This review is transcluded from Talk:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs) 17:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a review posted within a week. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rhain, I've posted the review below. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:18, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well-written

General

• This is just a suggestion, but there's no dedicated section about themes, motifs, etc. If you think it would help with presentation, you could move "story and characters" along with the last paragraph of "critical reception" into their own dedicated themes section.
• The article is pretty heavy on semicolons.

Lead

• who returns home after his mother's murder and finds his old friends and family in disarray – This makes it sound like petty drama, not gang wars.
• The lead doesn't need to mention California and Nevada if it then gives the more specific cities in the next paragraph.
• It generated controversy when the discovery of the "Hot Coffee" minigame unlocked a previously hidden sexual scene. – "Previously hidden" could mean it was eventually intended to be discovered.

Gameplay

• The fictional state of San Andreas comprises three metropolitan cities – This is provided without context. It should be made clear that San Andreas is the open world and that these three cities are all explorable areas. It might also be worth mentioning the open road and undeveloped areas between the three cities.
• Safehouses can be purchased to save the game – Specify that these are scattered throughout the map
• Players may run, jump, swim, or use vehicles to navigate the world – This is strangely worded. I'm picturing players hopping around the game world like a kangaroo and swimming all the way from Los Santos to Las Venturas.
• Several stealth elements are introduced in the game. – This doesn't add anything without context. I'd say either elaborate or remove this. I'd lean toward removal since burglary and evading the police are both mentioned below.
• police helicopters and military swarm to lethally dispatch players – This implies that police don't use lethal force in the other wanted levels. Also, the police are the ones being dispatched, not the player.
• The game tracks respect among CJ's friends, which varies according to his actions and appearance, and acquired skills such as driving... – This makes it sound like acquired skills are just measures of respect instead of progression bars in their own right.

Plot

• to reunite the various GSF sets who had splintered – Is this supposed to be "sects"?

Development

• allowed them to refine their craft – This feels slightly WP:PEACOCK-ish.
• Some had disagreements with Rockstar president Sam Houser, causing them to step away from development. – What disagreements? About the work hours?

Technical and open world design

• the developer's relationship with Estevan Oriol, Mister Cartoon, and DJ Pooh assisted imitation of 1990s Los Angeles street culture – How? Just by virtue of knowing them?
• In-game locations were inspired by real areas, such as Los Santos by Compton, California, and a bridge in San Fierro by the Golden Gate Bridge – It's confusing to say that Los Santos is inspired by Compton and to say it's inspired by Los Angeles. The article should be consistent or reconcile these. This also has parallelism (grammar) issues in the way it compares a city to the bridge in a city.
• and the open countryside driving was inspired technically by Rockstar's Smuggler's Run (2002) – What does "technically" mean in this context?
• allowing them to be loaded as the player traverses the map instead of in one instance and interrupted by a loading screen when moving between islands like in Vice City – The wording here is a little clunky.
• Textures were created at the highest resolution – Highest of what?
• Remodelled lighting systems allowed different sets during day and night. – Sets of what?

Story and characters

• Some of this section, especially the first paragraph, feels like a list of unrelated bullet points. It needs a little reorganization so the sentences flow a little better. It's also divided up strangely: there's a lot of info about the inspirations, and there's a lot of info about CJ, but they're scattered throughout the section.
• San Andreas concluded a trilogy – On it's own, this makes it sound like the three games all follow a single story. Ideally, it should be made clear somewhere that the connections between them are limited to a few recurring characters and passing mentions.
• he found Ray Liotta's performance as Tommy Vercetti in Vice City "conflicting" – What does "conflicting" mean in this context?

Music

• The in-game radio features eleven radio stations with twenty DJs, and more than three times as many songs and in-universe advertisements as Grand Theft Auto III – A sentence explaining what these songs and advertisements are would be helpful. Right now it sounds like these are all original songs created for the game.

Release and promotion

• The timeline in this section is confusing. It goes from a delay being announced to the game being leaked to a special edition being release. This section might need some reorganizing, and it should explicitly say what day the game was released on.
• to reinstate its Mature 17+ rating – There's no context here. The reader shouldn't have to go later into the article to understand what they read higher up.
• featuring the documentary film Sunday Driver – What is this, and what's its relevance to GTA?

Critical response

• Most of this section is just a list of quotes and random opinions instead of a summary of the reception. WP:RECEPTION provides some tips on this. This Kotaku article is a good example of the sources you might look for (though a higher quality source would be better). It can be used to support that the RC plane mission had negative reception generally by players instead of just quoting one reviewer's personal opinion. There's probably something similar for the train mission and maybe a few other aspects of the game where there's a consensus on what people like or disliked about it.
• Some reviewers compared the story to Hollywood and similar popular culture – What does it mean to compare a story to a place?

Accolades

• No issues.

Sales

• and boosting overall industry revenue – This is redundant to when it says the game increased revenue along with Halo 2 a few sentences later.
• In the United Kingdom, it sold an estimated 677,000 copies... – There are a lot of statistics in this sentence, making it hard to follow. It might be worth breaking it up.

Controversy

• "Controversy" might not be the best heading for this section. Since it's just about Hot Coffee, it would be more precise to call it "Hot Coffee controversy" or "Hot Coffee minigame".
• curtailed planned nudity and sexual content to obtain a "Mature" rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) – To someone who doesn't know much about video game ratings, they might be confused why removing sexual content makes it "mature". It should clarify that it would have been too explicit for the mature rating.
• and modder Patrick Wildenborg enabled the code after the Windows release – This makes it sound like he enabled it remotely for everyone's version of the game.
• "Hot Coffee" impacted the video game industry – This doesn't really say anything.

Legacy

• This section should be more focused on how the series was affected by San Andreas specifically. The info about seventh generation GTA games goes a little out of scope. If possible, it should explain what specific problems with San Andreas the changes were meant to address—the part of GTA V's setting does a good job of this.

Ports

• It's redundant to describe the Xbox, Windows, and mobile versions under both "release" and "ports".
• A remastered version of The Trilogy subtitled The Definitive Edition, including Vice City – Didn't the Trilogy already include Vice City?

Verifiable with no original research

The sourcing here isn't very strong, being mostly dependent on video game news websites and contemporary sources instead of analytic/academic coverage, but it's good enough for GA. If this were to go to FA, I'd expect more use of books and journal articles.

Source checks:

• [6] GamesRadar – The source doesn't say co-op is open roam, it only says anything about minigames and certain missions.
• [17] Dumham (2004) – Good.
• [31] Sulic (2004) – Good.
• [60] Penney (2020) – Thumbs up.
• [79] Boyer, Hsu & Davison (2004) – Good.
• [88] Parish (2004) – Good.
• [105] Hutchinson (2017) – Good.
• [138] Krotosk (2005) – Good.
• [173] Neumeister (2005) – Good.
• [198] Snow (2008) – This says it "will" be launched on Xbox Originals. Using this source, we don't know whether it ended up happening.

Broad in its coverage

• Not much coverage of the vehicular aspects of the game. It's touched on a few times, but the article doesn't convey how central to the game it is or how much variety there is in vehicle use.

Neutral

The article is neutral in tone. No one aspect is given undue weight.

Stable

No recent disputes

Illustrated

• File:GTA San Andreas mural, Melbourne.jpg is currently nominated for deletion on Wikimedia Commons
• File:Gta-sa-screen1.jpg should be filled out with a more thorough non-free use rationale, preferably with a template.
• File:Gta-sa-screen2.jpg same as above.

@Thebiguglyalien: Thanks for the review. I've gone through and addressed most of your concerns. To clarify, the "Critical response" section's paragraphs are grouped by thematic element and generally summarise the reception overall. Please let me know if you have other questions or concerns. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 03:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]