Gta: San Andreas Is Full Of Legends, And It's Got Me Chasing Ghost...

There's a magic in the myths that wikis have taken from us.

Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it's the canon height of Thief's Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.

In a first-floor flat above San Fierro's Chinatown, the amiable Triad leader Woozie is on the couch, clutching a gamepad. He's busy thrashing CJ Johnson in competitive multiplayer, much to the consternation of our protagonist. "How are you in the water?" Woozie asks, changing the subject. "Can you swim well?"

"No," replies CJ. "I can't." The cutscene is a reflection of the background stat tracking that goes on in GTA: San Andreas—recording the player's weapon skill, driving ability, stamina, muscle, fat, and most pertinently, lung capacity. This moment in particular is notorious among GTA fans, since it demands you raise your underwater swimming skill to 20% before proceeding to the next mission—an oceanic infiltration of a cargo ship which must be completed to see the rest of the game.

Yet if there's something else most fans agree on, it's that they love Woozie. Where the archetypal GTA quest giver yells and postures, Wu Zi Mu brings a relaxed energy that belies his position at the head of a beleaguered crime family. He trusts and supports Carl, defending him from the racially-founded suspicion of fellow Chinatown mobsters. Against a backdrop of backstabbings and revenge plots, he is an oasis of unlikely chill.

This is the man who wants me to practice holding my breath underwater? Then I'm gonna do it. Watch me speed through San Fierro, mount the curb near the famous ferry building, and plunge my ride straight into the deep blue. It's time to dive.

If there's a reason that most players haven't achieved their advanced swimming badge by San Andreas' mid-game, it's because it's boring. The region's sea is large and largely empty. Once the novelty of its colourful fish has worn off, there's none of GTA 5's scuba antics to keep you occupied. Despite this, and perhaps because San Andreas was the first game in the series to make the ocean navigable, it's a reliable source of legends.

One was a Bermuda-Triangle-esque claim that, when players flew out to sea, they would sometimes lose control of their planes, plunging helplessly into the dark water. An

Source: PC Gamer