I only had time for a few missions in San Andreas tonight, so I started on the ones for “Woozie”, a blind Triad boss. The first one was a bit frustrating because the first few parts to it were really easy, but then you have to evade some cars chasing you while letting Woozie shoot at them, and I would either get my tires popped or they’d blow up too close and take us with them.
The next two were much easier though, and I’m glad I didn’t have to redo them since one of them involved driving fairly far out of the way and a checkpoint race through the hilly backroads.
Given its buggy launch, this seems somehow appropriate:
Yes, Hellgate is shutting down its servers. It’s a shame, as I did like the fundamental gameplay quite a bit, they did eventually fix the vast majority of its bugs and other problems, and they just needed to keep adding new content at a good pace. It was just way too late though, and they struggled with that last part.
Unfortunately there’s no way to export your multiplayer character back to single-player, especially since the single-player game is still a bit behind in features, so I can’t just pick up where I left off. So, I think that’s pretty much the end of the line for me and Hellgate.
I did the Driving School tasks in San Andreas tonight, and although most of them were reasonable, there were two that were fairly frustrating: a cone slalom where the camera made it hard to see where you were headed after pulling a handbrake turn, and the final task that sent you in a car with terrible handling across the city and back within a time and damage limit, which was subject to all sorts of bad luck. I don’t think I’ll bother trying to get all gold medals in those. I did wind up getting a gold on that cone slalom, but that was pure luck, as it took dozens of attempts and none of those were even a bronze.
After that I did a couple more gang missions, and then headed back to Los Santos to restock on the sniper rifle (it’s not available in the store yet, so I have to get it from a ground spawn), and to finish dating Denise.
Yes, you can date girls in San Andreas, though it’s not really all that deep. Once a day you can take a girl on a date, either to a restaurant or bar for food, or to a disco for dancing, depending on what she asks for, to raise your standing with her. You can also give her a gift (flowers, a dildo, or a vibrator) for a bonus, though it’s a pretty small one. I eventually maxed Denise out, which gives me a pimp suit in my wardrobe. I hope I never see that damn dancing minigame again though, as it’s always the exact same song…
I first finished off Catalina’s robbery missions in San Andreas tonight. There was always some kind of twist to them, like someone else getting there ahead of us and robbing the place first so that we had to chase down the robbers and take the case for ourselves. The next mission was a race that also involved Catalina, who at that point had hooked up with the GTA3 guy, and I finally made the connection to what happened in the start of that game.
Then I got called over by The Truth and we had to burn his weed field to keep the cops from getting it, and then headed off to San Fierro. I have a garage there that I need to build up into a business, and I bought all the other properties there that I could, including the infamous Zero’s RCs. People have complained that his missions are among the hardest ones and near impossible at times, but I’ve also heard that they’re supposed to be a bit easier on the PC version. I only did his first one for now, which involved destroying waves of bomb-dropping RC biplanes with a minigun, and the mouse aiming again made it fairly easy.
I think I’ve managed to catch up in San Andreas to about where I was in the PS2 version, doing all of the Los Santos missions, getting dumped into the countryside by Tenpenny, and doing a few more missions out there, all today. The on-rails missions where I was running gunner were much easier on the PC, thanks to the mouse aiming.
Along the way I did the pimping missions, which took a few tries due to bad luck (the first one sent me to the airport, and I couldn’t figure out how to get to the upper level in time, and on the second I hit a slight curb and flipped the car end-over-end). I also did the ambulance mission once I was out by Angel Pines, since it’s much easier there due to the small size of the town.
Apparently I’m now working for a psychotic woman who loves robbing stores, and a drug-addled Willie Nelson-alike called The Truth. His last mission had me steal a combine thresher from a farm of right-wing survivalists, which was a rather easy mission, but it’s fun just to drive the thresher around. Though it was a bit disturbing when you ran over people and red chunks came out of the spout instead of hay bales…
Back in San Andreas, I got all of the oysters you can get to in the starting area. There are apparently ways of sequence breaking into the other areas, but there’s not as much point to it in SA, and the oysters aren’t really that important.
I then did the burglary mission, which gives me unlimited sprinting capacity as a reward, and worked on my weapon skills by blowing up cars. I started doing story missions again, primarily to get icons on the world map, and finished off Sweet’s missions for now. The DDR-ish lowrider competition was a lot easier than I remember it being on the PS2, though I did fail the first time just because I had to figure out what the PC controls were. And now I have to choose between doing missions for Ryder, Big Smoke, and Cesar.
I finished off the game of Hinterland I started yesterday, and there wasn’t really much notable about it. Once you’ve settled down after the initial chaos of overcoming your starting weaknesses, the rest of the game plays out pretty much the same way. I never managed to get a fortune teller or high priestess in this run, but they didn’t really hold me back that much.
I never saw any of the special Hallowe’en stuff either, though. I wonder if I had to specifically start the game today. I started a new game on hardcore/long as a journeyman anyway, though I won’t play it right away.
I also started a new game of Hinterland, since a big update just came out. This time I took a Goblin Thief character (one of the ones added in the update) with it on medium difficulty and a medium map size, though with requests and raids turned off.
It was an extremely slow start, with no farmers showing up for a while, and as a goblin I started out with -5 fame, forcing me to go out and kill some monsters immediately to bring it positive or the king would fire me within five minutes. But after getting some decent townspeople and equipment, it’s falling back into the same kind of pattern as my first game.
The exciting stuff should happen tomorrow though, as some extra events are supposed to trigger on Hallowe’en…
I finished off the rest of the tags in San Andreas tonight, giving me a set of weapons back at the house, and then figured I should make a bit of money. Fortunately this is trivially easy in SA thanks to the betting parlor. With some save game abuse, I soon had over $5 million, and went around and bought up all the safe houses I could.
Next up I should probably collect the pearls that I can, and then maybe do some of the side missions like the burglaries or pimping (both also new to SA).
I started San Andreas today, but a lot of this will be familiar ground since I completed the first third or so on the PS2 version (up to where you get kicked out of Los Santos, at least). I was thrown a bit at first by the mouse and keyboard controls being a bit different from the previous GTA games (e.g., run and jump have been switched around), but I’m sure I’ll get used to them.
As usual, I’m going to “cheat” by jumping straight into the collection tasks in order to get easier access to weapons at my safehouse, this time by spraypainting over the tags of rival gangs (though I did have to do a couple of missions before getting access to the spraypaint can). Tagging is actually much easier in the PC version, since you just have to hold down the left mouse button, while the PS2 version required some gyrations on the controller. I only managed to get the first 50 tags tonight though, and there’s no reward for partial completion, also unlike the previous games. There will also be other things to collect, like pearls in the water and horseshoes in a later city.
Oh yeah, you can finally actually swim in this one, whereas water was near-instant death in the previous ones. There are also stats for your character that cover things like your stamina, sex appeal, fatness, and strength, and you have skill levels in how well you can use various firearms and vehicles, all of which can be raised through use.
And in other differences, the textures are much better than the earlier games, you can have your gang take over enemy gang areas (though I know that it’s not worthwhile this early since you wind up losing them and having to retake them later on), there are a lot more simultaneous cars on the road, the drivers in this one are much more aggressive, and I’ve had a few actually follow me around and ram me in retaliation. Oh they’ll be sorry when I get that AK-47 spawn at the house…
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