I finished off the last handful of story missions in San Fierro in San Andreas tonight, and basically wiped out the Loco Syndicate in the process, including Ryder, Toreno, and Jizzy. That opened up the last area of the map, so it was time to get back to side missions.

I tried doing the Vigilante mission with a motorcycle, now that my bike and SMG skills were maxed out and I could just shoot at them from behind, but I couldn’t pass it in the half-dozen or so attempts I tried. I could often get up to level 10 or 11, but something would screw up the run, like getting three stars and being constantly assaulted by police vehicles, making it impossible to get to the target, or trying to go for a pay-n-spray only for no cars to spawn nearby (you can’t spray the police bike), or a cop to appear out of some obscured spot and bust me, or for the targets to wander into the city where they’re much harder to chase down and shoot, or… Oh well, apparently it’ll be easier once I get access to the Hunter helicopter.

I did the photo ops in San Fierro, and I should have actually done them sooner in order to get the weapons at the garage there. Along the way I discovered how to get into the airport without having done Pilot School, and could get the heat-seeking rockets there. I also did the NRG-500 challenge, though I used a small glitch to give me unlimited time to complete it, since it’s really tricky. It wound up taking me over 11 minutes, whereas you normally only get a few.

And I finished off a series of missions that unlocked the obligatory car collection mission. I could only get the first list of cars done tonight, since few of the cars are common ones you’ll find nearby like in previous games and the huge distances you have to travel make it slow going. But at least this time they made it so that they’re guaranteed to spawn in certain spots, so you don’t have to go waste time wandering around and waiting for them to spawn.