Las Venturas
The third and final city in the game is modeled on Las Vegas, with casinos aplenty.
Wu Zi has situated himself at the head of a Triad-run casino, with a convenient save
point outside, so you can use it to increase your bank to an obscene amount, if
you’re willing to put a little time into it.
Two games here are worth mentioning. The first is video poker; you can find numerous
banks of these machines just inside the entrance to the Four Dragons casino. Save
your game before playing, but when you do play, head straight for the highest-paying
machine you can afford. There are $5000 machines and $10000 machines, and you can
enter five coins per hand, letting you wager up to $50000 a hand. We’re not going to
lie and say that this is an easy way to make money - you’ll lose more often than
not - but if you’re willing to sink in some time and wait for a big payday, you
should be able to increase your bankroll quite a bit with minimal effort.
In essence, all you can really do in video poker is hold any pairs on your opening
hand and hope for trips. A three of a kind will get you back three times your bet.
If you don’t have a pair in your opening hand, hold any face cards and hope for a
pair - a pair of jacks or higher will win you your stake bet, effectively making the
hand a wash. If you have no pairs, faces, or four to a straight or flush, ditch the
whole hand and hope the second hand is better. This might not be correct video poker
technique - people actually write books about how to beat these machines - but since
you can reload your game at any time and get all your cash back, just go for the
easy money. You can find more tips and percentages in the Extras chapter below.
After you get a big bank, you’ll be able to play roulette for insane amounts of
money. You can’t just walk up to a roulette table and bet a million bucks your first
trip to the casino, though; you have to increase your gambling skill first. Video
poker will increase it, so if you want to play that for a while, then save your game
and bet your entire stash of money on black or red. You can eventually unlock the
million-dollar table, which will let you make a million bucks in just a few seconds,
and you can do it as many times as you want. If you lose a round, just reload your
game and try again.
Two other things to take note of: first off, you can grab body armor from the
parking lot across the street from the save point outside Wu Zi’s casino. Secondly,
you can find a pair of rocket launcher pickups in the parking garage behind the
Emerald Isle casino, on the northern end of the strip. There’s one on level eight of
the garage itself, and another on the roof, which you can reach by taking the stairs
from level ten. You don't necessarily need these, but they can come in handy here
and there; the missions in Las Venturas will obviously include some of the most
difficult you've yet come across.
Wu Zi
Fender Ketchup
The easiest way to get the snitch to talk is to take him back out to the Strip and
drive on the wrong side of the road, weaving in and out of traffic, but without
making contact with oncoming vehicles. When you’re ready to turn around, make a hard
handbrake turn onto the opposite side of the road and repeat the process. The rate
that the Scare-o-Meter increases will decrease as it nears the end of the bar, but
just keep up the scares and the stoolie will spill the beans soon enough.
Explosive Situation
Gotta hand it to CJ; he’s becoming quite the psycho. Even before you have any
definite plans to strike back against the mob families that are roughing over Wu
Zi’s casino, he’s gonna go out and find some explosives to do the dirty work with.
To begin with, head down to the quarry. You’ll have to bust the cases of explosives
open with the big old truck there, and don’t worry about the workers; you can run
them over simultaneous. After each crate of explosives is busted open, though,
you’ll have to jump out of your truck and grab the dynamite, then repeat the process
for the next load, and you’ve only got a couple of minutes to work with, so keep a
move on.
After the dynamite’s been collected, a twist is thrown in in the form of quarry
security, who’ll block off the main exit from the mine. You’ll need to follow the
very specific path laid out by the red path markers until you hit a hill that’ll get
you out of the quarry.
Architectural Espionage
You can find this mission across the way from Wu Zi’s office; it’s shown on your map
with a cash icon, which is listed as a Robbery icon in the map legend. Before you
can knock over Caligula’s Casino, you’ll have to photograph the plans for it.
After you exit the Five Dragons, you’ll need to grab a camera. Head up the strip a
bit until you find the tourists (their icon may be obscured by the North marker on
your mini-map), then kill the cameraman and grab his Leica.
The City Planning building isn’t difficult to infiltrate; just respond positively to
the secretary, and she’ll let you through. You will need to flip over to your fists
as weapons, though, since the guards don't take too kindly to having someone with a
boatload of guns in his hands walking through the building.
When you reach the plans, which are on the top floor, you'll find that they're
impossible to photograph due to the guard nearby (though they have been thoughtfully
tagged to the wall), so you’ll have to return down to the third floor and destroy
the air regulators. This will cause a fire, which will get you enough of a
distraction to photograph the plans, but will also tip the guards to your presence,
meaning that you’ll have to fight your way back to the ground floor, out of the
building, and back to the casino, all under a three or four-star wanted level. This
is going to be difficult, needless to say, so ignore the cops and get into a vehicle
ASAP when you’re out of the building.
You’ve Had Your Chips
This is a toughie, so get body armor and a whole lot of ammo from the Ammu-Nation
near the casino if you’re running short. If you still have the M4 ammo you picked up
from Fort Carlson, that should suffice, but you’ll definitely need 300-400 rounds if
you want to successfully complete this mission. Having a couple dozen rounds for a
shotgun will also be useful.
When you’re ready, head on over to the plastics factory and head through the
entrance. You’ll get a pop-up warning you of the goons in the car, so take a left,
then work your way around to the back of the factory and sneak in from the car’s
backside; you’ll know you’re in the right place when you spot the chainsaw. If you
manage to sneak in, you’ll still have to deal with a factory full of baddies, but
they’ll come in waves rather than all at once. It’s best to hang an immediate left
when you reach the factory and clear out everyone in the open corner of the
building, then just wait there for the rest to come to you. The machines can confuse
your targeting, though, so keep CJ facing towards the center of the building.
As mentioned, you’ll have a few waves of bad guys to deal with, but you can
eventually clear the place out. One of the guys coming towards you will pack an
automatic shotgun, though, which can take you down in just a few shots, so be sure
you've killed him before you start working on the machines. These things have a lot
of health, and explode if you try to destroy them with melee weapons, so the only
way to detonate them safely is to use your weapons at a distance. Your shotgun is
the best bet for this, as they'll blow in one hit, as opposed to requiring three or
four seconds of fire from an M4 or SMG. Blow them to hell, then fight your way to
the Admiral that's been parked by the entrance to the factory and use it to escape
from the grounds and return to the Four Dragons Casino to finish the mission.
Key To Her Heart
In order to get the keycard from the croupier, you’re going to need to follow her
around town until she hits up a sex shop. After you grab the gimp suit inside, keep
following her and wait outside until the gimp approaches; he’ll arrive on foot, and
won’t be wearing a shirt, so kill him, grab his...weapon, and head inside to pick up
a new girlfriend.
In order to get her keycard, you’ll have to take her out on dates. You can take her
out immediately after you finish this mission - the Steakhouse is your best bet for
big love, and is represented by a fork-and-knife on your map - but she’ll likely
require multiple dates before giving with the goods. You can get more missions from
Wu Zi in the meantime, so check back every once in a while and treat her nice. After
a few dates, she’ll call you on your cell phone and let you know that she’s left the
card in her bedroom, so head into her house and grab it.
Dam And Blast
Because all casino heists involve knocking out the power to an entire city - it’s
the law - CJ has to destroy the dam that supplies electricity to Las Venturas. You
can’t just drive over to the dam and say, "Excuse me, would you mind if I blow this
up?" though; you’ll need to grab a plane from the airport and do a little James
Bondish parachuting to reach your destination.
You can’t just jump out of the plane when you’re directly over the dam; that’d be
too easy. Instead, you’ll have to make it all the way up to a corona in the sky
before you’re able to bail out. The corona is way, way up there, too; you’ll have to
keep rising all the way from the airport to the marker to hit it. If you can’t quite
get there, fly past it and make a hard bank to return. When you hit the corona, bail
out and orient CJ towards the new marker on the ground below. If you’re really good
with the parachutes, you might be able to land directly in the circle, but if worst
comes to worst, you can just bail into the water and swim from there to the quay
After making your way past the security guards (you’ll need to get silent kills on
these guys), you’ll be inside the dam. There are four more people inside here,
including two guards that will pace along the left wall. You can take the workers
out fairly easily with your knife, but for the guards, you’ll have to hide in one of
the dark cubicles along the wall and wait for them to pass you by before slitting
their throats. If anyone sees you, you’ll have a more difficult time placing your
charges on the generators, but you should be able to complete the mission either
way, especially if you have body armor. Regardless, plant your charges and hit the
exit to complete the mission.
Cop Wheels
This is another mission that’s difficult to beat on your first try, so don’t get too
discouraged. The gist of it is that you have 12 minutes to track down four police
bikes from all over Las Venturas and drive them to a truck. The catch is that you
can’t, of course, drive more than one bike at a time, and that the truck will be
roaming around the city on the freeway, forcing you to catch up to it when you do
have a bike in your possession.
The trick here is to know where the truck is, even when you can’t see it on the map.
It begins its journey on the eastern side of town, so start by grabbing the
southeasternmost bike. Since the Packer drives clockwise, you can then proceed to
the west, north, and northeastern bikes and get them onto the truck as it passes by
their position. Needless to say, if you grab the northern bike while the Packer is
on the southern freeway, you’re going to be adding a couple of minutes to your
commute time. If you go in the correct clockwise order, though, you should be able
to complete the mission with over four minutes to spare.
The other big sticker here are the cops themselves. They’re not going to view your
theft of their property too kindly, and if you get to two or more stars, you’re
going to have lots of problems getting the bikes back to the truck without getting
run over. Thus, it’s important not to kill the cops while you’re stealing their
bikes. This may be unavoidable, in the cases of the bikes that take off as you
approach them, so if you do get a couple of stars, keep an eye out for the star
pickups around town that will reduce your wanted level.
Up, Up, And Away
Now that you have your cop bikes for the decoy truck, you need the decoy truck
itself. Unfortunately, a street-level jacking is a bit too risky, so you’ll have to
infiltrate a heavily-guarded military base, steal a helicopter with a loading hook,
find a truck on the ground, hook it up, and take it to a safe location to be
painted. Which, of course, is far preferable to sticking a gun in some armored car
driver’s face.... This mission has a high incidence of combat, so be sure that you
have body armor and plenty of ammo before you head in.
When you leave the casino, jack a car and head towards the base. As you arrive, a
Hummer will be coming out, so take the opportunity and drive through the gates as
they open. Immediately take a left and drive past the open hangar doors; note the
huge number of M4-wielding badasses inside. You can stop the car and proceed through
there, if you wish - there are health and armor pickups inside, so it’s doable - but
a more workable solution is to keep heading around the building until you find some
shipping crates. If you get on top of these, you’ll be spotted by some guards, but
they’ll likely bunch up near the wall, allowing you to use a rocket or grenade to
blow them all to hell. When they’re gone, jump across to the wall and fall down;
you’ll now be on the rear side of the hangar, and you can run past the rear doorway
and deal with any pursuers as they come out. Or, if you’re running low on health and
ammo, you can clear out the hangar with your M4 and get the pickups.
Proceed up the steps, killing any guards you find, until you get a message about
incoming gunships. There’s a minigun emplacement nearby, highlighted with a red
circle, so hop into it and blast the gunships, then grab your own helicopter and jet
out.
After you get the helicopter, make your way to the parked security truck and lift it
up with the winch. In order to avoid damaging your heli, extend your winch as far
down as it’ll go, then hover over the truck; you’ll automatically grab it with the
magnet when it’s close enough. When you do have a good grip on the truck, reel the
winch in as far as it’ll go and head out to the airstrip that you own. You’ll have
to drop the truck into a fairly small circle when you arrive, so go slow, and use
the L3 click to level yourself out. If you’re having trouble, you can drag the truck
into the circle after dropping it somwhere else.
When you have the truck safely stowed, land in the indicated area and save your game
afterwards. You don’t want to have to do all that again if you do something stupid,
now do you?
Fish In A Barrel
There’s no gameplay involved in this "mission"; it’s just a cutscene. Enjoy.
Breaking The Bank At Caligula’s
The glorious heist mission will begin after Carl makes his way into Caligula’s. You
only have four minutes to get the team into the casino, but that should be more than
you need if you check your waypoints and stick to the main corridors of the
building.
To begin with, hit the swipecard door in the casino’s main lobby to access the
secured portion of the building, then find the ventilation shaft in the generator
room and chuck a canister of gas into it. After that goes down, Zero will blow the
charges you placed at the dam, which for some reason were never removed by the
hordes of cops that chased you away. It’ll become pitch black at this point, so
equip your nightvision goggles, get through the second security door, then find the
door through which the van will enter. You’ll need to hang a right and grab a
forklift to open it.
Next up is the cash grab itself. You’ll have to take the team back through the
hallways, killing off all of the security guards that get in your way. There are a
lot of them, but they’re shooting blind, so you shouldn’t take too much damage if
you keep your distance. After you get to the vault, you’ll have to head upstairs and
blow the backup generators; use the satchel charges near the vault door if you don’t
have any other explosives. After that occurs, the mafia will again try to block your
passage back to the truck, so it’ll be another corridor crawl. Just stay in front of
your team and flip between your SMG and M4 to clear out everyone without having to
reload.
If you’ve managed to get this far into the game, one would presume that you have
some proficiency with the FPS-like controls, which is good, because you’re going to
need to use them. For the most part, you can stick behind your Triad friends and let
them clear out the many rooms in the first corridor, one of which contains a suit of
body armor. Eventually, though, they’ll stay behind, and you’ll have to drop down
the steps (grabbing the health restore in the kitchen) and give chase to Big Poppa,
who’ll attempt to leave the mansion. After this point, enemies will appear one at a
time, for the most part, so just proceed slowly but surely until you exit the
building.
Although your goal is listed as running Big Poppa off the road, what you’re actually
trying to do is destroy his car, so don’t hesitate to use as much SMG ammo as it
takes in drive-bys to get the job done. His car isn’t any more healthy than it
should be, so you shouldn’t have to wail on it too much, but on the flipside, it can
explode rather quickly if you manage to trap him, so be sure to get away as soon as
it starts smoking and finish the job with ordinary vehicular roughhousing.
The Truth
Don Peyote
Although The Truth gives you this mission, it ties into the troubles with Wu Zi’s
casino, as the end result will let you scope out Caligula’s Palace without causing
too many eyebrows to raise.
Luckily, it isn’t a very difficult mission, although it does involve one of those
annoying cross-country jaunts. After TT gives you the location of the band members,
head out that way and locate them. We found it easiest to just head to the Las
Venturas airport and grab a Shamal; you can fly over there in 30 seconds or so, then
bail out and parachute down to the band's location. You’ll need to ferry them
around, which requires a four-door vehicle; if you don’t have one, drop down to the
nearby highway and get a taxi or somesuch, then return to the Brits and grab them.
If you're not having any luck getting a four-door vehicle, feel free to cheat and
summon one in.
Your first stop, for some reason or another, is the snake farm near your airstrip,
so run by there, kill all the yokels, then get the band into Las Venturas to finish
off the mission. After you complete it, Kent Paul will call you up and start
offering you missions on behalf of Ken Rosenthal.
Ken Rosenthal
Intensive Care
It appears as though the snitch you roughed up with the car earlier is now a likely
target for a mob hit, so you’ll have to go and pick him up from the hospital and
move him to a safe location. Unfortunately for you, it appears that some mob goons
have already picked him up, so after you arrive, you’ll need to track them down and
get them to exit the ambulance that they’re driving. (It’s a fitting Rockstar bit of
humor that a mission given to you by a lawyer will see you chasing ambulances.)
To complicate matters further, though, you’ll have three ambulances to chase, only
one of which, obviously, is the correct one. The other two are real ambulances, and
you’ll need to ram them to check their reaction; if the driver jumps out and yells
at you, then you’ve hit a real ambulance; if he drives off faster, then you’ve found
your target. You’ll almost always hit a real ambulance first, though, and after the
driver calls in his warning, the mob ambulance will start making its way to the
freeway to escape out of town. (If you find yourself having problems catching up to
all of the ambulances, try doing the chase part on a motorcycle; you can just shoot
the ambulances over your handlebars to check their reactions. When you find the real
ambulance, though, you'll need to switch to a real car, as the ambo is bulletproof
and thus can't be shot up.)
At this point, you’ll have two ambulances to chase after, only one of which is the
real one. If you’re in a fast car, and you probably should be for this mission, just
go for whichever one’s closer and tap it. If it’s another real one, then book it for
the last ambulance. When you do find the mob ambulance, you’ll have to rough it up a
bit by ramming it around on the road, so try to jack something hardy, like a
Sentinal or an Admiral, before you start the destruction derby.
After a bit of roughhousing, though, the goons will jump out of the ambulance and
start blasting you. They pack SMGs, so be cautious as you make your way to the
ambulance. Even after you do gain control of it, though, your trip to your
destination will be beset by more mobsters in sedans that’ll try to run you off the
road. You can’t shake them, so drive like a madman until you get back to the
factory.
After the mission's over, note that the ambulance should still be its normal
bulletproof self; if you want to keep it, drive it to a garage. The Meat Business
Not much to say here; this is a straight-up killing mission. Get loaded out with all
the ammo and armor you can carry at the Ammu-Nation, then drive Ken over to the
abattoir. After CJ delivers one of the best lines in the game, you’ll have to shoot
your way through a couple dozen mobsters to escape. Don’t worry, the guys don’t have
particularly great aim, so take them out from as far away as possible, then exit the
building and drive Ken back to Caligula’s. One thing to note is that Ken will
attempt to hide himself in the abattoir's freezer; if you head in there after him,
you'll be able to grab some armor and fire on some of the enemies from behind a
grate, but you'll have a good chance of getting locked inside the freezer by one of
the mobsters, which will result in an automatic failure. It's best to just avoid it
entirely.
Freefall
Of all the crazy-ass stuff that you’ve been asked to do so far, making a free jump
from one plane to another a mile above the ocean has got to be the craziest.
Nonetheless, if you want to please your new mob master, you’ll have to fly out to
meet the incoming plane (and it’s waaay out there, well beyond where the map ends),
get behind it, and fly through the trailing corona. This’ll drop you onto the rival
mob’s plane, where you can kill off the assassins before they land. (Use the L1
button to fire while you keep your right thumb on the analog stick, and bring along
a full set of armor, as this can be a tough little shooting gallery.)
Saint Mark’s Bistro
Although you might be thinking Ultimate Easter Egg, your trip to Liberty City only
consists of a one-building interior view. Bring along body armor and clear the place
out! After you eliminate everyone on the upper level, you can chuck grenades down
below to kill off everyone but Farelli. Said boss has dual-wield Uzis, and packs a
lot of health, so you might want to take him out with a rocket launcher or minigun
if you have either of those. Regardless, when he’s dead, make your way down to the
bottom of the restaurant to get out of dodge. You’ll get your money and respect when
you make a successful landing in Las Venturas. This will also enable you to get your
heist on, assuming you did the rest of Wu Zi’s missions and got the keycard from
your girl up north.
Madd Dogg
Madd Dogg
This is really more of a mini-game than a mission; when prompted, grab the Walton
around the corner and use it to catch Madd Dogg when he jumps. You don’t need to
adjust your position relative to the building; just hit forward or reverse and try
to keep yourself so that the bed of the truck is beneath Dogg’s position. When he
lands, drive him to the hospital and drop him off. You have an unlimited amount of
time for this, so take it slow and don’t hit anything. You’ll need to do this
mission to unlock the endgame series of missions in Los Santos, so get cracking.
C.R.A.S.H.
Misappropriation
After you finish up a couple of missions for Rosenthal, the C.R.A.S.H. boys will
appear at a home outside of town, with another prototypical assassination mission.
This one’s simple enough; make it to the deserted town (which, as usual, is halfway
across the map), then kill the agent and retrieve the dossier. Before you open fire,
though, you’ll want to make sure you have a clean shot at the agent. Thus, you’ll
want to work your way around to the north side of town and kill him first before
taking out all of the cops and grabbing the dossier. You don’t have to return it to
Tenpenny to finish the mission; you end it right away.
High Noon
Doesn’t sound like Tenpenny has anything up his sleeve when he calls you for this
mission, does he now? No, this is certainly all above board. Regardless, make sure
you have a bunch of Uzi or SMG ammo, and be absolutely sure that you make the
rendezvous with a couple hours of daylight remaining; this is a tough mission to
complete at night. You’ll also want to make your savegame at a point near the
mission pickup, such as at the airstrip.
At its heart, though, this is another assassination mission, albeit one where you
have to kill Officer Pulaski. He’ll take off in what appears to be a Buffalo at the
beginning, whereas all you have to work with is a dune buggy. (You can try to shoot
him before he gets into the vehicle, but he’s immune to gunfire, and even a rocket
won’t destroy the car.)
Your first priority is to exchange the buggy for a more solid vehicle. The buggy is
nice for the desert, sure, but you’ll be on pavement for most of this little run,
and the buggy can’t take much damage. Luckily for you, the first road that Pulaski
hits will be a big switchback; check your map and drive over the cliff to a point
where you’ll land ahead of Pulaski. This should give you a minute to grab another
car (preferably something big, like a Ranger), or, if no one’s around, to line up a
rocket or satchel charge on Pulaski’s path.
If you do manage to get a new car, though, you’ll have to chase down Pulaski and ram
him or drive-by his car until he jumps out. It’s easier to say that than to do it,
though, as he’s a wily driver; try to hit him when he’s on a long stretch of road.
If he ducks into a town, tap him and try to get him caught up on a building; if you
succeed, you can come alongside him and unload a bunch of shells into the side of
the car. When you do enough damage to his vehicle, Pulaski’ll jump out and you can
run him down for the win.
You're donw with Las Ventuas but not with the game. Return to Los Santos.
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