A ton of different things to do and see in an open ended GTA fashion.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is graphically just like any other Rockstar game: just plain ugly. Fortunately in the Xbox version this has been pumped up a bit and lighting effects are nice. Environments are huge and open ended in true GTA fashion. Sound is great: everything just sounds correct and voice acting is absolutely fantastic. This is made all the better with superbly written dialog for the actors to work with.
Gameplay is where San Andreas really shines. There is a ton of different things to see and do, many different vehicles to drive and many different guns to shoot. Most importantly all the different action fits the overall story very nicely. Unfortunately two things drag the experience down a bit: targeting system and flight controls.
Targeting system has been improved since the previous games, but it has its difficulties: lock-on system is still no Zelda. I hope that in Grand Theft Auto IV they will replace the targeting system entirely with a solid third person shooting controls just like Saints Row has done. Flight controls on the other hand are terrible: it takes a long time to get use to them and in one mission you really need to master them in order to proceed the story. For me took many hours and even more tries. I still remember the flight sequences as the most frustrating part of the whole 36 hour experience.
For first time there are some RPG elements in GTA as well. CL Johnson can build muscle, swim and drive different vehicles better and so on. The more you do one activity the better you get in it and this has a solid impact on gameplay. Some missions for example demand that you have a certain level of swimming skills.
Later missions towards the end tend to culminate into just simple shoot and proceed type missions and since the targeting system is not that great they can be extremely frustrating. I had to use cheat codes in order to get to the end of the game: it’s that hard.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is not a perfect game, but it has a ton of different things to do and see and the story is interesting and rewarding. This is an experience you should not miss.