http://www.thegtaplace.com/sastats/index.php?user=algerad

Vice City didn't take nearly that long to completely finish. Good lord.

Each city was nearly the full length of the previous titles.

And all I got was this lousy second Hydra spawn and a Rhino...


And this picture was just funny because of the guy shooting at the tank...

I've heard that in this port, you have to control the camera and the player separately (which kind of sucks... in GTA3 and VC, the camera was bound to the player so wherever you went, the camera folowed you. There was also a first person view in vehicles, but it wasnt very good) , and that some missions are nearly impossible to complete on a pc b/c the game was designed for a hand controller instead of a keyboard. Is this true?

Nah. What I've found is if you drop the mouse camera handling, the next time you turn a corner the cam auto locks and follows like in the console version.

Yeah the camera will still fllow you, but in my experiance the mouse camera gets addicting. I also use the mouse for aiming since I never really figured out how to lock on.

Yeah, they're right about the camera. Mouse movement will take over the camera, but once the mouse isn't moving and you start moving again the camera goes back to auto-following. That's in vehicles at least. In third-person walking you can do either way, depending on how you set up stuff in the control settings (depending on if you set it to Joystick or mouse+keyboard).

And as far as the game being impossible to complete on PC, no. The third-person shooter elements are easier with a mouse to use for shooting. The driving elements are a bit harder IF you use the keyboard. The flying can be a pain with a keyboard, but I know people who've beaten the game with keyboard only fine.

Personally, what I did was make a USB adapter for an XBox controller to use to drive with. So I drive/fly with a controller and do ground stuff with a keyboard and mouse. Also with the tank, firetruck, and other stuff that has a turret I find it a bit easier to use the mouse with cause the turret is controlled by mouselook.

Is there a setting to make the camera like it is in GTA3/VC?

It'a like that in vehicles always. It's like that on foot if it's in joystick mode. It's in mouselook mode (which is infinitely better) on foot if it's on keyboard+mouse mode.

The ONLY things where the game really differs from the console version control wise are it lacks analog acceleration and braking and there's no force feedback. People fixed that in Vice City with mods, and I imagine there will be some for SA after a while. But neither of those are really that big of a deal.

I really recommend the gamepad for driving and mouse and keyboard for the third person shooter moments. It's really the best of both console and PC if you have a good gamepad (and console controllers seem to be the best).

What I didn't like about vice and san andreas was that they left out the original camera mode [top-down].

Which, in the new three dimensional environment was completely useless.

So? Nostalgia.

That lasted all of a few minutes, so I didn't really miss it too much.

Okay, right now I am trying to get through pilot school and this is DAMN hard to do with the keyboard. I may need to get out my old joystick.

A game pad with an analog stick will get it done.