Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Limited Edition (PC DVD)

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

Although the game itself is very similar to the previous instalments in terms of looks and gameplay, it takes it much further. For example, there is almost nothing that you can't do in this game.

Steal vehicles, shoot people, run your own gang, date girlfriends, eat at restaurants, go to the gym, buy weapons, rob houses, etc. The "city" is not a city at all but rather an entire county! Three cities (Los Santos, Las Venturas and San Fierro) are all linked together with miles and miles of countryside, smaller towns and villages, all with their own unique characteristics. Of course, you can only explore the area of Los Santos and the surroundings when you start as you need to "unlock" the other areas via missions.
However, even just Los Santos is enormous and will take you ages to explore.

The storyline is thus: you play a black American guy called Carl Johnson, commonly known as "CJ" who has returned to San Andreas to bury his Mum and take revenge on those who are to blame, restoring the neighbourhoods' credibility and power in the process.

Just as in Los Angeles, there are areas of the city of Los Santos that are controlled by rival gangs who will stop at nothing to take you down. Of course, the entire city isn't a gang-infested hellhole, only certain parts (mainly the eastern and south-eastern parts of the city) There are also extremely wealthy and aesthetically pleasing parts of the city, mainly in the north and west of the city.

All I can say is, if you've played GTA3 and GTA: Vice City and enjoyed them, BUY THIS IMMEDIATELY! If not, buy this anyway. I can't believe that anyone would not appreciate the time and effort gone into creating such a work of art. Long live Rockstar!


How does it run?   June 10, 2005
Ben Martin (London, London United Kingdom)
33 out of 36 found this review helpful

Having been out on the PS2 for some time now I think we all know how awesome a game GTA San Andreas is. However, I think the question that all PC owners want to know is how will it run on my system. Having spent a couple of hours playing about with it on my system here is my experience.
I have a Athlon XP 2200+, 1GB PC2100 RAM and a GeForce 6600GT so a moderate setup with a pretty good graphics card. I'm playing the game with a resolution of 1024x768X32 with the detail on maximum (very high), the draw distance almost full and the anti-aliasing on 2 (this can be off,1,2 or 3). This seem to run perfectly even when the action hots up. I have tried slightly higher settings and it seems to work fine on these too but I don't want to take the risk of ruining the most hectic parts of the game by pushing it too hard.
So my conclusion is that if you have a half decent PC you should get a copy of this now!! You won't be disappointed.


GTA SAN ANDREAS   January 3, 2006
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

GTA SA is an awesome game. Its enthrawling missions build up your respect and money. Watch as Cj the main character whom you play become a criminal king pin. You can spend you ill gained cash on anything from cars to guns. New aspects of the game mean that Cj needs to eat, if you just give him fatty foods then he becomes fat. The graphics in the game are some of the best i have ever seen and the ai is amazing. If you ever get bored of missions then do something else like: race cars, go to the gym, side missions, play basket ball and loads of others but if all else fails then do a classic gta killing spree and just kill everyone in sight with a huge arsnel of weapons from knifes to shotguns, uzis to rocket launchers,sniper rifles to grenades and many more. This game is a brilliant buy!!!!


Absolutely top notch.   July 14, 2005
Scott Dee (Manchester, UK)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

To start, I'd just like to say I'm running this on a P4 1.6GHz machine with a Geforce 4 Ti4800 graphics card under Win XP and I've had this setup for about 3 or so years, so it's hardly new. After installation there was a brief sound problem, but I reduced soundcard acceleration and it worked fine. Ok, so I can't use the top notch detail or graphics settings, but it still looks great and is totally playable, only slowing down in some of the more ridiculous pileups on the freeways...

Technical stuff aside, this game is a fantastic achievement. And it's HUGE too, this one will make you become a hermit for at least a solid week, and will likely affect your sleep patterns too. There's all the usual GTA elements: driving from place to place, meeting people, bumping them off, time limits, stuff like that that you all know. And then there's new things, such as a huge selection of outfits, girlfriend maintenance, car mods, fitness, tattoos.. all of which make a difference to your game. This game also brings back HILLS, which were all but missing from Vice City due to the setting, but enables you to have lots of fun doing ridiculous jumps all over the place.

Finally, landing in the drink no longer means game over.. you can hop out and go swimming, and go diving underwater too. On the flipside, and my favourite part of the game, you can get in all manner of aircraft that fly PROPERLY (unlike the Dodo of previous games) and zip about the entire map, which is great. And then, once you're above your destination, you didn't worry about a nice safe landing for your plane - it didn't cost YOU anything anyway - just jump out and parachute to where you want to go! The parachute can also be used as a pick-up, and you can go for a spot of BASE jumping if you fancy it.

The game has a good story to it, featuring some excellent new characters and a few very familiar ones too. This is definitely not one game for the kids though - the language is pretty obscene and the subject matter questionable - it has an 18 rating for a reason!

Once again there's some excellent music from the radio stations, and you can always add your own if you have mp3 files on your computer.

On the downside? The very open nature of the countryside and desert means it can take a while to get around sometimes, which can be a pain if you're having to repeat missions and haven't unlocked the ability to fly places or use the train yet. And some missions can be very frustrating, especially if you keep getting 10-15 mins into a mission and THEN failing a number of times. Luckily, there's always something else you can be doing if you fancy, whether it's driving trucks cross country making deliveries, street/air races, taxi missions, hidden stuff to collect, collecting cars... the list goes on!


probably the finest gaming experience ever   June 15, 2005
M. Young (London)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Fans of Vice City wont be disappointed. This game is absolutely huge. I've been playing it for a week or so and cant get enough of it. This takes elements from all sorts of games and puts them into one fantastic gaming experience - e.g. there are plenty of motorbike games out there that arent as good as the motorbiking element in this game. Equally, there are plenty of driving sims that arent anywhere near as good as the driving element in GTA:SA, and a driving game just stops there, whereas this goes so much further.
For the ultra obsessive (which will be anyone that plays this) there are loads of extra challenges, such as finding 100 grafitti spots in the city of Los Santos, finding 60 or so horseshoes dotted around Las Venturas, or taking photos of 60 specific sites in San Fierro. Enough to keep you entertained for hours and hours and hours...
I keep forgetting to eat and sleep(!)
Probably the best game ever. No joke.