GTA San Andreas: Viva Venturas

 After leaving San Fierro behind and Chasing Phantoms in the Desert, CJ has finally arrived to Las Venturas. The game picks up a lot of sidetracking here, but it has more passion in it than the San Fierro chapter... first let's get the the Hellish crap out of the way: Flight School is far worse than I remembered AND SCREW YOU TORENO!! For some reason N.O.E. was easier than I remember, but screw you Toreno! But yeah, Las Venturas unlocks Plane Shit, Mafia Shit, and Ocean's Eleven Shit! You can also make money or lose money at the Casinos. 

Not only that, but storywise, you begin to taste actual success with Carl. You go from gangbanger to Casino stakeholder. You even get to play with a $60 Million Jetpack that you steal from the army for The Truth. You're also preparing an Ocean's Eleven styled bank heist while doing jobs for the Mafiosi You're going to steal from... including flying to Liberty Coty for a hit job.  Despite some awful missions, Venturas feels more GTA-like than San Fierro... which is funny, because San Fierro had the more GTA-feel... on paper. The execution was a bit more boring. While Venturas having crazier and more over the top missions, the GTA-feeling is stronger here.

After all that Venturas craziness, you do one final mission for Toreno: Picking up Sweet from the LSPD building and return home. Here is where the story comes back to it's hood roots with Sweet, whose ghetto mentality doesn't let him see beyond the Hood clashing against Carl's success because he saw beyond the Hood, which echoes Big Smoke's mentality. With this return to Los Santos as a successful Casino stakeholder, auto dealership owner, Mad Dogg's current manager, among others, Carl must choose a path: Staying true to his roots, or follow the riches... but I will deal with this on the 4th and final part of the review with all the ratings before reviewing the Definitive Edition as a whole. 

I feel like the Venturas chapter was "shorter" despite having plenty of things to do: Last third of the oysters, the horseshoes, the heist, bike school, etc. I THINK that the missions being mostly entertaining and action packed might have helped with how swiftly I was able to get through everything.