Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)

For a start San Andreas itself is not a city but a whole fictional county, containing the San Francisco-esque San Fierro, the Las Vegas style Las Venturra and the Los Angeles inspired Los Santos. You can drive anywhere else you like in the countryside, between making the game four to six times the size of Vice City.

You can also now start up your own gang in the game, recruiting members and claiming territory--you can even build and operate your own casino once you get the necessary moolah. You can't just sit around and wait for the money to roll in, though--eat too much junk food and your character will grow fat and have to work out at a gym, as well as keep an eye on a new stamina meter.

The list of other additions and refinements are almost endless; above and beyond the usual claims of an improved aiming system for weapons you can now swim, ride bicycles, get your hair cut, take part in random break-ins and robberies... pretty much anything you were ever told not to do as a kid (except the getting a haircut bit). --David Jenkins

Minus's
- I don't think there's quite as much humour compared to vice city, but it's still really funny.
- Some of the blue 'blip' markers on the map are hard to spot when you're trying to speed across town.
- There is a girlfriend 'sims' aspect, which I find a bit annoying. You have to keep taking her out to keep her happy, which is kind of dull. I personally play these games to escape from female nagging, so understand my annoyance when this needy chick turns up on the scene!
- You can carry around a spray can or a camera - but not both at the same time - annoying!

Not many faults I've found so far. There are still all the plus's from the past games, but now other little gems like a skate park for your bmx skills, a fully-usuable basketball court, and usable arcade machines! The music's still great, the visuals great, the missions are much more varied than before - not just shooting and driving, but now challenges such as rescuing peeps from housefires and rhythm challenges along the lines of pa rappa the rapper.
Buy it now or be sorry later.


Thank the lord for Rockstar North   October 30, 2004
56 out of 60 found this review helpful

Quite simply, ITS MASSIVE. I played it non-stop the day i got it and i've covered an area i would reckon equivelant to the size of Vice City and 60% of the map remains undiscovered! You know all the details, your CJ your back to revive your gang and avenge the death of your mother, so no need for more of that. Anyways, i don't have the time or words!

There are bikes, street cleaners, Choppers, motorbikes and i believe aeroplanes, helicopters. TRACTORS, there are so many vehicles in this game you could probably waste a good couple of days messing around with them, thats without going into the customising. You can add alloys, bumpers, colours, nitro, hydraulics. Plus the handling is a damm sight better than in vice city, and since it was pretty ok this is a revelation.

Talking, as i was, about customisation, you can have beards, Elvis hair, B.A HAIR ( y'know B.A Baracus ). AWESOME. tatttos are there for the choosing, chains, tracksuits, jeans. The possibilities are endless.

Then there is the 'keep fit' element. Its strange at first, having to keep and eye on your muscle and stamina, but the excercises that you complete are so intuitive that you can't help but feel they add a certain 'something' to the game.

The visuals are awesome, the sounds are impressive. Pop-up's present but in a game of this size that streams off the disk you can allow some 'minor' flaws. Loading times are vastly improved.

I could go on but i won't since i'm off to play this awesome game some more!

Buy this game, you won't regret it. Just make sure you get it when you've got plenty o spare time.


GTA San Andreas - Spectacular   December 15, 2004
Mr. D. Middleton (Scotland)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

San Andreas must be the most immersive, involving and addictive games on the market. The scope of activities & routes in the game is enormous, and the gameplay area is neccesarily massive in order to make room for the literally hundreds of features of life in san andreas. Want to pimp your ride, give it a huge spoiler, stereo base boost & wicked paint job? organise gang wars and neighbourhood takeovers? four-man drive bys with uzis & submachine guns? or maybe you'd like to relax, kick back on a harley and cruise through mile after mile of farmland? alternatively, you could go parachuting, learn how to drive, sail, & fly in advanced training schools. On top of all this, you may like to shop for new threads, search for the most stylish haircut, go to the gym to work CJ's appearance and aerobic fitness, go dating- i could go on forever. On top of the free-roam features, the missions are as numerous, varied and possibly even more fun than the previous GTA's. The ONLY possible complaint I could give about this game is that it actually takes a while to get into- simply because there is so much to do, and you may be at a complete loss where, and how, to start! but you will be encouraged to explore and once you begin to memorise some of the gigantic map, it is very easy to get involved in. The graphics are not ground-breaking, although when the size of the game is taken into account, the consistency of the detail of the map is staggering-the developers have spent as much time developing the vast woodlands & deserts that they have the many towns in the game. The soundtrack is excellent-even more fantastic radio stations to choose from at your leisure (im ashamed to say i have occasionally even been spotted cruising down the highway in a pick-up truck, tuned into K-Rose, the country music station!) gameplay 10+, as it encompasses so many gameplay styles you'd be hard pushed not to have fun with some feature. Make sure this is on your christmas list.


Excellent   July 28, 2006
Lucy
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

Why are there so many bad reviews for this game? This, in my opinion is the best GTA game there is! It's the only GTA game that has a proper storyline. In GTA 3 you're just a criminal running around doing missions for money. In Vice City you're a guy who just wants to take over the city. But in San Andreas you're Carl Johnson, a guy who wants to regain respect from his brother, as they fell out when their mother was killed. This involves Carl's family, his brother Sweet and his sister Kendall, and of course the rest of Carl's friends who are part of their hood. Yes lots of it is about gangs, but the main plot is to do with Carl's family.
After being released from prison, CJ returns to Los Santos to bury his dead mother. He gets a pretty unpleasant welcome from Sweet, and after the funeral Carl decides to stay in Los Santos and help his brother out, as he has a lot of problems; the Grove Street Hood are failing and losing lots of territory to the Ballas (their worst enemies) and Kendall is dating Caeser, a white man with a gang of his own which Sweet is strongly against. CJ has his own problems to deal with as well, with Officer Tenpenny trying to find ways to arrest CJ again, and enjoying himself whilst he does so.
The great thing about San Andreas is that it uses a lot of ideas from GTA 3, and you instantly recognise little things that have been re-used and improved in San Andreas. For example, Catalina, the crazy woman from GTA 3 works with Carl in a couple of missions. Also Laslow from Chatterbox in GTA 3 is now on a different radio station in San Andreas.
Another feature in San Andreas, one I had been waiting for before it came out is the ability to swim. Not only that, but you can also dive underwater (which is needed for a couple of missions). The graphics are brilliant, and now with the ability to swim you can do crazy stunts and not have to worry about hitting the water and instantly dying. The water looks far more realistic in San Andreas, in comparison to the solid blue coloured stuff in Vice City.
San Andreas also supplies you with a map, which is brilliant for missions or even just simply trying to find a place. This map is also far easier to read than the Vice City map, and it shows you what direction you're facing as well.
You can fly planes or helicopters much easier in San Andreas than in Vice City and GTA 3, and you can also fly really high and leap out whenever you like, so that you can parachute down to the ground again.
This is the best GTA game there is. Yes, there have been complaints about it but if you're mature enough to handle it then you'll have no problems. If bad language offends you then don't buy it, but I'm not a fan of foul language and I just don't notice it after a while. So by all means, BUY IT! You won't regret it. The comments about the graphics certainly aren't true - they're brilliant on my PS2, so why should they be any different on anyone else's?


Truly Superb   April 5, 2005
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

Being something of a sceptic, and working in the games industry, I took little interest in San Andreas when it was announced, remembering back to my passive opinion of Vice City. Everyone knew it would get good reviews, but when sites such as IGN gave it 9.9/10, and the average magazine review score equalled 9.6, you couldn't help but take notice; but then again it was the same with Vice City, which I didn't regard as deserving scores of anywhere near that magnitude. So, I didn't buy it on release and my interest soon died down again; it was only a couple of months later, when I was given a copy that I finally got to see what they were getting at. In one word, wow.

This is the ultimate GTA, it improves on all of the individual elements of past games (character control, driving, shooting etc), refining them so that they are individually strong (rather than just working as a whole, as in previous entries in the series), and then they added in a ton of extra content to make this perhaps the most comprehensive console game ever.

I won't go into details as to the whys and wherefores of plot and gameplay specifics, as 300+ previous reviews hav no-doubt covered that already, but what I will say is that this is probably the most fun game I've played in years. Each mission is tailored to introduce something new, exploiting all of the available mechanics, and aside from a few (really) annoying tasks, the mission element is incredibly enjoyable. Add this on top of the immersive freedom of a city 5 time bigger than Vice City (although counting the countryside areas is cheating a bit), crammed with things to see and do, as well as some hilariously humourous elements (Wang Cars, the Van-Kopf Hotel anyone?) and you have something that doesn't just beat Vice City hands down, it practically wipes it from existance.

This is about as close to a gaming masterpiece as I have ever seen, and people stating that it is just the 'same old' obviously can't appreciate what Rockstar have pulled off. Sure it's similar to other GTAs terms of core gameplay mechanics, but what were they supposed to do? Set it underwater, or on the moon? No, what they did instead was addressed all of the faults of the previous games to make the whole experience gel, and set it in perhaps the best scenario yet; the early 90's Hip-Hop era.

As a games designer by profession, I hate to think what hours the Rockstar North team had to put in to get this finished, but I hope that now they are all relaxing somewhere hot, proud in the knowledge that they have pulled off a master stroke of computer game entertainment. Pure brilliance.

Just as a final note, although all of the GTA games have carried BBFC certificates, I do feel that this is the only one to truly deserve it, as the frequent explicit language and graphic nature of some of the scenarios is entirely inappropriate for young children.