On one miserable, rainy evening, with a bit of a cold, and with an hour and a half spare before I had to go and collect Nicholas from Scouts, I wanted to do something substantial; cross something off my “to do” list. I could have put up the hooks in the utility room that have sat there for several months. I could have rearranged the loft to get the Christmas decorations properly put away. I could have hung up the artwork that has sat on top of our bookcase for the past four years, wrapped in bubble wrap in case of accidents. Instead I decided to do something that has been overdue for much longer – I decided to start GTA San Andreas.

San Andreas is often cited as the best of the PS2-era GTAs, and one of the best games of all time. I’ve mentioned before that two things put me off playing it.

• The setting. The 2000s setting of GTA3, and the 1980s setting of GTAVC, felt much more relatable to me than the 1990s rap and gangster world of GTASA. I don’t like rap music, I don’t get the attraction of baggy trousers, I find the general griminess off-putting.
• The complications. I remember reviews telling us how amazing it was that you could get your hair cut, that you could go to the gym, that you needed to eat to stay healthy, and so on. At the time that seemed unnecessarily complex – could I not just run around the world shooting at other people, stealing cars, and failing missions several times before getting lucky?

I’ve now played a few hours, and while the first is an issue, the second isn’t. Maybe expectations have moved on (while my prejudices have not), but the use of food to recover health is just a clever cover for health packs, and everything else seems to be entirely optional cosmetics. I have bought green trousers and a white shirt, and that’ll do me. There may be more to the mechanics in future (and the immediate view of stats with L1 implies they may be more important) but for now I’m not having to think about much at all.

The first point is more of an issue. I have very little affinity with any of the characters, even CJ, and everyone is just generally unpleasant to each other all the time. They live in grimy houses, shout at each other in barely comprehensible sentences, and just seem ready to jump into a fight at any moment. It’s not a life I really want to live.

As such, I’m concentrating on completing missions, rather than exploring the world at large. This will no doubt give me a disadvantage in future missions when I don’t know my way around, but for now it’s nice to streamline my objectives.

Back in April, when I completed Vice City, I posited that I might try playing San Andreas in “a few months”. It has now been a few months, and I’m not playing it. I have a bit of a mental blocker on that game, partially around the setting, but also because I remember when it was released that there were countless reviews evangelising the detail they’d gone into, with you needing to regularly work out to keep fit, and eat healthily, and so on. It sounded too involved, and even if that’s not the case, it’s prevented me from playing it.

And so I went back to Vice City, to finish off side missions and collect stuff.

My first objective was to collect the hidden packages. Throughout playing the game, I’d found just over fifty of them, but the other forty were evidently too well hidden. I used a map guide to travel around the city and find them, and eventually I came to the end of the list … and still only had 95. I had to retrace my steps, eventually realising that I mist have failed to save at some point after collecting packages in the airport, because there were five of them still sitting there.

Collecting all the packages unlocked a military helicopter at the South end of the first island, so I spent some time flying around and blowing stuff up, including the annoying planes carrying banners over the city. I got a nice big wanted level, which I then got rid of by landing on the roof of my mansion and running in to change my clothes.

I then bought the car showroom, and found all the cars required by its clients, including the ice cream truck and pizza delivery bike. The biggest issue I had on this was with the games in Little Haiti, who all hate me for some reason and blew up two of their gang cars when I tried to steal them.

And then I went to the Malibu Club and tried to complete the missions there. I got stuck here before – there’s a mission where you have to break someone out of the police station, and I was being shot to pieces as soon as I entered. It’s a lot easier if you go in without a gun in your hand, and then run straight into the locket room to get a police uniform on. Once you open the cells, they still try to kill you – but I had a fast car parked outside, and a route to a pay and spray planned, so I managed to finish that … only to get stuck on another mission where you have to race someone through the city, with the police trying to ram you (and not him) off the road.

I’m nearly done with this now.

I’ve never completed Vice City, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because some of the later missions have a huge difficulty spike, or maybe it’s because the mission structures aren’t quite as well defined as in GTA3. More than once I’ve found myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, with a main story missions appearing at first as a side quest. Maybe it’s because Vice City is such a fun place to drive around, watching people interacting with each other and the gangs, chasing people who are being pursued by the police and getting a “good citizen bonus” for knocking them down (and then more and more bonuses for kicking them again and again). There’s more to do here than in Liberty City, with businesses to buy and shops to rob and a golf course to tear around in a buggy.

But, similar to when I played GTA3, over the past couple of years I’ve been picking at missions from time to time, and I’m not at a position where I think the end of the game is nigh. Tommy Vercetti owns the mansion in the middle of the map, many of the gangs have been beaten down, and I am left with a single mission marker.

Yet when I go there, there is nothing to start.

I last did a mission in which I had to steal some police uniforms and a car, then go and plant a bomb in the shopping centre. I did that, then ran away very fast, with a five-star wanted level (which I knocked down to two-star by planning an escape route through some police bribe markers). That was all fine, but nothing else opened up. I did get a phone call, but it seemed unrelated to the story.

I am hoping that the game hasn’t bugged out. In the meantime I’m travelling around finishing some of the side missions I hadn’t done before – buying a couple of the properties (not the Malibu Club though, it’s far too expensive), carrying out an assassination contract, and racing around in a fire engine. It’s very pretty.