I feel like the most consistently underrated element of video game design is level design. Whether you call them levels, segments, missions, or whatever, the parts of our favorite video games that make up our favorite video games deserve the proper recognition, and it’s the purpose of this column to make sure they get that.

And since the recently released “GTA V” screens have got me reminiscing about the last time the “GTA” series paid a visit to the west coast, I’ve decided to start with my favorite entry in the “Grand Theft Auto” series for this column, by looking back at the best missions from “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.”

10. Drive-By

One of the great thrills of the GTA series is how it allows you to live out all of those great crime fantasies that film and possibly literature has instilled in you. In “GTA: III” is was planting a bomb on a car mob style. In “GTA: Vice City” it was intercepting a coke deal with a speed boat like Crocket and Tubbs on “Miami Vice.”

Since “San Andreas” was inspired by the west coast gangta films, like “Boys in the Hood,” one of the great thrills is living out inner-ghetto turf wars, and any good inner-ghetto turf war needs a drive-by. Drive-by’s are so common in “GTA” that there is a feature on the control for it, but here is the only place where you get to roll up on enemy gangs with your friends and rain ammunition on them while listening to N.W.A. just like most of us modern suburbanites figured happened all the time in the early 90’s. It’s as simple as a mission in “GTA gets,” but it’s so satisfying.

9. Fender Ketchup

So you’re working for the Triads and the Italian mafia has been messing with their operations in the “San Andreas” equivalent of Las Vegas, Las Venturas. One of the thugs have been caught, and to make him talk your friends decide to strap him onto a car which you are to drive at top speed until he gets scared enough to figuratively spill his guts ( or not and literally do so).

Driving around in a convertible at night on the Venturas strip is always a fun experience, but doing so in the most reckless way at your disposal so that a mob thug will rat his gang out makes it all the sweeter. Much like Drive-By this is one of those missions that takes a simple gangland pleasure and lets you run wild with it.

8. Amphibious Assault

When most non-stealth games try to have stealth sections, they tend to suck almost without exception. Of course, this being “GTA,” it’s not like other games and therefore enjoys the distinct advantage of defying normal conventions.

Of course to be fair, this isn’t a strict stealth mission as you are tasked with infiltrating a boat, planting a bug, and making your way off, but are free to kill at will as long as you do it quietly. However, the atmosphere the mission sets is just perfect, and the approach to the boat itself is very dramatic. The “GTA” series has always had an incredible sense of scale, and the ship makes for this perfectly ominous opposing figure in the distance, that makes this mission feel like a true accomplishment for having finished.
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I just realized that I wrote “As you can see from the screenshot I’ve been holding my own with him,” in my last post regarding Master Yi. The picture wasn’t a screenshot and instead was a picture of Chosen Master Yi. If that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is!

Anyway, I’ve updated the post, which you can find here, with screenshots for your amusement (no, I don’t want to talk about that Katarina game – thank god it was ranked 5v5 premade (not thank god for my poor teammates)).

Deus Ex was a huge part of my upbringing in video games. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Eidos announced Deus Ex 2. Even though the game was a bit of a letdown, I have high hopes for Deus Ex 3. The game could be incredible if Eidos just returns to the roots of the original. Honestly, I would take Deus Ex with updated graphics.

Eidos leaked two screenshots this week that have me more than a little concerned. The first shot is just a lighter. The second, that same lighter…wait for it…lighting a cigarette! How cool is that? You’re right, it’s not. Not at all. This is about the worst screenshot leak I’ve seen. Does the lighting look good? Of course it does, but there are hundreds of ways to show off cool lighting. Remember the first trailer for Black? That thing rocked, at a time when graphics on the Xbox were just starting to get decent.

The one saving grace is that the Eidos Community Guy that posted the screens said, “I can’t say a darn thing about this other than people who like to go into details will shortly have some new material to dissect.” Let’s hope it’s something good.