It took me a while to play San Andreas. After going through GTAIII and
Vice City in a relatively short period of time, I felt sort of burned
out from Grand Theft Auto so I skipped San Andreas when it was released
in late 2004. Recently however I decided that the time was right to
plunge myself again, and here I am, being very impressed by the latest installment of this extremely popular series.
In San Andreas you play the role of Carl Johnson, a man raised in
the hood with his family of two brothers, a sister and his mother.
Obviously, the ghetto is a harsh place so as he grows older he gets
implicated in some violent situations which eventually gets his brother
Brian killed. Feeling guilty for the death of his brother he moved to
Liberty City to escape his memories of San Andreas. Five years later,
he receives a call from his remaining brother Sean telling him that
their mom has just been killed which causes Carl to go back to San
Andreas and that's when the game begins.
The story in San Andreas is by far the most involved and most developed
of all the GTA stories. Now I would have still liked it to be developed
a bit more, but this is GTA we're talking about, I don't think their
goal is to reach RPG or Adventure game status in storytelling. But
there would be potential for something deeper still.
The game plays like every 3D GTA to date, so if you've played one of
those you'll feel right at home in San Andreas. But there does seem to
be a slight downgrade in the gameplay, namely that it does seem to be
harder to aim this time around, often you'll press the aiming button
and instead of aiming at the enemy Carl will aim at some bystander or
something, I don't remember that happening in past games. Also, it
could be said that the gameplay is getting slightly stale but then
people are still playing RPG's today that play pretty much the same as
they did 10 years ago so maybe that isn't so much of a problem.
The graphics are capable, and considering how huge the environments are
you can't really fault them for not being detailed enough. But if a
game ever screamed for next-gen, this is it. The character models are
so UGLY, it's crazy! And GTA is a really sexualized game, there are a
lot of prostitutes and girlfriends and whatnot running around, the game
really flaunts the girl in the game and still they look like total
crap. How am I supposed to want to date a girl in the game when their
hands are shaped like spatulas and they don’t have lips or something?
Sometimes the character models look straight out of the PS1 era,
they're that bad. Now I understand that they had to do it because you
can't have a huge world like that with detailed character models, but
here's hoping that GTA IV on the 360/PS3 will look much better in that
department.
Sound wise, there's nothing to say, it's just perfect. There's a good
choice of musical stations as always, on the xbox you can select your
custom soundtracks, and the voice acting is top notch. What else can
you ask for, cake?
Value is also excellent. After all, I’m guessing it could take around
60-70 hours to get 100% everywhere; it took me about 40 hours to finish
the game with 65%. It's a great value, especially now that the game is
cheap.
Finally, I thought San Andreas to be a great game, easily the best in
the series, but it was also a sign that it is now time to head for the
next generation consoles.
