If you haven't played GTA III or Vice City, this is the GTA for you.
User Rating: 5.3 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas PS2
It's a sad day that i feel obligated to give a GTA game a poor review. Don't get me wrong! If this game stood on its own, it would definitely be in the high 9s or even get that oh so special perfect 10. BUT (and this is a huge but), i've already spent 200+ hours playing GTA3 and GTA: VC. With that in mind, GTA: San Andreas is a huge disappointment. Before you're through with the first 10 minutes, deja vu should reach around and smack you upside the head. HARD. 99% of the gameplay is identical to the previous two games, and i simply can't see why i would possibly want to invest any more of my rapidly shrinking gaming time into repeating the same cycle a 3rd time. In the interest of giving a unbiased review (well, as much as possible), San Andreas does do the GTA thing pretty well. The graphics are a slight improvement over Vice City, the world is bigger, the environments slightly more varied. The character models still look terrible up close, but that's always been true, so why start complaining now? The music selection is excellent, the SFX are good, and overall the game has a that slick polish that you expect from the franchise. There are more frame hiccups than you may remember from GTA3 and VC, but it's a bigger more complicated world, and it doesn't affect the actual gameplay that much, so i can't really knock it for that. The storyline is decent and the missions are... well, they're definitely GTA missions. In true sequel fashion, it makes improvements on the failings of the old, and all is basically right with the world. Unfortunately, the new aspects of the game are not quite so polished. The biggest offender is definitely the new RPG-like character growth system. Every day, your character has to eat, and it ends up being more of an irritant than anything else. You'll be in the middle of doing something interesting and you'll see your max health or your muscle bar pop up and decrease a notch. Time to abandon the fun and go waste a couple minutes finding something to eat! Welcome to Pointless, population: you! And speaking of the fantastic land of pointless, you can also waste a significant amount of time bulking up in the gym to increase your muscle and stamina stats. While it is nice to be able to sprint for longer and punch people harder, this is Grand Theft AUTO not Capt. Fantastic's Gym Adventure. It's a lot easier to just jump in a car and run somebody down than chase them for 3 blocks and punch 'em in the neck. Stats that are actually useful in the context of the game, like your driving skill and gun proficiency, only increase through hours and hours of driving/shooting/bicycling/motorcycling/etc. Why not get rid of the gym and give the player a gun range or a track for those stats? Sorry, i'm talking crazy again. That would make sense, and we can't be having any of that nasty, filthy stuff about. Other additions include a DDR like rhythm game in dance clubs (where the lighting is extremely bad to non-existent), and another rhythm game for lowriders, and possibly more, i don't really care enough to go look. Not really a good/bad thing, more a "why bother?" thing. None of them are necessary, and they're all extremely easy, so i didn't really factor them into the review. The lowrider one at least gives you some cash, so that can come in handy. There's also the new extremely tedious stealth missions and side-quests. You move very slowly and pick stuff up, then take it outside. Somebody really needs to tell the development community that stealth is NOT a necessary part of every game. Again, these are mostly avoidable, so i won't hold it against the game too strongly. So, to wrap up this extremely long review, i'll come to the final nail in the coffin, and the reason i won't be wasting any more time on San Andreas. The sheer size of the city and scope of the storyline has absolutely killed the pacing of the game. Unless you plan to just play the missions (and miss the ambulance, taxi, vigilante, etc. side-tasks that were probably the best part of the previous two games), the world of San Andreas is simply too big and clumsy. Just learning the basic layout of the city and finding a few of the shortcuts (again, critical to the enjoyment of the prior 2 titles) is a HUGE time investment. So, for the first 20+ hours of the game, you're usually going to feel absolutely lost and stumble around the city at random, arriving at your objectives more due to luck than skill. The larger scale also affects the storyline. There are now a lot more filler missions in between major plot missions, and you'll find that you've completely lost the thread of what's going on. But i've rambled on long enough. To really hammer my point into oblivion, if you haven't played GTA3 or GTA:Vice City, San Andreas is probably perfect for you. However, if like many of us you spent many sleepless nights with Mr. Vercetti, San Andreas is just more of the same and after the initial glow fades, you'll find all the fun has worn away and it's just a grind. 
