More of the same
The game pits you as Carl "CJ'' Johnson, a gangster returning to San Andreas after five years in Liberty City for a funeral. Right off the bat CJ and his friends embark to re-earn their "street-cred".
Let's get right to it. San Andreas is immersive, covering three whole cities and plenty of rural area between. Each city is inspired from real world cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. The total massiveness of the game is San Andreas' main feature.
But that is where the fun ends. Missions are simply variants of "Kill this guy" or "get that car". Missions either run from the incredibly easy to the mind-numbingly hard. Needlessness to say, the story mode is not the games selling point. The story is a half-baked attempt to make an excuse to shoot and blow stuff up, the characters are uncharismatic and don't inspire much confidence in the plot. On top of that, each character seems to mutter certain four letter words in absurd abundance.
The graphics are nothing to look at either. Character models are blocky and pretty ugly. There is plenty of pop-up and image ghosting, and land textures don't leave much to the imagination.
Sound quality is easily forgettable. The audio does nothing to immerse you into the game, even wanting to turn the sound down to listen to the sometimes humorous radio stations.
All in all, San Andreas is a game that is not innovative, impressive, immersive, or any qualities generally associated with even average games.
This is one series I can say does not need to go on.