Grand Theft Auto (GTA)™: San Andreas (Special Edition) for PlayStation 2

The Grand Theft Auto series is one the most successful series in video game history, despite its mature and excessively violent content. Rockstar Games, the developer and published of the games, have released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas just in time for the 2004 holiday season. Surpassing Vice City and GTA III is no easy task, and few thought that it could be achieved. Many believed that Rockstar would take the easy way out and simply tune-up a few things here, add a few things there and release a product that would not live up to the hype surrounding it. To their surprise, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas turned out to be perhaps the best PlayStation 2 game of all-time.

GTA: San Andreas features a very intricate, compelling and well-developed story. It takes place in 1992 in California with a gangster theme. You start off by learning that Carl Johnson has been living in Liberty City ever since he fled from Los Santos five years ago. He did so due to the escalating crime and poverty in his hometown, and because his brother Brian had been shot. However, the ill-fated death of his mother has brought him back to Los Santos. Upon his arrival, CJ meets two cops that rob him, frame him and drop him off in rival gang territory. Your first priority will be to avoid conflict and get yourself back to the neighborhood where you grew up.

From there, the real story begins. You are introduced to your gang, the Grove Street Families, and all of the interesting people that will help you along the way. There s your brother Sweet, your sister Kendl and her boyfriend Caesar. Big Smoke and Ryder are two friends of yours that will have a major impact on you as well. All of these characters have interesting personalities, and you will develop intricate relationships with each one. After being introduced to everyone, it s back to business right away. You learn that your gang has lost respect over the last five years and there are very disorganized. It is up to you to glorify your gang and to become the king of the streets.

Before I begin discussing the gameplay, the magnitude of the game must be mentioned. GTA: San Andreas does not consist of a single city, au contraire, it consists of three cities and two areas in between. There s Las Venturas, which represents Las Vegas in the '90s and is full of casinos, clubs and other forms of entertainment. There s San Fierro (based on San Francisco), which is full of hills, fog and mist. Finally, there is Los Santos, which is supposed to represent the city of Los Angeles. Los Santos is full of rival gangs in the ghetto, large highways and urban areas. In between Las Venturas and San Fierro you will find miles and miles of desert wasteland, while the road between San Fierro and Los Santos is full of farmland, plains, small towns and wooded areas. The inclusion of three large cities and two rural areas means that San Andreas is absolutely huge. I knew that the developers at Rockstar are a very ambitious bunch, but the scope of this game is simply remarkable. Driving from Las Venturas to Los Santos literally takes around half an hour without even stopping. This is the largest non-RPG game that I have ever played, although I can tell that it s even larger than most RPGs.

The gameplay in GTA: San Andreas is more or less similar to the gameplay found in past GTA games, although San Andreas does bring a lot of new things to the table. The game is an open-ended action game even though it features a linear story. In all GTA game (San Andreas being no exception), you have the ability to create mass havoc. The ability to jack cars, run around and beat/shoot people, destroy property and run away from cops is what set the GTA games apart from all other games. Those elements are what make up the basis of the GTA world, and committing lots of crime and getting away with it is what attracted gamers to the series.

The game is linear only because the missions must completed in a certain order. You can t skip a mission; all missions are completed in succession. However, the missions themselves are so varied that you probably won t even care about the fact that they make the game a bit linear. Missions include sneaking levels, races, drive-by shootings, murders, driving people around, flying places, on-rail shooting and various other types of missions. Missions vary in different locales, as for example, in Los Santos most missions are related to gang rivalry; meaning that spraying over rival gang graffiti or performing some drive-by shootings is what you ll be up to. In Las Venturas, you ll attempt to rob a casino. In rural areas, burning fields of weed or flying airplanes is the order of the day. Sometimes you will have to rob houses without getting caught, sometimes you will have to kill a certain drug dealer, sometimes you might have to swoon a girl. The missions are so varied and plentiful, that despite the longevity of the game you never become bored with them. My only quirk is that some of the missions are incredibly tough for one reason and another, and replaying them ten times just to beat them made it feel like a chore and I really just wanted to move on.

In San Andreas, you literally have total control over how CJ looks. Early on in the game you will find the tattoo parlors, clothes shops, gyms and restaurants. At first glance, I didn t see why they were necessary yet soon you realize their impact on the game. If you work out in the gym by running on a treadmill, bench-pressing and curling weights, your muscle and stamina stats go up. The more muscle you have, the more powerful your melee combat moves are. The higher your stamina, the longer you can sprint. By working out, you also become more ripped. You need to eat at restaurants from time to time to maintain your muscle. If you don t work out, then you turn into a fat slob. If you want to be a fat and slow dude, no problem. However, if you are leaner and stronger, your respect goes up and everyone will respect you more. This means people might join your gang, and girls will find you more attractive.

Speaking of attraction, looking buff is not the only way to go. There are tattoo parlors, barbershops and clothes shops scattered throughout San Andreas. By getting more tattoos and buy expensive clothes, your respect will go up and girls will find you more attractive (sex appeal stat goes up). You can get haircuts to change your appearance in order to look sharper or simply to avoid the cops. The inverse will happen if you dress in cheap clothing. People actually make comments on your appearance as you walk down the street.

The game handles many aspects with the aid of statistics, including your weapons. Guns are easy to find, and shooting them is very easy. You lock-on to a target and fire, and in San Andreas the computer automatically locks-on to the target that presents the most danger to you. Every weapon that you use for the first time will have a poor rating. However, as you use weapons more often, all of the guns will become easier to use. After using a certain weapon for some time, its lock-on range will increase and reloading the weapon will take less time. After spending a substantial amount of time with that weapon, you obtain a hitman rating, which makes the gun even better and allows you to wield two of them at the same time.

Vehicles are handled in the same manner the more you use them the easier they become to handle. This includes driving cars, cycling, riding motorcycles, flying airplanes and breathing underwater. The vehicle selection in San Andreas is greater than ever. Most of the cars (tank, anyone?) and motorcycles from the previous games make a return, as well as a few new ones such as my favorite hovercraft. You can upgrade your cars by buying hydraulics systems, nitro packs, bass boosts, new bumpers and rims. By pimping out your car your respect level goes up, as well as your sex appeal stat. Airplanes, helicopters and BMX bikes are new to this series. I actually disliked piloting planes (although flying from one airport to another makes getting places much quicker), yet I loved the new BMX bikes. You can tap X to speed up, and you can even perform all kinds of tricks such as wheelies and 360s. For those that like to cause a lot of trouble, hijacking trains is possible too.

Besides the 100+ missions and instead of simply causing havoc, there are plenty of others things for you to do. You can jack an ambulance or cop car and perform a few vigilante missions. You can purchase property all over San Andreas in order to increase the number of safe spots for yourself or to maintain a steady supply of income. You can play all sorts of mini-games, such as pool for money, a basketball mini-game and a few classic arcade games. You can bet on horse races. You can go to clubs and try out the rhythmic dancing game. You can go to casinos in Las Venturas and try your hand at dozens of casino games including blackjack and poker, although you better hope that luck is on your side. You can try to spray all 100 graffiti tags, try to collect all of the 300 oysters, horseshoes, special photographs and other hidden items. There s just so much to do!

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas even features a multi-player mode. No, this doesn t mean that there is online functionality nor does it mean that there is a co-op split-screen option. However, there haven t been any multi-player modes in GTA games in the past, so you should be happy for whatever you get. In this case, the multi-player mode involves locating two-player rampage icons in various locations. This allows to players with separate ammunition, health and weapons to run around shooting enemies or creating havoc at the same time. Although you must stay close to one another, it s still pretty fun. There s even a driving rampage, where one person takes care of the driving while the second player does the shooting.

In my opinion, the graphics is the only aspect of the game that keeps San Andreas from being perhaps the best game of all-time. Theoretically, the graphics engine is fairly impressive for a PS2 game. The fact that there are virtually no loading times (except when you enter certain buildings) is utterly amazing. The inclusion of changing weather effects from city to city is also an impressive feat. An example of this is that in Los Santos there is constantly a haze covering the city and it rains sometimes, while when you drive out to Las Venturas it is always sunny. The fact that so many things are occurring at the same time is also impressive, as for example you will see cops arresting gangs, traffic increasing due to rush hour and a thief running away from a victim all at the same time as you walk down the street. However, since this is a PlayStation 2 game, there are obviously problems.

The game tends to stutter at times, especially when too many things are happening at the same time. There are some glitches with the graphics at times and you might argue that some characters are too blocky or their movements are a little robotic. This is absolutely true, however if you consider the scope of this game, you will realize that polishing this game even further might have been impossible for the PS2. And I really doubt that if a Xbox version comes out that it will look a lot better, as pushing the graphical capabilities of this game would take years in my opinion. Everyone should just think about how well the nice cut-scenes move along the story and that the game truly portrays the feel of the '90s. Since Rockstar was successful in doing this, I do not feel that the graphics detract much from the game at all.

Sound-wise, this game is a masterpiece. There are hundreds and hundreds of sound effects in this game, and I found all of them too be terrific except for the guns. I felt that the gun noises were a bit unrealistic, although this is probably just a personal quirk. Everything else related to the audio department is amazing. It all starts with the terrific character voicing. Rockstar went all out and hired some great voice talent. The rapper Young Malay does an impeccable job of voicing our main man, CJ. Samuel L Jackson makes an appearance as one of the cops that CJ meets in the very beginning. A few other celebrities, including David Cross, Charlie Murphy, James Woods and Ice-T, deliver sensational performances.

One of the staples of the GTA series has been the inclusion of radio channels. Whenever you are driving a vehicle, you have the option of choosing a station of your liking. In San Andreas, there are a few rap stations, a funk station, a country station, a rock station and a few others. As always, there are plenty of hilarious ads, and the DJs also bring a lot of humor to the table. One of the channels has no music, only shows, such as sports shows and weather updates. Musically, you ll probably end up listening to the rap stations because they fit in with the overall feel of the game. The artists that you will hear fit the time period perfectly, as you will most certainly bob your head to songs by Tupac, Rick James, Dr. Dre, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim and others.

Overall, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is simply an amazing game. Since I m still waiting for Halo 2 I can t call San Andreas the game of the year, although it is definitely the best PlayStation 2 that I have ever played. I m fortunate to have a friend that pre-ordered this game, which has allowed me to play this game for extensive amounts of time over the past week. Finding a copy of this game right now is no easy task: the Best Buy that I visited yesterday was all sold-out (five empty shelves). I m sure that the demand will eventually die down and picking it up won t be too hard, yet it will be a top-seller for months to come. Beating the main missions should take the average gamer about 40 hours, while beating the game 100% will surely take over 100 hours. The value of this game is off the charts, and if you own a PlayStation 2, then you must buy this game.

Warning to parents: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is rated M for Mature. This game really does deserve this rating, as murder, violence, theft, breaking traffic laws and other crimes are committed in this game all the time. Hoes, pimps, alcohol, guns and drugs can also be found almost everywhere. Constant swearing, especially the F and MF words are very common in this game. As you can see, this game is definitely not suitable for young children. It was a bit disturbing when I saw a 7 year-old jumping for joy when his teenage brother found a copy of this game at Blockbuster. I m sure that teenagers and adults will enjoy this game and won t take what they see seriously. However, kids are another story and if this is on your 8 year s old Christmas list, I strongly urge you to look for something else.