GTA:SA Waste of a good Ryde

I've been continuing to try out my "new" video card setup, and GTA:SA is reaping some impressive gains just like Madden. If you have a Radeon Xpress motherboard and are using the integrated graphics for gaming, please, please, for the love of all that Chris Farley felt was holy, ensure you've got good, paired RAM for the hypermemory. Even better, buy a video card, fool. Me included.

So in GTA:SA, I've just wasted Ryder. It was not satisfying in any fashion. With most games doing such a poor job of building characters to begin with, trying to get you to care about characters for which you haven't an investment at all, it's a real shame when a series usually quite good with narrative considerations cheeses out like this. You've run missions with and for Ryder. CJ has joked with him. Ryder's from CJ's neighborhood. He's a turncoat. This is decent character development for both Ryder and CJ. Don't make the final showdown about as interesting as the random goons that get tossed at you at the end of any other mission.

I hope they do a better job with Big Smoke and Wuzzy/Cesar/anyone else that turns "bad".

In other news, I think Toreno (sp) is voiced by James Wood. Regardless, the voice acting there isn't half bad, and is Emmy winning good by Resident Evil standards. I'm impressed with the new land that's opened up so far, like entering a new territory in WoW, and the news radio with Big Smoke doing a public service annoucement about drugs is right humorous. Though San Fiero's missions seemed to hit just below average expectations, Toreno's two missions I've done so far have, in large part b/c of the plot development in the cut scenes, been interesting. I hope the game continues the improvement.