Gamers World

With Grand Theft Auto 5 – Rockstar’s latest in the sandbox series – set in the sprawling countryside and suburbia of fictional state San Andreas, it’s difficult not to cast our minds back to 2004, when we were following “CJ” Carl Johnson around Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas in his quest to unravel the plot surrounding the death of his beloved mother.
True enough, Grand Theft Auto 5 is a stand alone game in its own right – it has already been revealed that we are to be treated to certain features that are new to the franchise entirely, like the apparent ability to play tennis. Then again, a certain amount of nostalgia has been injected into the latest in the behemoth that is the GTA franchise, with the re-emergence of certain features from GTA: San Andreas, like the ability to fly planes, climb a mountain, race dirtbikes and parachute from dizzying heights.
With that being said, here are five more features from GTA: San Andreas that we’d love to see again in Rockstar’s latest iteration.
Click “Next” to travel back to 2004.

5. Weight Fluctuation

GTA: San Andreas presented gamers with dilemmas that they were already quite accustomed to in reality, namely: “To gorge on a burger, or go to the gym?”
In the above picture, you can see all three extreme body types players could either strive for or succumb to. Obese, regular, or greased up meatball. These weight classes were attained by either going to the gym, and using exercise machines such as the treadmill or stationary bike, by lifting weights to pump some iron or visiting one of the many fast food establishments such as ‘Burger Shot’, ‘Well Stacked Pizza Co’ or ‘Cluckin Bell’.
From there, players could choose to build up weight classes or burn fat by taking part in a variety of button mashing mini-games, or eat until their character quite literally threw up.
We think it’d be brilliant if this feature returned to GTA: 5. Too many video games these days thrust a pre-selected, unchangeable character upon us and force us to follow them through a storyline. In San Andreas, we could choose exactly how our protagonist looked, from the clothes he was wearing through to the bulk they adorned.
From the first trailer released for the title, we caught a glimpse of an outdoor gym – whether we can use it, and whether or not it will affect our weight class remains to be seen. We think though that this feature lends the series a fantastic touch of realism. One of the best parts was NPC’s making fun of us if we were overweight during missions!

4. Car customisation

Another customisational feature from San Andreas. So, you’ve decided if you’re going to be fat, skinny or muscular, now pick your car!
In San Andreas, players could drive their ride to “Arch Angels” Body Shop and pimp it whatever way they liked. (See above video for example). Whether it was changing the paint job, picking the colours, adding different exhausts, spoilers or even wheels, or giving the vehicle a supreme injection of speed by adding nitro, we really could choose what our car looked and drove like down to the finest detail.
For some reason, as with body weight fluctuation, this feature never made it into GTA:IV.
We hope that Arch Angels hasn’t relocated from San Andreas by our next visit though.

3. Gang Wars

An excellent and addictive feature in San Andreas was gang wars – the ability to seize control of certain parts of the map and then defend your captured territory against invasions. GTA has always been about starting with nothing and building your empire from the ground up, and this feature was a metaphor for that gameplay element that we have all come to know and love.
In GTA: San Andreas there were two rival gangs, the ‘Ballas’ and the ‘Vagos’. Each would shoot at you on sight in an attempt to kill you. The solution? Wipe them out! Simply head to a section of the map shaded in either purple or yellow and pick a fight, queue a fierce exchange of gunfire, plenty of blood and best of all, the respect of your peers.
Defending your territory only increased the respect earned from your fellow “homies”. Of course, you could choose to allow a part of your territory to fall back into the hands of the enemy if you just couldn’t be bothered fighting anymore, at a penalty.
Rockstar should really consider bringing this feature back – it was great fun and was an almost unending mini-game of sorts giving the gamer something to do long after the main quest line had been completed.
It also doesn’t hurt to have an ally on the street corner if you get into trouble with the law…