Another San Andreas Thread

[Wholly Schmidt]

Just to give people something besides BF2 threads to complain about.

I have golds on all the vehicle training schools, and felt the need to brag. Despite my complaints about the flying controls, the normal driving school was by far the hardest to get all golds. Anyone else spent the time to get the golds?

[Tom Ohle]

of course :) this was on PS2, though, so I can't compare the difficulty... I do know that I had to retry a few of the training bits a lot

[Wholly Schmidt]

I think the two-wheel driving challenge in the banshee was the hardest of any of them. I think in the end, the final car challenge "City Slickers" took me longer to get, but that was just because of the unpredictability of the other traffic on the road. Sort of frustrating to be at the end of a great run and have a taxi sideswipe you, but not much you could do about it other than try again. Driving the banshee on two wheels though, that was a whole different type of frustration because I just couldn't really get a hold of how to improve. Trial and error and error and error and error and finally some luck.

[sluggo]

Of the four schools, I currently have golds in everything except the driving school in San Fierro. In order:

- Boating school was a snap. I got gold on just about everything the first time through.

- Motorcycle school had some tough tests, partially because it's not always clear what you're supposed to do. There's some trial and error figuring out exactly where you're supposed to start and stop the wheelie and stoppie, for instance. But once I figured that out, I zipped through motorcycle school.

- Flight school had some bitches to get golds on, such as the Circle Airstrip and Land, and Destroy Targets in the chopper. And it takes time, because you start flight school with no skill, and you really have to go for bronzes, build up your skill, go for silvers, get more skill, then go for the golds. But once your skill is up and you get the hang of flying the planes, I didn't think they were as hard as ....

- Driving school. I thought this had the hardest challenges by far. The 90-degree park, the barrel roll, the 2-minute City Slickers race... I'm still at 95-97% on some of these. Agreed on the 2-wheeled driving -- it was just try-try-try-try-try until I got lucky.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Yeah, in flight school I had some trouble with the same two you mentioned. It was just kind of luck whether I hit the two moving vans in the Hunter as I spammed with missles, and I spent quite a while consistently 2 seconds too late in Circle and Land. Without realizing it though, I made all of the flight stuff a lot easier by not bothering with any of the schools until my flight skill was almost maxed out from lots of attempts at the flying races in Las Venturas.

[Kareem]

Is anyone aiming for 100% completion on this? Must take months for a person casually playing the game a couple of hours every night.

[Kalle]

Is anyone aiming for 100% completion on this? Must take months for a person casually playing the game a couple of hours every night.

Obsessive compulsive disorder helps. :wink:

[Kareem]

Heh not during a summer semester it doesn't. :D

[sluggo]

100% isn't as crazy as it sounds. It's really figuring out what you need that makes it seem hard. I'm currently at 91%, and think all I have left is 100 grafitti tags, 100 oysters, a few horseshoes, and the import/export stuff.

Some of the fun stuff I've already completed beyond the main story missions:
- Lowrider challenge
- Zero RC missions
- NRG 500 challenge
- 50 snapshots
- complete Ammu-Nation challenge
- Frieght Train challenge
- 8 Trucking missions
- Vigilante level 12
- Firefighter level 12
- Paramedic Level 12
- 40 Taxi missions
- Valet challenge
- Pimping level 10
- all 4 stadium challenges
- LV courier missions
- Quarry missions
- 4 schools (driving, motorcycle, boating, flight)
- defeat 3 gym leaders
- all street races
- all airport checkpoint challenges
- buy all safehouses
- the Chiliad Challenge (mountain biking)
- 2 triathalons

This doesn't even count gang wars, which I don't think counts toward 100% -- I'm currently at 35 areas.

Something neat in the PC version: if you go to the stats screen and press S, it outputs all your stats to an HTML file in your save directory. Makes it easier to read than searching and scrolling.

[Kareem]

- Pimping level 10


I found this to be a really easy way to make a lot of money early on in Los Santos, especially since the amount you receive for each girl keeps increasing the more the number of customers they get, so you get 300 after the first customer, 900 after the second, 1200 after the third, etc.

[Gladguy]

Something neat in the PC version: if you go to the stats screen and press S, it outputs all your stats to an HTML file in your save directory. Makes it easier to read than searching and scrolling.
Even neater is that you can upload it to a handy website (http://www.thegtaplace.com/sastats/index.php?user=bglad) and view it nicely formatted.

[Wholly Schmidt]

I'll probably go for 100% eventually. Stuff like golds in the driving school isn't required, I just felt like messing around with some of the side missions and such. I'm right at the point where Las Venturas has opened up and--whoops, forgot some of this is spoilery
Woozie wants me to come check out his place, but I have yet to do a single mission there. They really dropped the ball with the plot, because at this point it's dead. I haven't seen Tenpenny in weeks and Toreno doesn't have anything for me to do at the moment. He was the only tenuous link to the plot from the begining and CJ's brother being in jail currently. There's hook at all now that I've finally opened up Las Venturas to actually go do the missions there. Just "oh yeah, Woozie wants you to stop by and say hello." So? Woozie's just some guy I helped out cause he helped me off Ryder.

[Kareem]

Folks, please attach spoiler warnings :)

[sluggo]

Something neat in the PC version: if you go to the stats screen and press S, it outputs all your stats to an HTML file in your save directory. Makes it easier to read than searching and scrolling.
Even neater is that you can upload it to a handy website (http://www.thegtaplace.com/sastats/index.php?user=bglad) and view it nicely formatted.
Wow, that's sweet (http://www.thegtaplace.com/sastats/index.php?user=sluggo).

Looking at my stats laid out like that, it appears I haven't gotten credit for some races I know I beat, like Vinewood / Freeway / Backroad Wanderer. I'll have to go back and beat 'em again.

[Xemu]

I'm shooting for an eventual 100% myself, but I'm playing the game pretty casually, just enjoying missions and exploring the world a bit before I get serious about knocking off the checklist. I'm at like 60% or so, having almost finished up Las Venturas.

[Gladguy]

Money spent gambling $410,847,424.00
Bit of a gambling problem there, sluggo?

Bet with your head... not over it!

:P

[sluggo]

Heh -- once I got to the Four Dragons Casino, I played blackjack to get my gambling skill up, and then I'd play at the $1,000,000 table. I did have to reload a few times to clear up some bad streaks -- there's a save point right outside -- but I had $20 million in the span of an hour.

Of course, all that cash made a lot of the subsequent missions seem a little silly. With 20 mil in the bank, risking life and limb for a $100,000 payday felt like Bill Gates taking on mugging as a side job.