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 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).