Respect +

5pm on Tuesday, busted out of the office and headed straight to the Game Crazy. Knowing that today was the release date of GTA : San Andreas, I had this knot in my gut that said it was going to be all bought out by the time I got in there. Waltzed thru the front door and headed straight for the purchasing counter. The teenage kid who was working there must have recognized the GTA determined look on my face, because he dropped the controller to the game he was playing and intercepted me halfway thru the store.

"Can I help--"

"DoyouhaveGTASanAndreas?", I blurted out.

The kid anticipated my question for me because he was already answering "Yup!", and moving toward the counter before I had finished speaking. Game cost me $26 and change after I used up my credit from bringing in god-knows-what other games for trade-in over the last couple years. The kid rang it up and then cursed about having screwed up the purchase somehow. He sheepishly handed me the receipt.

"I accidentally ran it thru the computer as $260 instead of $26. Sorry."

"But you only charged my credit card for $26, right?"

"Yeah. It's just the store receipt says it's $260." -- He really looked like he didn't want to be doing this, and just wanted to get back to playing his game.

"Okay, whatever." What do I care? I suppose I could have tried returning the game the next day, unopened, and tried to get a $260 refund. Sounds like a lot of effort to trick a couple teenage kids who work at Game Crazy.

3 minutes after I walked in to the store, I was back out on the street with the game in hand. I headed home, happy with my purchase of sweet, sweet video car-jacking goodness. After the kid went to bed, I couldn't control myself and had to load it up. Played it for about 1 hour. So, now I'll tell everyone what everyone and everyone else already knows: GTA : San Andreas is totally tits.

After that hour of game play, all I know is that my bike riding skill is up, my pimping skill is up, and I've been busted by the cops 6 times already. Most importantly, I have "Respect +". Which, according to the in-game help, when you have enough Respect, you can build a crew of homies to follow you around as your gang. I'm still lost as hell since the whole city is so big and everything looks the same. I remember that's how it is with every new GTA when you start out. You've got to learn the city gradually.

The ability to pimp is my favorite so far. Once you find and steal a pimp vehicle, you can toggle "pimp mode" on just like you can when you get in a police car to go on police missions. While pimping, you go pick up a girl, take her across town somewhere to work, then go pick up another girl and do the same until the first girl is ready to be picked back up. As with most of these type of "toggle mode" missions, just keeping your car from blowing up due to wreck damage while driving like mad thru the city is the hardest part.

I had to call it quits after only an hour because of the pile of contract work I'm doing at night. Every night. From now until eternity.