Hands on: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on BlackBerry 10

It’s definitely not available in the Amazon Appstore or BlackBerry World but it “works.”  In that I mean that there are some things in the game which do not show on the BlackBerry Passport in specific due to the symmetrical resolution (my guess at least).  However, on all other BlackBerry 10 devices I tried this on including the Z10 and Z30, everything comes out just fine.  So what’s missing? Two things – when playing missions which include dance moves to follow (DDR style), the moves are on the lower part of the screen which seems to be cut off on the Passport.  With that said, the radio station changing is the second piece which does not work.  Both of these don’t really bother me honestly but, some of you who are mission intensive may care for it – and again this only matters if you’re on the BlackBerry Passport to begin with.

So how do you load the apk to your BlackBerry? The obvious methods being through Snap if you already own the game or if you decide to do the deed and grab it through apps like Aptoide or other leaked sites.  In my case, i already own this game on Android, so I simply downloaded my own copy again on my Passport.  Back to the install – there’s two parts to it, loading the apk file itself and copying “obb” files to a root directory on your device.

These files which have to be moved can be found on your Android device which has the game installed (if you are in this situation), otherwise, you can search online for those directory files to download.  Again, i am not encouraging to grab a non-legit copy of the game files as I did purchase it and simply extracted my own files.  The files will originally reside in “sdcardAndroiddata” folder, where on BlackBerry 10 you will need to move the files to DevicemiscandroidAndroidobb.  The folder you’re moving here is called com.rockstargames.gtasa and includes two files inside which are combined at 2.5GB plus tax.

Gameplay:

It’s GTA – the game that can definitely keep you entertained for hours and hours at a time.  Whether you’re a mission kind of person or like to go around causing mayhem after acquiring some badass weapons from Ammu-Nation, it’s just plain fun.

On the BlackBerry Passport in specific, the on screen controls can seem kind of cluttered, where thankfully you can customize the layouts and button sizes as needed – awesome feature for you chubby fin gers out there.

As mentioned before with the screen cut offs, loading screens in the game do have cut offs on the BlackBerry Passport, but fine on Z10/Z30.  Again, not a big deal here since it’s just the loading screen.  The loading bar is intact just fine.

App crashes? The game will take some memory on  your device, so obviously be generous with your crazy multitasking and numerous live tiles up.  Usually when I’m playing, I make sure to have a gig of free memory at the moment, which equates to a couple live tiles, most likely just my Talk2WatchPro is open any way.  Other than that, if you’re planning on adding all these cool mods to the game, such as extra cars, features, and all other miscellaneous hacks, you’ve been warned.  All those can cause game crashes – not just on your BlackBerry but on any device in general.  Some of the mods are cool for sure but I’ve had to revert some due to performance impacts, or overall crashes I have encountered with the game.

One thing that’s cool about the gameplay here is saving the game. Generally on the console game when it launched on PS2, you have to save before leaving the game which resulted in walking CJ (the main character in the game) to his house so you can save.  On the mobile edition, the game will save where you were when exiting the game, which is pretty cool.  It’s a built in auto-save feature pretty much.

The overall consensus? Yes, get the game, buy it, go through the small pain of copying the game directory files accordingly and worry about nothing else.  I’m hoping Amazon releases this for BlackBerry devices, and Grand Theft Auto Vice City is available and works perfectly on the Passport (have not tested it on other devices).  Maybe you want to grab Vice City first, and wait it out to see if Amazon seeds this one out to us, or go ahead and grab it.  Again, my intention here is not to teach you how to do the porting and movement of the obb files, but a higher level overview and my general opinion of having the game on BlackBerry 10.  There are plenty of resources you can search Google for which have these instructions step by step if need be.  If anything else, drop me a line or let me know your feedback on the game.