A wonderful game with good basics can make us forget about the flaws it contains...
User Rating: 9.6 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas PS2
Yes, like you all I looove this game! Rockstar seems to be able to put out numbers of title in the same line without degrading its quality. GTA is the best example. Max Payne is a good one too! (When will Max Payne 3 be released?) heh! Back to San Andreas... This game is just what you would expect from it, even more! Just like Vice city was a "Tuned up" GTA3, San Andreas is sort of a "Tuned up^" Vice City. Gameplay is still just as good as it was, even better! You can now jump over fences and gates, grab on edges of buildings, to get over or onto them. This may seem like a minor amelioration but it was for me a big one. Wasn't it frustrating in GTA3 and Vice city when you had to come all the way back to the entrance of a courtyard just to get back to the streets. Now you can just jump the fence and there you are. You now have to be concerned about your health and fitness to avoid getting FAT! You can now ride BMX and other new vehicles. There's also minigames now included...you can play pool! :) The city is HUGE! There's a lot of places you can visit. You still can change your clothes but even more, you can now change you hairstyle! Long live to the FRO BRO!!! hehe! Anyway there's just too much innovations for me to tell them all, and it's only the beginning. (Since I only played a couple of hours yet) Graphics are just OK to me...There hasn't been much ameliorations there. Characters are polygonal and lack in details. One more annoying thing about the graphics is the prensence of lag and the slow loading of textures. First the cutscenes are often choppy... In the game there is some minor lags in some times and the PS2 just can't seem to be fast enough to load all the textures when cruising at high speeds. Resulting in textures *popping* onscreen just in front of you. But just like the title of my review says, when you get a game with such an astonishing gameplay, you forget about those things. Overall as a resumé, GTA San Andreas is a near-perfect title that has been released on a perfectible gaming console. We can't blame the game for the so-so performance offered by the ageing PS2. All my complaints will probably be meaningless when the PC version gets out. If you liked other GTA titles, go get this one! But I wouldn't consider getting this title BEFORE any other GTA games as you'll be missing all the new features of San Andreas if you play Vice City or GTA3 AFTER you played San Andreas. 
