kjell1979's Full Review: Grand Theft Auto (GTA)â„¢: San Andreas (Special Ed...
Grand Theft Auto Vice City was the reason I got my PS2. While there have been many imitators, no game to date has matched the level of freedom and gameplay the Grand Theft Auto series has offered.
Story
The story of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas follows the early 1990's thug life of the west coast. You are Carl Jones or CJ, a young African American male who spent the past 5 years in Liberty City. You're forced to return to your west coast home of Los Santos when you hear that your mom is the latest victim of the escalading gang violence in the area. Upon arriving, you're pulled over by a bunch of corrupt cops and framed for the murder of one of their own. Dumped in the middle of rival gang territory, you race back to your old home in Ganton.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is unequalled. The complexity of this game dwarfs its two predecessors. First, you'll notice that the map is bigger. Not just a little bigger, try four times as large. The map has three major cites, and countless other areas like small towns, military bases, mountain parks, etc. The three major metropolitan areas are Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas, which are meant to represent Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas respectively. Each city has its own identity ranging from the gang warfare in Los Santos, to the embarrassment of riches and ethnic diversity in San Fierro, to the desert casinos in Las Venturas. As you travel from area to area, the culture begins to change. For instance, inside certain areas of Los Santos, you'll encounter many lower end cars tuned to the area's rap music station, armed citizens, and many more subtleties of the stereotypical urban culture. Outside the city boundaries however, you'll notice an abundance of truckers, travelers, and cars tuned to country music stations. At times this difference is too striking.
Besides the map improvement, your main character, CJ, is also much more robust. Unlike Vice City, you can do more to customize him. For instance, you can mix and match your changes of clothes. Pants, shirts, and headwear can be put on CJ like a paper doll. You can also give CJ one of many different hairstyles, as well as give him dozens of different tattoos. CJ also can now eat not only to affect his health, but also his appearance and other stats.
This leads to another new aspect, which is the abundance of new attribute statistics. CJ has many new attributes that you can track including, fat, muscle, stamina, sex appeal, respect, as well as vehicle and weapon proficiencies. The clothes, hair, tattoos, and bulk of CJ determine some of these attributes like sex appeal. If you don't eat enough you'll burn muscle instead of fat, but if you eat too much you'll lose stamina. Killing gang members and completing missions contribute to your respect attribute. It allows you to recruit gang members to follow you and do your bidding. The more you use certain weapons and vehicles, the more proficient you become with them. That means that at higher levels, the more likely you are to get headshots, or handle your vehicle better.
The dynamics of the game have also been tweaked. Police presence really picks up once you get a 3 star wanted level. I noticed that the cops are more aggressive in shooting at you if you're brandishing a weapon even with a one star wanted level. Gang violence is much more brutal despite having help on your side. Car handling is much more loose than before, although that improves with proficiency. Also, item placements are much more obscure and than in previous Grand Theft Auto installments. Like before, money is an issue early on and it's not viable to bludgeon your way to a fortune but rather do more scripted activities like R3 missions and other mini-games like races and whatnot. Overall the gameplay dynamics are tweaked for the better in that Grand Theft Auto veterans will get more of a challenge, but it's still easy enough for a newcomer to step in and have fun.
The missions follow the same linear style that you saw in the previous two installments of Grand Theft Auto. A certain portion of the map is closed off until you further the story. In this case it's an earthquake. The missions do branch off from the main storyline, but that main storyline is rather linear. I don't see this as such a huge issue other than the fact that I dislike how restricted the game is before you complete some of the missions. Missions have roughly the same learning curve as before. Their difficulty builds up steadily, but they are rarely so difficult that a regular gamer cannot pass them without some practice. There are however the few racing and RC missions that can be frustrating to many veterans of the series, but that's the only downfall that I see.
CJ still has plenty to do outside of the missions. You still can purchase property, participate in the same R3 missions as before like fire fighting, taxi driver, ambulance driver, and vigilante. The only exception is pizza delivery, which is replaced by another similar mission. There are now a more abundance of prostitutes which still participate in the same, ahem, "activities". Stealing cars is pretty much the same as before, except CJ likes to land a haymaker right before pulling the driver out. The activities in previous Grand Theft Auto installments remain intact for the most part.
As good as it is to keep the old activities, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas adds in several new activities. You can date women, taking them out to do whatever they want, give them flowers, as well as kiss them goodnight. There are new R3 missions that include home invasion, truck driver, and pimping. You can expand your gang's turf by starting turf wars, but other gangs will attempt to regain their turf too. CJ can swim now. This means that you aren't instantly killed when you're up to your neck in water. Piloting is now more robust in that you can take the controls of commercial airliners. You can also parachute from those same planes. You can bet in about a dozen different forms.
There are also many new goodies and easter eggs in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Mini-games include an arcade games from the late 80's, pool, and basketball. There's even a two-player component where you and a friend can compete in a mini-game, or go on a cooperative rampage. The rampage allows you or your friend to do the same things that CJ can do, the only restriction is that you're bounded by the screen size. Instead of collecting hidden packages like in Vice City, you collect shells, spray-paint over gang markings, and take pictures. This leads to certain weapons and vehicles appearing in set locations.
Speaking of weapons, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas offers a few new weapons to the fold. Most of the new weapons are melee including shovels, pool cues, and the knife. The knife allows you to sneak up on someone and slit their throat. It also allows for more stealthy missions. Firearms remain relatively the same. Some of the more notable additions include the silenced handgun, the sawed off shotgun, the combat shotgun, the Tec9, the AK-47, and the country rifle. The heavier weaponry is a little bit more interesting. You can now aim the minigun, and there's a heat-seeking RPG. Other notable items that can be used as weapons include tear gas, a fire extinguisher, spray-paint, a cane, and yes a dild-oh (yes I know it's misspelled).
Controls
While I am not too fond of the controls in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I have to admit that the control scheme allows you to perform many different tasks with a relative amount of ease. The control scheme is relatively the same as Vice City. My biggest issue is the targeting. This version of Grand Theft Auto introduces a free form of targeting in addition to the standard acquire target functionality. The problem is that acquiring a target versus going into the free form mode isn't all that instinctive. You could be facing a gang member shooting at you and depending on the camera angle, your might not acquire him as a target. However, once you have obtained a target, switching is easy and you don't have to worry about targeting dead people.
The controls still switch depending on what you're doing. If you're on foot you have a different set of controls than when you're in a car, in a plane, in a helicopter, or swimming. Given the vast amounts of new activities, it takes longer to memorize these sets of controls. Most activities though take full advantage of the plethora of buttons on the PS2 controller.
The responsiveness of the controls depend on what you're doing. RC vehicles are much less responsive than the weaponry controls. However, this is somewhat logical given the fragility of some of the operations you're doing.
Graphics
The graphics in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the game's achilles heel. They aren't bad in a general sense, but when you compare the graphical performance of this game against for example the gameplay, it is definitely a rough aspect.
The best part about the graphics is given the sheer size of this game; the cities and landscape are rendered wonderfully. Everything from the smallest detail was picked up in this game. Another good aspect is the animations. Although there isn't a huge variety, the few animations they have are very well done. The physics engine is also very clean and represented well through the graphics.
The human models in this game are clearly rough. Up close they look very blocky and not terribly detailed. Even in the cutscenes the human models look rough around the edges. Another complaint I have is with the camera. The camera just isn't as responsive as it was in Vice City. A simple task like backing up and moving forward in your car shows the bad camera AI in this game. Also tight alleys and other areas also confuse the camera to the point where you're left to view CJ from a horrible angle. Overall this could have been improved.
Overall it's not that the graphics are really that bad, just rough. Very rarely does the graphics get in the way of a great gameplay experience.
Sound
One of the tell-tale signs that the Grand Theft Auto series demands respect is looking at big names in the voice acting cast as well as the bands on the radio stations. The radio stations include artists that range from NWA, 2Pac, and Cypress Hill, to Willie Nelson, The Who, and Rage Against the Machine. Despite these big names, the game still manages to maintain the integrity of the era.
The voice acting is fantastic. Young Maylay, although not as mainstream as other actors, is very talented as the voice of CJ. Other more big name personalities like Axel Rose, and Andy Dick have roles as DJs. Other big names that play more prominent roles include Ice-T, and Samuel L. Jackson. Overall the voice acting whether it's performed by big names or lesser-known names comes off as very professional and very convincing.
Replay Value
It will be a long time before another company creates a game comparable to this. The replay value is simply off the charts. There is so much to do even once you've completed all the missions and found all the hidden goodies. The street, arena, and off-road racing is good enough to come back to over and over. Gang wars can be very entertaining. You can gamble, play retro video games, and even pool. The gameplay is so wide open that simply shooting up as many pedestrians as possible and running like heck from the cops creates its own entertainment for hours. Unlike previous Grand Theft Auto games, this version allows you to do so much after the game is already finished that it will create as much fun as your imagination will allow. My biggest gripe is that the two player options are so limited. This game, although having multiplayer capability, simply doesn't have the staying power when someone is forced to sit and watch. Although with the right company it can enhance the experience.
Intended Audience
I typically don't address the appropriateness of a game, as it's usually obvious from the content of my reviews. However in the case of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, this should probably be directly spelled out. Adults and very mature teenagers should only play this game. I am typically not one to impose my ideas on the way people should parent, but I was once a teenager and I know the power of these sort of games. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas offers probably the most strong language I have ever seen in a video game or movie. Profanity is strung together so tightly in the dialog that it ceases to have meaning. In addition, the game features acts of sex and violence that can easily be mimicked by impressionable kids. While the sex and violence isn't as graphic as most R-rated movies, the violence at least is something that is more interactive in the game. The ability to gun or run down innocent people in the street is just a sample of the types of interactive violence that this game offers. I certainly am not going to be playing this game in front of my kids and in a few years after they figure out how to turn on the PS2, the game will be locked away until they are sound asleep in bed. I should hope that no parent out there succumbs to the begging and pleading their kids put out in order to get their hands on this game.
Conclusion
The biggest factor in determining whether you should pick up this game is whether you can handle its controversy. Can you accept the fact that you have to commit crimes including murder in this game in order to advance the story? Can you handle an abundance of profanity? If you're ok with the controversy, then this game is a must-own for any PS2 owner. In fact I shouldn't have to say anything more. You should just pick this game up and see for yourself.
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