Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the most free, most fun and most epic game currently available…
You play as CJ (Carl Johnson) a guy who wanted to escape the pressure of gang life out in Los Santos (modeled after Los Angeles), San Andreas. But a few years later he finds himself coming back after his mom is murdered, and quickly gets sucked back into the very life he wanted to get away from. So, as you can probably tell the story has improved a lot from previous games and there are plenty of twists and turns and surprises on top of it.
The story missions have definatley improved. They’re all way deeper and way more engaging. I’ll give you an example: one mission late in the game tasks you with sneaking on to an aircraft carrier (yes, players now have the ability to sneak around and execute stealth kills) to steal a jet. But, you’ll soon find yourself having to ditch the stealthy approach and start fighting as you normally do. Then once you steal the jet, you must take out some other jets and a flotilla of ships, then fly the jet back (while being pursued) and land it at an airstrip. Its pretty obvious right from the beginning that this game is far deeper than the “go from point A to point B” missions you’ll find in GTA 3 or Vice City. The story campaign is long and will lead you all over the state meeting all sorts of interesting characters and doing a bunch of cool things.
San Andreas is huge. So huge its almost scary. Vice City and Liberty City were just…well, cities, but San Andreas is a state. A massive state complete with three cities (modeled after San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles) and two different sprawling country-side settings (badlands and woods.) But, whats probably the most remarkable part about this huge environment, is that there’s almost always something to do no matter where you are in San Andreas. San Andreas has no lack of side missions and minigames, when you’re not engaged in the awesome story mode then you can: Do all the “R3” missions from Vice City or Liberty city, plus, loot people’s houses in the dead of night, play video games, work out, dance, rob casinos, play numerous casino games, bet on horse races, drive trains, go to driving school, tag rival gang’s turf, find seashells, take pictures, drive a tanker, be a valet parker and go on dates.
The graphics in San Andreas are very good, especially when you take the game’s size into account. The models and textures are okay, but not too detailed, but the games effects (such as explosions and damage modeling on cars) are great. There’s also zero load times interrupting gameplay. To be able to travel across an entire state with zero load times, a pretty good graphics engine and very few slow-downs is great, but again this is not the best you can find on the PS2.
The sound in San Andreas is amazing. The sound effects are superb and the soundtrack is great and very fitting of the 90’s. But, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this game’s sound quality is the voice-over work. There’s just so many movie stars playing pretty major parts in this game (such as Samuel L. Jackson as the main baddie) its ridiculous.
The story mode in San Andreas will take you a while (probably around 20-25 hours), but you can do countless other tasks on top of the campaign missions that will add dozens and dozens of hours to the experience, not to mention the game is free enough for you to do whatever you want to.
San Andreas is simply a masterpiece. This game is a huge one, filled with plenty to do and pretty good production values. Rockstar has created an epic that will be among the games to become timeless classics of this generation of video game consoles.