I'm car jacking you, foo' Ai'ight? (Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas (PC)
Date:	25/07/05 (1891 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Yet more of the GTA series

Disadvantages: No multiplayer

I loved the previous games in this series and have played them all, from the original top-down Grand Theft Auto on the DOS-based PC with the add-on packs through to GTA 2 and the current trilogy, the GTA 3 trilogy.

My first recommendation is that, if you haven't already played any of the previous Grand Theft Auto 3 games (the original GTA3 or Vice City), then it would be best to start off with those games for two main reasons. The first is that the games do get significantly better as you get further on in the trilogy (and GTA3 is still a damned good game) and the second is that by jumping straight into San Andreas, you'll miss out on all the nice little in-jokes.

You're Carl Johnson, an ex-gang member who has recently returned to San Andreas from Liberty City for your mother's funeral. As you travel from the airport to your mother's house, you're forced to renew your acquaintance with Officers Tenpenny and Pulaski (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn respectively). They coerce you into doing dirty work for them by threatening to arrest you for the murder of a police officer and leave you in the middle of a rival gang's territory before driving away.

Welcome to San Andreas.

As with previous GTA games, you start off as a lone man in a dangerous, evil city. It's up to you to make something of yourself (usually by illegal means) while ridding yourself of the shackles of the people who control you.

San Andreas is not a brand new game, really. Vice City was an evolution of Grand Theft Auto and by the same token, San Andreas is an evolution of Vice City. Not only was the technology tweaked to prove better visuals and sound for each step, but the game also got a lot bigger. Unlike the previous two games in the series, San Andreas takes place in the state of San Andreas which contains three cities and surrounding countryside. There is a timeline involved with the three GTA games. Vice City was the "first", set in the 1980s, San Andreas is the second, being set in the early 1990s and the original GTA3 was set at some point after that, probably in the early Noughties.

The early 1990s "Los Angeles" setting means that San Andreas contains a lot of references to the gang culture from that time along with a lot of the music etc. The gang reference actually influences a lot of the early part of the game. New additions to the GTA game play this time around involve your character. As part of the game, your image is very important. To this end, Rockstar have implemented a basic role playing system onto the game. You have several characteristics that can change throughout the game, depending on what you do. In reference to what I was saying above about image, your stamina and fat play a part. Your stamina, for example, reflects how far you can sprint before you tire. Your body fat also plays a part in this, but your body fat also plays a part in your image. Your image is important to two main groups of people – your compatriots and potential girlfriends.

But you will also have to build up various other skills and attributes: shooting weapons, driving cars will help during missions. Each mission passed will add 'respect' which in turn enables you to control gangs of more members. A lot of the attributes don't directly affect the way you play the game with one or two exceptions. For example, there is a BMX challenge at a bike park which you cannot attempt until your bike riding skill is high enough. Likewise, each of the four girlfriends you can date within the game will require a certain combination of fat and muscle (controlling these involves eating or going to the gym). All of your stats and attributes are available at any time using the 'Tab' key within the game or the 'Stats' option on the main menu.

Gameplay is comparable to earlier GTA3 games in terms of missions, but I thought that some of the later missions in San Andreas were a lot more difficult than GTA3 or Vice City and in particular some of the flying missions caused me to swear quite a bit. However, just as with the previous games, if/when you run into a mission that you can't complete you can wander around the cities or countryside exploring or getting some extra cash until you want to attempt the mission again.

The vehicles handle differently and you'll soon find a favourite for whizzing around the cities and countryside. I particularly like the monster truck or one of the more powerful motorcycles.

When I first installed and played the game, I had an issue with my graphics card drivers where running San Andreas would "crash" the graphics card and force it to restart (no, I don't understand it either). This didn't actually seem to make any difference to the game in terms of graphics though, and often I didn't realise what had happened until I had quit the game and there was a popup message explaining what had happened. Where I have had more than a few issues, though, is with the sound. There are times where an element of the audio will drop out. If a cut-scene that explains a mission or something is triggered when this happens, that can be annoying. What I've found is that the voices and vehicle voices will go, usually during some adverse weather (thunderstorms etc.) leaving you with just the sound of the rain and thunder and little else. This doesn't really affect gameplay that much and the most annoying effects of this glitch (lack of character voices during cut-scenes) can be negated by keeping the sub-titles turned on.

Graphically, the game does the job very well with the aforementioned weather effects and an upgraded game engine from Vice City, although the graphics work best when you're speeding around the various cites and landscapes at full speed and don't really bear up to close scrutiny. That's not to say that they're poor – there's more to life than a set of flashy graphics (just ask DOOM 3). I've found that they're sufficiently speedy, even at higher resolutions, and don't slow down when there's lots of action onscreen. A friend, though, complains that he has issues when the game produces smoke and fog effects.

The Grand Theft Auto games have never been stunning aurally, and San Andreas is no exception. If you've played previous GTA3 games, then expect more of the same this time around. Weapon and car sounds are meaty enough and each weapon and vehicle have their own distinct sounds. The music and radio are again playing the sounds of the times with humourous (and sometimes sick and twisted) commercials. I didn't find these to be as interesting or as memorable as in Vice City and GTA3, but I loaded my own mp3s into the game fairly quickly as I wasn't interested in most of the music that was played on San Andreas radio stations.

I bought the Limited Edition of the game which I believe is special because it includes a hard back city guide/instruction manual. I've not really read this through, but it's fairly weighty despite being relatively free of vital information for the game. There's also the obligatory fold-out map included, but I found this one to be very flimsy due to the perforations used in the vertical folds. As a result, I used the in-game map (available from the main menu screen) almost exclusively.

There's no arguing that San Andreas isn't an enjoyable game, because if you're a fan of the previous episodes of the game, you're going to enjoy yourself. It's bigger, slightly more complex and will easily keep you entertained for many hours. At the time of writing, I've completed around 80% of the game and been playing for about thirty seven and a half hours. My usual rule of thumb is that I judge value for money by taking time spent playing and dividing by the price. Anything which offers an hour or more of enjoyment per pound that I've spent represents a good investment. By using this formula, I regard San Andreas to be a good investment at £24.99. I wouldn't say, though, that San Andreas was as big a step forward from Vice City as Vice City was from GTA3.

Ultimately, I preferred Vice City to San Andreas. I liked the silliness of (or less serious) Vice City a lot more than the seriousness of San Andreas (and some of the story missions annoyed me because CJ was talked into situations that I thought he shouldn't have and couldn't understand why he did).

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the game and don't rue the £25 I spent on it. If there's one criticism that can be leveled at the GTA3 games, it’s the lack of a multiplayer option. Hopefully though, GTA4 will remedy that.

San Andreas is rated 18 by the BBFC. There's the obvious car theft, plus the main character will engage in robbery, murder (with firearms and vehicles), gambling and sex (though not obvious unless you're using the now famous 'Hot Coffee' mod) and drug use is talked about and implied (but the main character does not indulge). If CJ hits another car when driving, then there will be a lot of swearing too.

Recommended Specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP Processor
OS: Windows 2000 or Windows XP
RAM: 384MB (the more the better)
DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card (Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Recommended)
128MB (or greater) Video Card (GeForce 6 Series Recommended)

My PC:
CPU: 2.5 GHz Athlon
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
RAM: 1Gb
Soundcard: Soundblaster 24
Graphics Card: Radeon 9600 Atlantis
Direct X: 9.0c

Summary: The latest in the Grand Theft Auto series moves to California after New York and Miami previously.