This latest installment to the Grand Theft
Auto series takes place in 1992 in the West Coast-themed
state of San Andreas. San Andreas is an island containing
three cities. You'll begin the game in the city of Los
Santos, which is based roughly on Los Angeles and consists of
a mixture of ritzy downtown areas and the gangland ghettos of
South Central. San Fierro is based on San Francisco,
reproducing the real city's hilly terrain and ever-present
fog. The game's third city is Las Venturas, which is a great
take on early-'90s Las Vegas, complete with a strip full of
casinos and the surrounding desert. While one-to-one
measurements against previous games in the series are
difficult in practice, San Andreas definitely feels like a
much, much larger place than Vice City ever did, but at the
same time, the growth is handled intelligently. There are
plenty of things to do both in and out of the cities, which
makes all this real estate matter.
Like the previous games in the series, San Andreas features a fairly linear story that takes you through the game's areas. You'll start off restricted to Los Santos--something the story justifies by claiming that an earthquake has taken out the bridges and roads that link Los Santos to the surrounding area--but it doesn't take long to unlock the other two areas. The game also throws in some pretty great surprises in the form of characters from previous entries in the series. These characters tie the GTA games together really nicely, so while San Andreas feels pretty different from the other games in the series, it still feels like you're playing in the same universe.
As in the previous games, most of your
progress is accomplished by completing missions for a variety
of individuals. These missions are oftentimes similar to
missions you've seen in previous games in the series. You'll
drive people around, take out specific individuals (an early
mission gives you the straightforward objective of beating up
a crack dealer, for example), do drive-bys on your enemies,
and so on. But as you proceed through the game, the missions
get crazier and crazier. Along the way you'll pull off a
daring casino heist, steal some wicked military hardware,
"take care" of plenty of Mafia bozos, and much, much more.
The missions in the game are a lot more exciting, on average,
than they have been in some previous GTA games. Additionally,
the game is a lot better at spelling out what, exactly, needs
to be done. It does this with onscreen text that color-codes
each specific piece of a mission differently. Yet while the
basics of the gameplay--taking on and completing
missions--are similar to past GTA games, there are plenty of
details to uncover, and plenty of new things to try.
The game tracks a lot of statistics. Respect is a big one, as it's what you'll be earning the most of as you complete missions. Not all missions earn you money, but almost all of them are good for a slight respect bonus. A higher respect rating lets you recruit more and more gang members to follow you around and shoot at rival gangs, which is another new addition and a nice perk, but not something that comes in handy very often. You're also rated in a lot of different vehicle categories, like driving, riding motorcycles, bicycling, and piloting aircraft. As you use a vehicle, your skill with it slowly increases, which seems to tighten up the controls a bit. In the case of motorcycles, it also makes it less likely that you'll fly off the bike in a wreck. Your bicycling skills translate into higher bunny hops. Similarly, you're given stats for every type of firearm in the game. You'll start with poor skills with all weapons, but don't let the tag of "poor" fool you--CJ's skills feel roughly the same as Tommy Vercetti's when you first squeeze the trigger. After getting in some time with a weapon, you'll upgrade it to "gangster" level, which extends your lock-on range with the weapon, speeds up reloading, and in some cases lets you walk around while locked on. Upgrading your skill with a weapon to the highest level, "hitman," takes a relatively long time, but it extends the lock-on range and speeds up reloading even further, and it also opens up the ability to dual-wield some one-handed weapons. Unloading two full clips of submachine-gun ammo is extremely satisfying here.
One of the many interesting wrinkles in
GTA's gameplay is that the game now has a two-player
cooperative mode. You'll run into little two-player icons in
certain spots in the gameworld. Walking over one with a
second controller plugged in lets you start up a series of
special objectives that work sort of like the rampage icons
in previous GTA games. You and a friend will be able to wreak
havoc in a car or on foot, though the game requires that both
players remain on the same screen. While the concept of a
multiplayer mode in GTA is pretty mind-blowing, the
implementation here makes it more of a fun little addition
that, along with all the other crazy things you'll come
across as you play, contributes to the feel that the game has
a million different things for you to uncover. OK, while
there aren't quite a million side missions in the
game, it seems to come pretty close, offering everything from
a basketball minigame, to pool games played for money, to
arcade machines that pay homage to classic games like Gyruss
and Gradius.
Usually, when a game tries to do a million different things, it's an overambitious hodge-podge that can't manage to get its different parts down cold. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has you doing many, many more things than any previous GTA game, and while some of them do work a little better than others, the strength of all these different gameplay elements--too many to count--makes for a powerful package that does not disappoint, despite the extremely high standards that Grand Theft Auto established and that San Andreas needed to live up to. With its strong story, well-written dialogue, terrific voice cast, impressive graphics, great in-game sound, and extremely entertaining and varied gameplay, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a stupendous thrill ride that shouldn't be missed.
