roof of the really steep slanted church in Los Santos (this one failed due to my helicopter still being on the roof which blew up in my face)

Good times though.

I think I want to have my next seige on the Golden Gate bridge, as high as I can get. Yes this would be good I think.

So it's out today for Xbox, still not received my copy but not bothered because having a marathon '24 series 3' viewing this weekend anyway, so probably just as well I don't get addicted to anything else in the meantime. innit.

Yo

XBOX & PC San Andreas release - 10 June

2005-06-09T12:49:00.000Z

That's tomorrow kids! Already pre-ordered mine for the Xbox. Going to be weird because I still haven't fully completed PS2 version yet, so will be playing them both in parallel. Improvements of course include longer draw distance, more polygons, sharper res, and a 30 second replay mode. Apparently the PS2 version was so good that not many other improvements will need to be made. Damn that rubbishy Xbox controller though.

(found another sneaky horseshoe at lunchtime today, inside my casino of all places. Two shoes in two days? Now there's something to get mighty excited about, doncha think?)

Liberty City Stories

2005-06-09T12:48:00.000Z

That's the title of the PSP's version of GTA out soon. That's all I can tell you as there doesn't seem to be anything else available anywhere apart from a crappy splash screen on Rockstars site.

But should be good and my sole reason for buying a PSP in the first place

Impossible Unique Jump - "Sphinx Paws"

2005-06-08T12:32:00.000Z

Yes there I've said it. This jump is impossible. It's located on Las Venturos, near the Sphinx casino. The ramp is situated just to the South of the Sphinx's paw and the jump sees you having to fly over both paws and a small smidgen of water. The sheer load of traffic, trees, lamp-posts and wobbly run up road make this a complete nightmare. It's almost impossible just to start the jump-cam anyway. Madness gone mad.

I just found another horseshoe. I was farting around in one of the multi-storey carparks on LV (of which there are a few) and I had a four star wanted level. So I was climbing here there and everywhere avoiding the police, luring the choppers into the car park so they collided with the ceiling, stuff like that. I found the horseshoe hidden in one of the corners. So there yer go.

"Pnickies" - Capcom 1994

2005-06-08T11:04:00.000Z

Blobs or bubbles? What's your preference? You'll know what I'm talking about if you've ever seen Pnickies. That’s the new gaming craze sweeping the nation at the moment.

Okay it's not exactly 'sweeping' and it's by no means a national thing. In fact it's just a game that I've been playing lots in the house at the moment. I just always wanted to type that at the start of an article.

Seriously though it's a great game, along the lines of Tetris and similar games of 'blocks-falling-down-position-them-correctly-and-they-disappear'. And it seems to be all about the fairies and goblins, if the graphics are anything to go by. My version seems to be all in Japanese so I can't read most of what's going on but I don't think this affects the gameplay too much. The aim is to position your falling multi-coloured blobs/bubbles in a way that the blobs of similar colours align with each other. Occasionally blobs will have a star symbol on them. Once you get a collection of blobs with more than star in the mix then that whole section will be gobbled up, allowing all other blobs on top to tumble down to the bottom of the screen. Of course just like in Tetris if you let your blobs gather up and reach the top of the screen you fail. The more blobs you manage to gobble up in one go the better your score, I thought I was doing really well with my highest combination of 24 blobs but I just read on the internet that you should be getting around 60 for better results.

It's infuriatingly addictive and sports a really cute tune that just adds to the dream like aura that sucks you into this weird and wonderful world of blobs, fairies, hob-goblins, and strange star faced old men (he sits at the top of the screen presumably dishing out the blobs).

After level 24 things start to get faster and before you know it the blobs are racing down the screen at around level 26/27. Even though you do get to see what combination of blobs are coming next it's at this point in the game where reflexes are tested to the max, once you've let your blobs reach two thirds up the screen though you can be sure it's going to end soon.

Brilliant game and highly recommended, you can catch it on Mame somewhere I'm sure.

Blob on brothers!

Cool Breeze Birds and Clouds

2005-06-07T10:41:00.000Z

Okay played this slightly yesterday, while I was off work.

All I managed to accomplish were a few unique jumps and a bit of a half assed hunt for the last tag, which has still not been located. Found the jumps in the airport off one of the portable steps, one across a roof over the road (yeah could be anywhere), and the small stairway that makes up the bridge walkway towards the East coast of the stadium. (all on Los Santos)

Oh, and I made sure that every single other computer driver was severley punished if they managed to even slightly graze my NRG-500 motorcycle. For "punishment" see "AKA bullet in the face". Needless to say there were plenty of these incidents.

And that was that. After trying other games - Outrun2, Need For Speed, and Simpsons Hit and Run. I just became aggitated and wanted to smash my PS2 and XBox into smithereens. Instead I just put on a calm relaxing DVD of Spaced and everything was cool again.

On the brighter side of the news I had a great weekend camping over in Wales. Hurrah! I even saw a Mesa jeep while I was there, this is the final vehicle which my house mate has to find on his game for the Export boat. I was going to take a photo of it and send it by phone to him but I realised he doesn't have a picture phone. So that was a pointless gag really.

As we drove home through Conway and Llandudno my friend pointed out how similar the roads were to a lot of the Burnout[3] tracks, the scenario was made complete when Franz Ferdinand came upon the radio.
Although I felt the coastal roads were more like Need For Speed myself.

Will I ever get the 100% I so dearly long for?????????????

The Warriors

2005-06-02T08:59:00.000Z

Sigh. Still no GTA play of lately, I can sense a long session on the horizon. I'm off work tomorrow and Monday so these would be perfect opportunities to spend some time hunting. Although I really need to get some work done on my zombie text adventure game that I've sadly neglected lately as well, had a quick look at it last night and started drooling.

Also of news is the new Warriors game that Rockstar have announced, which is a version of the cult classic movie of the same name obv. Not sure whether to get excited about it and I'm guessing it's going to be similar to Manhunt. If they manage to get the atmostphere right then they could be onto a winner.

Sans San Andreas

2005-05-27T13:11:00.000Z

These past few weeks I have discovered other games than that of GTA, this isn't as painful as it first sounds. Star Wars Battlefront and Jedi II on the XBOX are where I'm at at the moment, what with all the Star Wars banter about at the moment it's difficult not to get caught up in the moment. Did you see what I did there, I managed to insert 'AT AT' into a sentence. cor!

Watched all 3 original Star Wars movies last weekend, New Hope and Empire Strikes Back on the Friday night and then Return of the Jedi on the Sunday night. I'd forgotten what such an amazing film Empire really is, fantastic stuff!

Also been enjoying the loving delights that is Burnout 3, what a gorgeous looking game this is. Especially having much fun with the multiplayer Road Rage game with one of my friends.

Absoloutely not played San Andreas whatsoever since last post. Not at all. Not even a smidgen. My house mate has been ultra busy though, he's recently obtained all the snapshots the jammy sod.

It's a mad mad mad world

2005-05-19T10:56:00.000Z

My house mate skived off work yesterday to play the game, the rotter.
He managed to overtake me in the hunt for horseshoes, I think he finished with 45. This only fuels my fire into staying in this Saturday to take the lead again.

Great things: The large gatling gun, keep finger on aim, and use L1 button for firing instead of X. This way you can move around with analogue buttons while aiming and firing at will! Great for taking down the helicopters. Just a shame that you eventually run out of ammo. Not so when I claim that 100% malarky. Yum

I noticed I have omitted to include my criminal rating on my stats here as well. Will get that sorted out quick as quick.

And I never did find any oysters.

2005-05-16T12:09:00.000Z

Just played the game for a bit at lunch time, was concentrating on looking for oysters. When suddenly I get a text message. From my house-mate : "Check my horseshoe notes, you don't have that last one". He has been scribbling down the locations of his horseshoe finds so he doesn't end up double searching for them later on, he also must've loaded up my game to check this.

Anyway I read his notes, the last location read :-

"Big storage container plant east of [???] above horseshoe"

Hmm, I thought, not exactly crystal clear is it. I managed to suss it out based on his previous notes where he had been searching though and he meant 'east of THE BASEBALL PARK'. Ha, found it!

44!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.....

Hey! It's Mr Veee!!

2005-05-16T08:43:00.000Z

Lawks I am so cheesy and geeky. I now have a snazzy picture of Vice City on my mobile phone wallpaper, rofflelol!!

Managed to find 3 more Horseshoes over the weekend. There was one north of the city in the doorway of a house (which I am sure I already had!), one on the roof of a building with a heart shaped sign out front, and one in the castle looking place which I'm not sure what it is probably just another casino. I am positive I already had this one too. Found two of these on foot rather than jet-packing about, sometimes you notice more when running about on the ground and jumping onto things.

Still no sign of this last tag, tho not really looked much for it this weekend. In fact I do believe I haven't been to any other island other than LV.

The other news is that I spent a good few hours playing Vice City again. The usual. Armed to the teeth with infinite ammo, stood on a roof somewhere, needlessly releasing round after round of missiles onto the cops. Such joy. Oh and I pulled off a rather impressive unique Double Insane Stunt in the Cheetah car, hitting the fountain at top speed on the TV Studio island and performing oohs and aahs of multiple flips.

Back on San Andreas. Watched my house mate search for his horseshoes for a while but he never found any that I didn't already have. He's such a spawny kid, check this for a sequence of events that happened within the space of 5 minutes:
a)He pulls up the map and spies a suspicously looking shade of green and says "I'll bet there's a horseshoe there". Sure enough he is talking about the tennis courts and indeed there is a horseshoe which he collects as soon as he lands his helicopter on the lawn.
b)He then flies really high up into the air and parachutes down saying "where I land I will look for a horseshoe". Yet again he lands 2 foot!! from a horseshoe that is hidden in a sign.
c)He then walks off and says to himself "I need to get back in the air", meaning he needs to get a chopper again (they are rare in LV city). He walks around a corner 5 seconds later and there lo and behold is his chopper that just crashed to the ground and ITS STILL IN WORKING ORDER!!!

I could sure be needing me some of his luck right now. Ironically that is the whole point of collecting the horse shoes innit.

*sigh*

Le Parker ?

2005-05-10T14:23:00.000Z

Wonderful things about this game #456:

The sheer amount of intricate places your character can climb onto, like small ledges on the rooves of buildings. And then being able to jump from one building to another. I'm such an acrobat. Will be fun once I get my 100% and an infinite round of ammo and perch myself up on top of some random ledge, so much trouble brewing oh yessir mister FBI men you'd better be scared.

I just found another tag anyway. One of the orange ones, it was at the end of a row of houses that go up a steep hill. Yes I know that could be anywhere but whaddya want from me?!

Discovered a couple more unique stunts too, not that these are needed for 100% completion but I'll obviously have to give it a go. There are an incredible 70 stunts in total spread out across the whole map. Wow.

I think it's time to change my wear. The white kango hat, the yellow sweatshirt and black pants are getting a bit smelly. Think I'll go for something bizarre. I'll take pictures if I remember and post them here.

A TRILLION HOURS OF GAMEPLAY....

2005-05-08T12:24:00.000Z

...+1 Horseshoe later.

Ha, but tonnes and tonnes of pure brutal hardcore GTA slam dunking fifty degree kick ass stomping mega mix funky bass to the max thrills.

GIRLS SUCK, THROW ROCKS AT EM!

2005-05-05T09:23:00.000Z

Okay, after a rather miserable failing of a 'date' last night I think it's time to wallow in self pity and play San Andreas for the whole weekend.

With a bottle of wine.

or two.

The two missing tags on Los Santos are beginning to annoy. I honestly don't know where to start looking for these. I could start in my own sea of disgust and vile loathing for all things female. But nah!

A change of clothes. Visit to Ammunation. Perhaps completion of the Paramedic mission. And then I'll be lost in it for two days solid.

Best Friday Ever!

2005-04-29T21:46:00.000Z

Fuckin eh! Check me out.

Finished work and immediately started up the pS2. 45 minutes later I had completed the horrible horrible Cobra mountain bike race. This one is set in the lower half of the mountain where the strange wooden ramp constructions are set up. Trouble is the checkpoints are on this wooden path which is raised a good couple of yards up, so if you fall off (and you will) you have to bunny hop into the checkpoint. Yes this caused me some headaches.

I did it though and that's finally all of the Chiriad missions done.

Next up was the Dirt Track down at the Las Venturos arena. After only 4 attempts I completed this, and yes I only won because most of the computer oponents fell on their arses at the same jump. See me do my best to motor most of them to death.

I was on a roll

So I thought I would attempt the other elusive mission that's been grinding me up recently. The Freeway street race. This involves driving the worst car ever in the game at high speeds, colliding into lampposts, ending up facing the wrong way, etc you know the score.

But fucking fuck yes I managed to complete it after only a few attempts.

Ha, that takes my percentage up to a considerable amount. Now for the Paramedic missions and the hidden items.

Chilliad Challenge 66.666666667% completed.

2005-04-29T12:17:00.000Z

Went home at lunch time and attempted the Chiriad Challenges (the mountain bike races, of which there are 3 and I have already done 1). As they are only available between something like 6am till 6pm I had to leave a save point available at the appropriate time. Also the missions are started from the top of the bloody mountain which means it's prolly best to whip a copter up there instead of the gruelling cycle up the hill.

So Marina Beach was my base for the save point as they have a handy coastguard chopper for you on the beach.

Lawdy Lord it was hard.

But I did it.

After 6 attempts.

Now I hate mountain bikes and coastguard helicopters!

Tonight will see me attempt the final 'Cobra' race, heavens knows how difficult this one is going to be. A few bottles of 'pop' should give me the bravery needed here.

Bank Holiday Weekend - Hurrah!

2005-04-29T09:45:00.000Z

This weekend DEFINITELY. I promise I will start playing this game again soon. I'm planning to save cash for the next few weeks which will mean less nights out on the pop. The other activites that have been leading me astray though are my revision and music, can't seem to stop purchasing new CD's.

Anyway I have good reason for wanting to get cracking again on San Andreas. My flat mate is slowly overtaking me on the percentage, he has even managed to complete the mountain bike missions and the Dirt Track race on Las Venturos. Fortunately he's still tearing his hair out on the City Slicker, has got lots of oysters and snapshots to collect, and hasn't finished the Export dock mission. If I manage to complete the 100 tag section by Monday I will be pleased. If by some miracle I can finish all 3 mountain bike challenges I will be ecstatic. If by some magical power of the San Andreas Gods I have done the tags, mountain bike races, AND the dirt track race by start of the working week on Tuesday I will be OMG'ing all the jolly way into the sunset.

Can't see it myself...

Dirty Sanchez

2005-04-18T09:05:00.000Z

Another weekend of just watching my house mate play the game unfortunately. He's managed to find quite a few tags for himself but still none that I haven't already got.

And see me furious when he mentions that he managed to complete the Sanchez bike race in one go, "I think I got lucky coz all the computer opponents fell off their bikes right at the start". AAARGH SHUT UP, JUST SHUT UP!

Back to Liberty City We Go

2005-04-10T14:52:00.000Z

No new game info but looking forward to the PSP version of GTA out this summer, I hear it's going to be a new game based upon Liberty City. Another one for the blog.

Been working on my zombie text adventure game lots this weekend, I've managed to complete the basic map for the game including whereabouts of locked doors and some associated puzzles. It's a long way off finished though. I am going to post a link to the source so far, this will only consist of the player being able to move around the map without being hindered by locked doors and zombies. But it should give you an idea of how it's developing.

Increase your Luck Factor

2005-04-09T09:38:00.000Z

After a lazy Friday night in then I decided to attempt Resident Evil 2 for the first time in my life ever, having obtained the game for 99p from the local video shop. Once my player had saved the point at the police station though things just went pear shaped. How the hell do you save ammo in this game?? After one too many zombie munchies then it was time for GTA, before the main feature "Invasion of The Body Snatchers" with Donald Sutherland on BBC1.

I gave up on the tag search (only 3 more to go) and decided to hit the streets of Las Venturos where in my whole hour of play I managed to locate 2 more horseshoes. Might not sound much now but if you've ever played the game you'll know just how difficult it is to track these fellas down.

That was that then really, I'd found the horseshoes while flying around with the jetpack but I got bored of listening to no music. I then spent a good 20 minutes flying the Leviathon around (did you know this thing can land on water?)

After some unsuccessful attempts at defending my hood I decided to trash some Ballas, I got tooled up but then got tired. I saved the game ready for a gang warfare.

Until next time.

Taggerz inc 2005

2005-04-05T08:57:00.000Z

Yummy, got to grips with the game again last night after feverishly watching my flat mate play it for the past couple of weeks. He is catching up with my progress slowly but surely, although I think he's going to struggle finding the rest of the hidden items as I am.

Last night was spent mostly hanging around Los Santos (boyzzzz..) and locating the last 7 tags that I required. Here's what happended:-

After agonisingly watching my flat mate search for hours on his final 23 tags and only managing to locate one (which he spawnally found by jumping out of a jet and saying 'right where i land is where i will search') I just had to have a go. Locating the hidden packages in Vice City and Liberty City never took this long.
The initial idea was to use the jet pack to hover about and see if the tags were on more higher ground. While this sounds perfect in theory the practice is definitely a different matter. For a start the jet pack is located miles and miles and miles away from Los Santos and it's sloooowwww going. Also it has no radio (weeelll not such a bad thing really). So what usually happens is I spend most of the time flying all the way to the jet pack location, hovering all the way back, getting sidetracked with looking for tags in the hills, start fighting with other gangs/cops/pimps/bad-drivers, get killed/busted, lose jet pack. And as expected last night was no different, I think it was a hood attack that distracted me this time. After trying to take down the rival gang from the air they eventually got the better of me and nailed me out of the sky. See my jet pack clumsily tumbling down to the ground.
After that I decided to stick with a motorbike and assumed that the rest of the tags were not on higher ground.
I checked a lot of the areas that I'd seen my house mate get his but alas I already had them on my checklist. Spent a lot of the time just admiring the city graphics at night time, such a beautiful looking game. I would take more photographs for this site but my camera keeps flashing and I don't seem to be able to turn it off, this makes the pictures too bright.
After a couple of hours I had drawn a blank and endlessly returning back to the same places was starting to irritate. That was until I decided to check out the South beach next to the factory docks (near the lowrider upgrade garage). Seems there are a nasty few tags which a) bear a strikingly close resemblance to the green colour of my own and b) are very faint and difficult to spot in the daytime. So in the space of two minutes I found 3 new tags!! I was chuffed.

After that I searched the same area some more but couldn't find another one. Stumbled into an unfamiliar area back in the city and found one more, a purple one. Hurrah!

So 4 new tags now makes my total to 97, 3 more to find which I aim to complete by this weekend.

Had a brief look for the last few snapshots that I need but just ended up feeling the need to drive around extremely fast. And that's where my turn ended really.

New stats window now available! Not everything is listed but do you really want to know how often I 'went to the gym' ?

Slugfest ?

2005-03-14T10:32:00.000Z

After a meritive slugfest on San Andreas over the weekend I have accomplished precisely nothing that has increased my percentage. Though as always I had great fun.

Helena has dumped me now, this was to be expected as I did not conform to her 'chubby' man desires. meh, but stupid bitch all the same.
This has resulted in my priviledged access to free flamethrower and molotovs being revoked. No more railway sidings 'myseriously' catching fire from now on. Although luckily I do know where there is another flamethrower hidden, somewhere in the trees near Shady Creek, *points hazily in direction of woods*. um.

Lots of flying. I enjoy flying again after a brief period of being miffed with Rockstars programming and the horrendous pop-up that occurs. I have managed to adjust my pilot skills so that 'large-pine-tree-suddenly-2foot-in-front-appears' syndrome is reduced.

I've noticed a sort of underwater canyon too between San Fierro and Las Venturos, is this the fault-line? I wonder if there are rare occurences of earthquakes in this game? Although I have still not seen either UFO's, Bigfoots, Leather-faces, pigs-with-chainsaws, or whatever, apparently some of this stuff really is in the game.

Found the biggest unique jump ever on Las Venturos. It's atop the multi-storey carpark, the one with the 10 levels, go out (on motorbike obv) onto the stairway that leads to the chopper roof and to the East edge of the roof face South and accelerate to full speed, you will drop onto another ledge and then further on is the ramp. Wow that's some height.

Scooped up on roulette in my casino but after loosing a couple of bouts I decided to murder the croupier with my shovel. I then preceded to continue with the roulette game without her annoying chatter. WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!! HAHAHAHAHA..erk.

(perhaps a rest is needed?)

Land Of The Dead

2005-02-22T15:35:00.000Z

George A Romero has planned a new Dead movie for October 2005, called "Land Of The Dead". It features cameo roles from Spaced geezers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, as well as Dennis Hopper and as per the norm Tom Savini.

IMDB.com has all the info plus links to other sites, there's even a copy of the full script if you fancy spoiling it for yourself.

Omission of mission write up - an apology

2005-02-21T15:54:00.000Z

Reading back on my previous posts on this site I noticed that from the part where I team up with Cesar at the San Fierro garage and towards completing the Four Dragons Casino, I had failed to write up anything about the missions I'd done. The excitement must have gotten to me. Okay, for safety sake here is a brief rundown on what happened :

Myself and Cesar purchase a small car garage on San Fierro, in the hope of building a small empire out of boosting cars probly. So missions involving stealing the odd cars are the key here. Cesar contacts me and I meet him out in the sticks by an old billboard, we drive to a nearby town where Smoke and some guys are meeting up. I take photographs of their faces and return to the garage in SF. Woozy stops by and we ask him if he can identify the faces in the photos. Of course he lets his sidekick do the identifying (Woozy is blind) and quickly we pick up on T-Bone and Jizzy B, two new faces in the game.
I go check out Jizzy who owns a nightclub down underneath the Gant bridge on SF, his first job for me is to drive his pimp mobile around and do a spot of cleaning. After a few more missions with his sidekick T-Bone (who I hate) I return to the club to pound his stupid head in. I also remember vaguely a mission which ended at the airport and having to destroy a van. This proved hard as I had no weapon.
Anyway, back at the garage and more boosting needed. I liked the mission where I had to track down a woman using her cellphone or something, she would show up on the radar as a blip every now and again and I had to catch up with the blips. Crazy and hard to explain.
Purchasing the car showroom opposite the garage was essential to complete these and this became an asset. I also forgot to mention about Zero and how bloody hard his missions were, Zero was an electonics nut who owned a toyshop that sold RC units. His missions were basically flying these toys:
1) Using a fixed gatling gun on the toyshop roof shoot the RC planes out of the sky that are trying to bomb Zero's antennas. Hard
2) Flying the RC Barron shoot the shit out of the enemy guys toy-vans driving around the street. Extremely Fcking Hard.
3) In a wharehouse co-ordinate the battle field using the RC chopper to pick up, remove, bomb whatever to allow the RC car to drive to the opponents base. You have a time limit and limited cars. Not so hard but long winded.
Phew! Although not important to the main game I did eventually complete these.

Okay back to the story. Car showroom and missions at garage completed. Car street races now opened up at the showroom and it's also an asset (with good cash rewards too). Woozy wants me to run some errands for him and after an initial mission of shooting lots of people in an alley we take to the sea but I need to swim good, so a bit of practice in the water is needed to increase my lung capacity. No probs.
The missions if I remember correctly were fairly hard, swim under a network of tunnels, avoid boats, climb the huge frigate, rescue illegal immigrants on the boat, shoot everyone else. Repeat, or something.

A phone call from Toreno (at this point just called '?') opens up the third Las Venturos island. Missions I remember here, racing a big-foot truck across the desert, learning to fly and purchasing the derelict airstrip. Storming the dam generator building and sneaking about for reasons I can't remember. Toreno was a strange black agent who would sneak about and be very x-filey, was funny though (James Woods did the voice, brilliantly).
The Truth contacted me again and asked me to do some work involving similar black agent stuff. Breaking into Area 69 (ho ho) and stealing a special project (the jet pack and the green goo) using the jet pack to attack a train.

Then we move to The Strip and the casino missions, Woozy and myself team up and purchase the Four Dragons, unfortunately at time of writing I cannot remember the main missions, the sub missions involved attacking the Mafia casino down the road (which saw me at one point pay them a visit back in Liberty City at the St Marks Bistro). Also I remember following some bird home and having to have sex with her to gain a key card. Stealing 4 cop bikes and trying to load them onto a moving car carrier on the motorway was another mission. Storming the military fuels factory was another, just to get the chopper with the crane on (for picking up crates I think)

At some point here I chased Tenpennies colleague (Chris Penn) around LV, he was a slippery customer but I nailed his ass in the end. You know what I mean.

Along the way I met up with Macca and Kent Paul, we did a few missions together I think, not sure. They returned when I got back to Los Santos, after I'd saved Madd Dogg from killing himself and took back his mansion (even though it was partly my fault it was lost anyway). Missions I remember, boarding a jet in mid air by parachute and killing the onboard people. Storming the mansion in Mulholland by parachute with some other soldiers and a HUGE gun fight ensued.

Once this was done, myself and Sweet decided to get back to the Grove. Riots had broke out in Los Santos and the streets weren't safe. But the Ballas had to pay. A few turf wars later and things were back to normal. Apart from Tenpenny that is, but I already told you what happened there...

Heck that was all from memory and typed in about 15 minutes in haste, so could be slightly wrong. Don't sue.

GO GO SPACE MONKEY YOU BIG BOLLOCK!!!!

2005-02-21T13:43:00.000Z

After a brief period of no-show we got to grips with the game again yesterday, and OMG what a great session it was.

In the 7-8 hours of non stop gameplay I think all I managed to accomplish percentage wise was 2 more snapshots. That just shows the sheer fun that can be had with this game without actually playing it properly. Standing on the roof of cars with the camera permanently in view seems to be a clever method of finding some of the camera snapshots, it's also a great way to watch some crazy ass shit going on. For instance I noticed that the reg plates of vehicles are all different, how fcked is that!

Another thing I noticed, after jumping from a plane at maximum height into the sea, was that swimming right at the bottom of the sea bed becomes very dark due to lack of light obv. I want to post a picture of a jet wrecked in the sea because it's extremely eerie looking especially with the door still open.

Favourite car of the moment has to be the Buffalo, if only for the noise of the engine. And I found a new car, I think, well I haven't seen it before anyway. It's called an Intruder and I found it in the garage on Los Santos where the countryside races start. It's nowt special but I've definitely never driven one before.

I met up with some of my boyz, grabbed a Glendale, sprayed it black (with a green roof - respect to the Grove), and paid 'Helena' a little visit with my good friend the Flamethrower. That'll teach her never to be home when I want her. Just a warning shot, thas all.

I've often wondered how many tow trucks I could hook up to each other before the game won't provide anymore?

I really need to get some more pics on here soon, the place is looking a little lost without them. Words alone cannot describe how beautiful this game looks.

And YES go go Space Monkey! With a rather modest 66,000 racked up on the high score table. You beauty!

Hot Knife

2005-02-06T22:52:00.000Z

Yes finally we have Gold medals in all the Driving School missions. It was a bit messy on City Slicker resulting lot's of cursing and wailing of arms before finally I figured out the best route through the streets and also managing to pull off a decent hand-brake turn at the checkpoint which didn't result in my car halting and ending the mission (every bloody time!).

Rather amusingly I shouted with joy upon getting the Gold and then immediately realised that I still had Burn And Lap to complete. Luckily I managed to do this on my second attempt so we were right back to singing and dancing on the sofa.

Anyway the Hot Knife car, was it worth it? Well sort of, it's pretty funky and drives great. Not sure of the purple paint work though. Actually it's quite cool, so yes if you haven't already go get them golds.

Nothing else was attempted today, other than one Chilliad Challenge mission which resulted in disaster (again). That was that, now I'm off to watch the Superbowl.

Wot no San Andreas?

2005-01-31T11:29:00.000Z

After watching a few old eps of Miami Vice the other day I ended up craving the virtual neon sunshine state and played Vice City for a couple of hours, on the Xbox. Although I was unimpressed by some of the translation it's still a great game. For example the sound cuts out sometimes, and the radio stations are really quiet. I'm not a fan of the control system either, trying to switch quickly between weapons in mid battle is ridiculous. What with the increased power of the Xbox I was also surprised at some of the jerky frame rate occurences which at times was actually worse than the PS2! What's up with that?

Other than these slight niggles I enjoyed it like it was the good old days, I managed to get as far as opening up Kent Paul at the Malibu night club. I opened up some of the bonus missions on the second island and then went on a hidden package hunt to get the extra weapons. I noticed something new from the PS2 version, outside the bank there is usually a locked Securicor van parked up.
One thing that does impress me are the details of the vehicles, the wheel and engine detail on the Xbox is great.

Haven't got around to playing San Andreas for a few days, been busy with other things. The trouble with SA is you can't just load it up for a quick 30 minute bash you have to spend at least 2 hours on it.

Is this a good or bad thing?