Brilliant article. Absolutely nails why the GTA3 era games were so much fun to play.
San Andreas gave so many ways to play the game that I lost track of all the crazy stuff I did. One time I pretended CJ was a champion mountain biker living in San Fierro, and basically simulated his every day. He'd get up at 4am, drive over to the huge mountain outside town, cycle up and down a few times, head into the city for food, maybe take his girlfriend on a date, then sleep - all the way to winning every single race on that course.
Another time I pretended he was a pro photojournalist, and just drove around the map with the camera taking photos. For extra challenge, I wouldn't stock up on film, only taking the amount a single refil would give, thus forcing each shot to be extremely well composed, and his brief had to include a mix of action, portrait, and landscape shots each time. This meant camping out at the edge of the totally-not-the-Golden-Gate-Bridge waiting for a sunrise photo or trying to catch a high speed chase or shootout between cops and gang members in progress.
I remember trying to earn enough money to buy a beachfront house by working only as a taxi driver in Los Santos. I remember trying to drive cars from one city to another as fast as possible without a scratch, like Dean Moriarty from On the Road. I remember making planes do an emergency landing on the streets of Las Venturas. I remember packing on as much weight as possible and seeing how quickly I could make CJ lose it. They crammed so much into that game that it really shone like any other. GTA IV was, by contrast, a massive disappointment considering it had a fantastic recreation of New York to work with.
