San Andreas for PS2 may be better than PC and Xbox but still it falls just short

User Rating: 8.6 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas PS2
GTA: San Andreas was in news even before its release. First, the much ooh-ah hype and then a delay of one week in its release date to remove the problem of glitches. What a waste it really was! Because GTA: San Andreas contains more than a dozen of glitches the biggest one of it caused a big controversy which resulted that people sued Rockstar. Now I am a real huge fan of Rockstar as GTA: Vice City is my most favorite game and I was real shocked when I read all this things about `Hot Coffee` glitch. This glitch resulted in some angry shouts of the people at the outbreak of such outrageous thing which forced the ESRB officials to put the worst rating that a decent game could ever receive, the AO(Adults Only). Even some big game stores pulled out San Andreas from their racks and in the end San Andreas ended as a major loss for Rockstar. But is GTA: San Andreas is any good as a game? No Chance. GTA: San Andreas has some huge sound problems in PC as well as the Xbox. The sound system gets completely faulty and the music of the radio stations sounds like a Serious Sam music.

As for the gameplay we might give San Andreas a chance. Overall it is not as good as we expected. Maybe we cannot blame San Andreas for this because the only one to be blamed is our expectations and hype. Maybe after the success of GTA 3 and Vice City we expected even greater things from San Andreas. But still I cannot deny that San Andreas is a huge disappointment in terms of both the characters and the storyline.

The story is very boring from the beginning when there is a complete mayhem everywhere. The characters are not nicely developed and their personality is quite weak. The real GTA characters were Salvatore Leone, Toni Cipriani, and Ray Machowski etc. (in GTA 3) whereas in Vice City all the characters were brilliantly created like Ricardo Diaz, Lance Vance, Ken Rosenberg and the old fool Sonny Forelli etc. San Andreas may offer many characters, which includes some old one from GTA 3. San Andreas jobs or missions are mostly related to vehicles and you will see very few blasting moments.

But all these characters are the side part of the role. The main one is the protagonist or the character, which you play as. Unfortunately San Andreas protagonist Carl Johnson or C.J is quite weak both in looking and fighting. Tommy Vercetti was a dozen of times better than him in all. Moreover, Carl Johnson in beginning looks pretty tough when he battles through the area of Ballas (a rival gang) .

The enemy AI is pretty loose and it looks like we are facing some zombies who just wander around. Another thing I mentioned in my Vice City for PC review is that Vice City did not allow us to develop relations with a female character like the totally beautiful Mercedes Cortez in Vice City. San Andreas does allows us to date with a few particular girls but in a real boring sort of manner. You will be taking a girl to eat and just dance and then that’s it. Rockstar might have taken my comment even more seriously that they have developed a sort of attraction for all female characters towards C.J. It looks like that you are using the cheat FANNYMAGNET in Vice City. As for those girls onlookers the girlfriends of C.J. are not too good. Maybe C.J you should consult a chat site and talk and make some better friends.

Yawn…After this long review in which I have done nothing but just criticized San Andreas. So, if you are planning to buy San Andreas I would suggest that you just take a sneek peek in to my review. As they say that always consult a friend before taking any step. So consult my review because I am your friend am I not????