head to head
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now asks more than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the gap is execution.

Execution · Practiced Mastery
Vehicular mayhem testing car handling plus knowing when wrecking beats racing.

Optimization · Practiced Mastery
A sprawling open-world crime epic with RPG-style character stats across a whole state.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery).
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now leans clearly harder on execution.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
Perfect car control trivialises wrecking AI opponents and surviving
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Flying school and drive-bys need decent hands
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now leans a little harder on reads, though the gap is small.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
AI drivers follow set behaviours, never modelling the player
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Gang AI is scripted, never adaptive
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
Pickup spawns and physics chaos add modest run-to-run noise
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Territory wars and traffic add light randomness
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now
Choosing wreck-versus-race strategy and upgrade economy is solvable
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Stats, gym, weapon skill, and routes reward systematic play
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.