I actually thought the fact that the shooting sucked was genius. Insofar as, basically it’s not a shooter at all, only they answered the question “why can’t Faith pick up guns and use them?” with “Ok, you can pick up guns and use them. Good luck with that.”

Weird thing for me was, I didn’t like the story either (BETRAYAL! OMG TWIST!) yet the environment was just so amazingly well realized, that for me, it filled in the gaps. I ended up caring more about the untold story of the city and its citizens than about Celeste, Miller, Ropeburn, or even Merc. I just want to go there again…

Yep. Check out the SA trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHzG0bKTa1g

Still a hardware generation’s difference, but it just looks PS2-era, not PSX-era.

Now I truly understand how this is the spiritual successor to San Andreas. It’s still set in three cities, it’s just that they’re all very different sides of Los Santos, and we get to see them through the eyes of different protagonists that live there.