Reviewed: July 5, 2005
Reviewed by: Mat Houghton

Publisher
Rockstar Games

Developer
Rockstar North

Released: June 6, 2005
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Mature

9
9
9
10
9.0

Supported Features:

By now, if you don’t know Grand Theft Auto you haven’t been paying attention. The Doom of recent years, at least as far as video game violence is concerned, GTA has revolutionized how games are designed and how they are played, bringing players unprecedented levels of freedom in terms of game play and massive environments to explore. They say that getting there is half the fun, in GTA that’s only true if there are enough cops chasing you.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the most recent installment is bigger, longer, and most definitely more challenging. There are more vehicles, more weapons, and more places to run to. San Andreas is a big place; I hope you brought your bulletproof vest.

New additions with this title are bicycles, skydiving, and jetpacks not to mention being able to control your character’s appearance by buying individual pieces of clothing you can mix and match for that perfect look, working out to get ripped and do more damage with your fists, learning new fighting techniques, eating too much to get tubbed out, hairstyles, eye patches, and tattoos.

There is a LOT of content to this game, and it is almost all player-controlled. If you want to work out, you have to work out with a mini-game that’s different depending on what equipment you use. It’s essentially button mashing, but still it’s more interactive than just pushing the button and then watching as you lift weights. Oh and if you want to keep that muscle you better come back often. If you want to learn new moves the gym trainer has to approve you, and then you have to fight him. You want to gain weight you have to buy lots of the biggest meals and stop going to the gym.

All this is of course detail to the main event. What you are really here to do is drive around town shooting gangstas, outrunning the cops, and generally causing a ruckus. You had better be prepared though, because now you have character development, not just in terms of muscle or fat, but also skills and respect. If you want to get a car full of homies together and do some drive by’s you’d better be sure you have enough respect to lead a crew, otherwise you’re going solo. Sure you shoot straight on your own, but you want to hit harder? You’d better put your time in at the shooting range. You want to get in police chases through all of San Andreas, get on the road and drive boy, because these cops are no slouches.

If you want to be good at anything you have to practice, but fortunately most of the time the practice is fun (especially the driving). The only real drawback to all of this content is that it’s almost an exercise in too much of a good thing. There are three cities in this game, each with their own distinct look and feel (not that you didn’t know that already), there are unique tasks to do in each of them, as well as the countryside in between.

One of the things that was particularly appealing to me about the last title was that there was only one, and that set the tone for the game (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t like eighties tunes to blow things up to?), where as here you have an overall “image” – that of California – but then each individual area is different. The game feels a little less unified than the last. I don’t know that it’s a bad thing, but it did make the game seem a little less fun to me.

Also, all of the extra content makes slows down the game for me, and much of it is simply filler. The gym mini-games are fun the first few times, but they pale quickly and you still have to do them. All of the stats that you can build in the game are also a bit slow, so you feel like you are barely crawling along even though you have been playing the game for the past 10 hours.

Core game mechanics have been bliss since GTA III, so you can expect nothing less from this title. The fighting interface has been improved and driving is as excellent as it always has been, so expect no surprises here. Mission completion is still totally in your hands within the bounds of certain requirements. If you need to perform some drive bys it is just as effective to run over the targets, as it is to let your passengers shoot them down. The freeform elements are still there, so have no fear that this is an enjoyable ride, it’s just very different from what you’ve experienced in Vice City.

Oh, and to those of you who have been complaining about it for so long, yes you can finally swim in this game.

As far as comparing to the PS2, the graphics are better of course, but not really in a glaring fashion. Sure things are smoother, and load times are shorter (though in some cases not that much shorter), but the biggest difference comes when the camera is close to the characters, mainly during story sequences. Then each character looks more detailed, with better defined features and expressions than on the PS2.

Aside from displeasure at the color palette, this game is very good looking. There are a wide variety of character models wandering around in every city, and they are different for every city, or at least different sections of cities, so while in “Vegas” you see Elvis impersonators, and in downtown “LA” you see very high class looking ladies. More specifically on character models a lot of work went into your character.

Building up muscle has a noticeable effect on Carl, as does simply gaining weight. There are also a wide variety of hairstyles and clothing combinations to choose from, not to mention tattoos. If you want to run from the cops in a Zorro mask and boxers with hearts on them you can do that. If you want to just look straight up like a gangster you can do that. If you want to throw on an Afro and eye patch and run around like Tyrone the funkiest pirate ever, you can do that too.

Special effects are here by the boatload. You get the nice blurred edges on your screen when you get up to speed in a car, and the rain effect is phenomenal. Explosions, and car crashes, spurts of blood, and gorgeous sunsets are all to be had inside.

Alright, so maybe I exaggerate a little, still that is an all star cast for a game that isn’t a movie tie in. And, no I don’t really know who Bijou Phillips is either.

The music in San Andreas is also as good as it always has been in the GTA franchise. It’s all licensed music that was popular at the time the game is supposed to take place, and with 11 radio stations to choose from that’s a lot of 90’s music. You get rap, rock, r & b, and just to mix it up a bit some country and reggae. Also included are a host of fake products, stores, public speakers, and talk radio that they had in Vice, so be prepared for a few laughs at what is totally inappropriate humor, but still funny as hell.

Sound effects? Hey, what can I say, explosions and crashes and gunfire. What more can you ask for? The cars have been given a little bit better treatment, so now they sound a little more individual than previously. In fact everything sounds very realistic, down to the gliding of a bicycle at high speed down the street.