L3 M5 - Can't Complete It, Even With Cheats

L3 M5 (Slithery Sleuthing) has been driving me bonkers. I simply can't complete it, even with cheats enabled. I've even tried blocking the road where Snake starts driving with the fire truck and some traffic vehicles to block him in and screw up the AI that drives his car in the hopes that all 3 items will drop within a very small area and this didn't work either because the map refreshed when the mission started, clearing my roadblock.

To make things worse, this mission is near impossible to exploit because it's the only one out of the game's 57 combined missions with both a forced vehicle and forced character clothes.
PC mods are out of the question here because I play via PCSX2. At one point I got so fed up with L3 M5 that I opened my save in a hex editor, spent the good part of 2 hours looking through the code until I found where the bytes for L3 M5's mission status and save state were stored. After finding them, I tried replacing them with bytes taken from a completed mission and the game said the save was corrupted.

Other things I've tried include:
- Using Cheat Engine to make the game run very slow. This helped a little bit but not enough
- Parking next to a traffic vehicle and very quickly getting inside before the 10 seconds ran out. Tried it and the moment I got in the traffic vehicle, "Mission Failed - Player Out Of Vehicle" appeared despite still having 8 seconds on the timer.
- Trying a trick where I call a car from a phone box to bypass the vehicle requirements. Well guess what? The telephone lines had been cut and the fail screen appeared when the car selection UI popped up.
- Driving in directions the game isn't expecting for the mission so that the AI for Snake is forced into a premature drop of the first item which has a very small chance of causing early drops for the other 2 items.

None of these have worked and all I can think of is finding something that makes the game work against itself like somehow pushing Snake's car backwards towards and then into the Squidport because that part of the map isn't used for the mission.

Unfortunately those strats wont work, as each drop occurs in a designated zone and its a forced car mission. what parts are you struggling with in the vanilla game? i would advise just hanging back a bit and driving carefully. snakes car is fast and level 3 still has a bit of rubber-banding to work with. maybe try hanging back at half bar? give some room to avoid traffic and the like

PC mods are out of the question here because I play via PCSX2.

Out of curiosity, why? The PC version is just better.

what parts are you struggling with in the vanilla game?

Pretty much all of it but mainly the rubber banding. It's what I've been trying to manipulate by driving in directions that the game isn't expecting which creates the early drops I described in my original post. I've also tried using the car horn jump to try and further break the rubber banding and preset drop areas since it has a small chance of making the map reload which will also make Snake's car move back to where it was prior to the map reloading.

I have found a weakness which involves blowing up Snake's car with the one hit cheat then ramming the undercarriage in the hopes that the game will drop an item with broken rubber banding.
Fairly sure the mission has a second part which if you fail, it's back to square one.

I do have to admit that as hard as the mission is, the Invisible Chief Wiggum Glitch that sometimes happens when you start the mission always makes me laugh and watch the cutscene

When snake enters a drop zone, a timer begins to drop the item. the early drop manip is simply him driving slower, therefore not being as far along after x amount of time. to beat the mission, i would advise to keep it simple. stay behind, drive slowly and carefully, avoid traffic. the mission is a fairly easy one if you can avoid traffic. follow snake as intended, hang a bit back so you see the drops a fair distance ahead, and give yourself time to avoid traffic and you should find it fairly easy to complete. going in other directions and stuff will just make your life harder

The second part of the mission is a very very lenient return timer. take the gas station and bowlerama shortcuts and youll be fine its barely a 20 second drive back the way you came

Thanks for the tips.
I have noticed that I'm slowly getting better at the mission each time I play it.
Would anyone happen to have a map of where the 3 drop zones are along with the route that is driven in the first part of the mission?

Right now, the biggest issue I'm facing is with the game dropping items into places I've already passed. Whenever I go back to get them, Snake drives further away and I fail the mission.
I might try the Cheat Engine Speedhack and make the game run slow since it was allowing me to better keep track of Snake and collect the items.

Finally Did It!

Ended up using Cheat Engine's Speed Hack to make the game run slower than normal which messed up the rubber banding.
So glad to have this mission done after so much failing.

saw the W good job. if you want to beat it vanilla, he wont drop behind you if you hang back. he drops behind you if youre too close to him