Grand Theft Auto San Andreas

GTA San Andreas is THE game to own and no PS2 owner should be without it!

Rockstar Games never ceases to amaze me. Time and time again they’ve been able to put their best foot forward, simply by clinging to a single game series and pushing ahead with it over and over again. The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the most popular and longest-running franchises still in existence, and somehow the development team has managed to avoid the fate of Tomb Raider by churning out one blockbuster after another. They did it with GTA3, they did it again with Vice City, and now they’ve done it once more with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. How can a rehash of the same basic formula prove so successful? As GTA:SA has taught me, one does so by taking the best parts of a given game, improving them, and then adding a ridiculous amount of new features and content.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas places you into the black shoes of Carl “C.J.” Johnson. Following the death of his brother five years ago, Carl took off for Liberty City to get away from the horrors of his upbringing in Los Santos. Now, after getting word of the sudden death of his mother, Carl heads back to San Andreas to find out what the hell is going on. But after a less-than-friendly greeting back into town by a pair of bent cops, C.J. finds his old neighborhood torn apart by gang wars, his brothers barely fighting to survive, and guns being pointed at his face around every corner. The only way he can resolve matters is by fixing up his gang, clawing his way to the top of the ladder, and using the typical ludicrous amount of firepower to indiscriminately annihilate anything stupid enough to get in his way.

Note that when I say this game is “huge”, I’m definitely not kidding. Considering the level of graphical and gameplay detail put into GTA:SA, I was definitely amazed at how much content Rockstar had packed in – so much, that I’m left unsure where to begin. The game begins with Carl having just been dumped in the wrong side of Los Santos, with only a bicycle to aid his escape. Eventually he links up with his brothers and starts on his quest to take the gangster crown, but it’s going to be one very big, very long ride. This is aided by the fact that the game world is astonishingly large – it’s well over four times the size of all of Vice City, the previous game in the series, and is made up of three separate land masses with a huge amount of terrain to explore. It’s not just copy and paste terrain either – there is actually some thought put into the layout of the land, and it offers both open countryside and tight, cramped cities, all presented with a surprising level of detail. The cities have the typical winding paths, thick traffic, towering buildings, and other random features we’ve all come to expect from the series, but the country areas actually have dirt paths, massive hills, run-down shacks, small hick towns, and even forests, all waiting to be explored and exploited. As is the series custom since GTA3, the player is stuck on the first major land-mass for the early parts of the game (and if by some freak chance you DO manage to get onto the restricted islands, an instant four-star police warning will ensure you don’t last long), but the rest of the map is unlocked soon enough, an event which offered me an excuse to waste yet another hour of my life just exploring every nook and cranny of this new terrain and killing myself from horrific high-speed vehicle accidents in the mountains.

But as for actual gameplay, I’ve already stated that GTA:SA maintains the same basic formula as its predecessors; carjack people for transportation, spend cash at the local Ammu-Nation stores for destruction, and head to the highlighted waypoints on the map to play storyline missions to advance the game – plus the usual gamut of other crap to do, like play special missions and mini-games, hunt for hidden goodies, listen to the brilliantly-done radio stations, and just be a total jackass by beating up old ladies with a golf club until the cops drag you in. But thanks to the new features and some re-balancing, GTA:SA’s gameplay takes on a new twist differing somewhat from the previous titles.

The first major change is that of cash. Available income was neutered somewhat for Vice City, but in San Andreas, players will constantly find themselves digging around the bottom of their pockets towards the beginning of the game. As time goes by, more and more opportunities will open up to gain money, but early on I found myself really forced to make careful decisions on what exactly I wanted to spend my green on (hard, given the multitude of options), which was a much welcome break from being able to throw sacks of cash at the weapon store vendors as I grabbed their entire inventory each time I stopped by – it really makes the gameplay a lot more interesting and immersive in my opinion. Moneymaking really does require a bit of clever thinking and determination, and most of the early missions don’t even offer any dough, but like I said, this isn’t something that should be considered a bad thing, especially when a few taxi runs can usually clear up the worst of your problems. Speaking of which, the vehicle-based mini-games have definitely seen some improvements (as well as, of course, additions), and while I haven’t had a chance to give them all a workout just yet, I’ve at least seen a cool little change in the cab driver missions in the form of a little “tip” meter that now appears, showing how much of a bonus you’ll get for delivering the customer as fast as humanly possible – provided you can avoid smashing your taxi up. New mini-games worth checking out include house robbery, a pimping job, and the ability to make quite a hefty amount as an upbeat trucker, so there’s definitely tons of opportunity to make cash on the side, and have fun while doing it too.

Another thing that has changed is health management, as well as general stat handling – in the way that there actually are stats now, beyond health and armor. Health power-ups are no longer randomly littered across the landscape, but instead C.J. must replenish his energy (which is represented by a bar instead of a numerical figure now) by either going to a restaurant and ordering some grub, or stopping in at one of his hideouts and saving, which advances time by six hours as he rests. As I also just mentioned, there are a number of other statistics to play with, which almost transform the game from a slightly cheesy action thriller into a physical gangster simulator. Your main character now has a number of major statistics that affect his performance in a number of fields, such as fat, muscle, sex appeal, and even luck. These stats not only affect C.J.’s capabilities (a better muscle stat will cause more damage when you punch people in the face, for example), but also his appearance, so a C.J. with a decent amount of fat and maximum muscle will look lean and beefy, but let the fat meter go out of control and the muscle meter drop too much, and he’ll instead resemble a hideous, scrawny slob who gets winded after a brief jog and hits like an old lady. Eating at a restaurant (complete with smart-assed employees that hate their jobs) will increase fat, which can be worked off by running / bicycling around a bunch, or heading off to the local gym. At the gym, there are a number of minigames which can be played to exercise, like running on a treadmill by hitting the X button as fast as you can, or lifting weights by quickly alternating between two buttons, and there’s even an arena available to practice fighting skills and learn new moves.

The game also features other stats that can be improved only through time and practice. Each weapon type (pistols, SMGs, etc) has an associated skill that, when high enough, will trigger a noteworthy improvement in accuracy, refire rate, and other aspects – some weapons will even allow you to dual-wield them once you’ve practiced enough. Vehicle skills will also improve with time, and riding around on bicycles or motorcycles will also result in relevant skill increases – hell, there’s even a stat for flying planes. All of this adds a really cool RPG element to the game that makes the player character better and better the more the game is played, and the upgrades cause enough of a difference to make obtaining them definitely worthwhile. At first, I was worried that all this stat-handling would turn the game into a freak version of The Sims, but aside from some critical basics, players will find themselves perfectly free to ignore any stat-building exercises they feel like without any kind of serious repercussion, even though the effort is far from tedious.

Stats aren’t the only thing that can attribute to a more personalized gangster, however, as GTA:SA also allows players to pick from a huge combination of clothes, tattoos, and haircuts, something I found myself spending hours just trying to perfect. Shops all over San Andreas offer services for fine-tuning C.J.’s appearance, and there are enough options available that you can either turn him into a Mr. T knock-off with enough bling-bling to blind entire nearby crowds whenever the sun on the horizon, or a hilarious blind drunkard wearing an eye patch and heart-pattern boxers who runs around slapping people around with a double-ended dildo (an actual weapon in the game). The primary gameplay role in all this is to increase your character’s “sex appeal” rating and make it easier to pick up random women on the street, but from an immersion standpoint, the “make your own C.J.” thing is just really cool. The degree of customization offered by the game is nothing less than astonishing, especially given how Rockstar could have very well gotten away with not adding it and still put out a solid title. My only complaint is that I sometimes had trouble finding the right combination of gear that would stop people on the street from telling me I looked like a clown, but after some time I just stopped trying to impress people and stuck with whatever worked for me.

But wait, the personalization factor goes even further! As expected, the most important part of the Grand Theft Auto series has always been the vehicles (obviously), and San Andreas really delivers with a sweet selection, with high-end vehicles like the Banshee and Infernus from GTA3 making a comeback, a number of toys from Vice City, and of course a bucketful of new rides to experience as well, including lawnmowers, tow-trucks (which can actually be used to tow vehicles around – my favorite thing to do is to daisy-chain a dozen or so tow-trucks together and go cruising around the mountains until something hits me head-on and ruins my mighty train), and of course the aforementioned bicycles, as well as a surprising number of boats and aircraft to tool around with. But the most interesting part of game’s vehicular side is the auto-shops scattered around the major cities. Driving into these shops with an appropriate vehicle will bring up a screen where, for a cost, the vehicle’s color can be changed, spoilers and vent holes added (I’m sorry, “speed holes”), custom wheels installed, a nitro system plugged in, and, of course, a custom hydraulics system set up for all the bouncy goodness one could ever hope for. Not all vehicles can have every kind of upgrade installed (and some can’t be modified at all – sorry, no Type-R lawnmower racing), but the sheer coolness of being able to finally customize your favorite vehicles just the way you see fit is incredibly novel at first.

Of course, all this is fun and games until the mission scripting plows over your joyous ride by erasing it from existence because you parked it in a bad place when you went to go do a mission. Several times throughout GTA:SA’s campaign I was stupid enough to spend well over $6000 ricing out a mighty pimp-mobile, only to take it along to my next mission and find it had vanished into thin air once I triggered a cutscene or finished the mission. Combine this with the fact that modifying a vehicle is mainly for aesthetic appeal (even the nitro booster has limited usefulness because of all the heavy traffic on the main roads) rather than anything else, and I soon found myself no longer sinking my cash into this little gig. I don’t understand why the developers put such a potentially cool vehicle modification system into the game, only to slap gamers in the face for actually using their customized rides, but it’s sure as hell irritating. On a final note, vehicle handling has really been loosened up, and while it’s now quite a bit easier to spin out of control, I found the change to be a bit more realistic and for the better. I didn’t have too much trouble performing the usual gamut of wacky stunts after a few hours of playing (the driving school helps in mastering a few techniques too, although some of the courses can be hair-pulling) I was dodging, weaving, and flipping my vehicle with the best of ‘em. One thing I was curious about was if vehicle modding actually has any direct effect on performance (especially given how you can buy dedicated off-road tires), but I haven’t played enough to verify if this is actually the case or not yet.