Electronic Gaming Monthly: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

CRISPIN: Your long-distance girlfriends are giving you grief, crooked cops are cramping your style, and a surface-to-air missile just sheared the wing off your fighter jet. Such is the thug life of a rapper manager/car exporter/parking valet/casino heister/captain of industry/small-business owner from the gang-war-torn side of the tracks. We’ve all been there.

No, fo’ real: We’ve all been there. As you read this, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas—the hyper-hyped sequel whose inner-city hero lives all the lifestyles described above—has been in stores for a little while now. Most PlayStation 2–gaming grown-ups have been racking up mileage in the game since the day it debuted. Some of you may even have beaten it. So let’s review this literally larger-than-life masterpiece together (and if you haven’t played it yet, no worries—we spoil nothing).

So...she’s a biggie, eh? No longer confined to one metropolis, this latest chapter in the series that defined free-form gameplay sprawls across the fictional state of San Andreas, home to three massive cities and all the wilds in between them. Just as you get used to one town, it’s time to move on to another, where you’ll spend your first few hours gawking like a bumpkin (and you’ll feel a comfortable sense of coming home when you return to familiar neighborhoods). While the game’s visuals aren’t much improved over those of the past titles, the sequel still ramps up the reality with little touches: thunderstorms that rumble your joypad, cirrus clouds at 20,000 feet, cops chasing crooks, copse-covered fields, blinding fog, radio newsbreaks that report plot points, and more.

As the world opens up, getting from A to B becomes an adventure in itself. You’ll need to study the map and mark routes by using the new waypoint system. You’ll even need to read street signs. Fortunately, a new trip-skipping feature lets you instantly bypass lengthy drives in later attempts at failed missions. And San Andreas’ terrain is so fun to explore that road trips rarely become as tedious as, say, a long-distance drive to grandma’s house.

Unless you cruise to grandma’s in a hovercraft, WWII fighter plane, or cargo helicopter. San Andreas’ variety of jackable vehicles is enormous. You’ll find mountain bikes, go-karts, chopped-down hoopties, riding lawn mowers, helo gunships—plus a couple of incredible machines that embody the go-anywhere freedom of the series. (A hint: One’s big, the other’s small, and neither needs a runway.)

Series vets will find that cars feel slippery at first; power slides can slam you into light poles or off a bridge into the sea (good thing your hero can swim now). But the more you drive, the better you drive, thanks to a skill-building system that turns GTA into a full-fledged role-playing game. It’s simple and it works. Use a certain weapon to nail enemies and your aim and range improve over time, and eventually you can wield a gun in each hand. Blast your pecs at the gym and you’ll grow to Ah-nold proportions. Ultimately, you’ll drive better and fly straighter; the ladies will like what they see, and you’ll have earned the game’s ultimate currency—respect.

But San Andreas’ super size derives from more than its sheer geographical enormity or character-building options—this world is packed with an intimidating number of things to do. Your hero starts and ends his career in the ’hood, accruing a crew of super barrio brothers to wage one turf war after another. Along the way, however, he’ll engage in sneaking, flying, shooting, racing, construction work, destruction work, dancing, dressing, car customizing, heist planning, and more—all during a twisting plot laden with nods to past GTA games that brings the series full circle (yes, fans will freak). The game can get janky (especially during Manhunt-inspired sneaking missions), but ultimately, there’s enough variety here to fill a dozen titles. It has triathlon events, for crying out loud.

In fact, San Andreas’ makers boast that it takes 150 hours to do all there is to do and see all there is to see. It took me about a third of that time to reach the ending, but my stat screen showed that I still hadn’t seen 35 percent of the game. You, on the other hand, have no need to rush. This is your thug life. Live it large.

SHOE: Holy f***ing s***. (Sorry...I’m swearing a lot more now because of San Andreas.) I can’t wrap my head around how much stuff is packed into this one disc. It’s grand, it’s ambitious, and funny as this may sound, it’s legendary.

Playing this game, I feel like a little kid again (well, except for all that R-rated business)—my fun is limited only by my imagination. You can do so much here at your leisure. For example, I spent twice as long in the first city, Los Santos, as Crispin did because I was really determined to fight rival gangs for turf, work out until my arms looked like Popeye’s, and stuff my girlfriend’s ever-hungry face with food. I took care of my character’s stats and appearance as if he were some SimGangsta, only he wasn’t burdening me with mandatory, mundane micromanagement. And all this wasn’t really even helping me finish the game....

As wide open as San Andreas is, I do wish the main mission line was more flexible. Yes, you can tackle each mission however you’d like, but as a general rule, you still have to complete one before you can move on to the next. Several branching paths that lead to different conclusions would’ve been nice, so if you didn’t want to help that Triad guy in San Fierro or you didn’t want to do the long cross-country missions, you wouldn’t have to. The only other things you can criticize are the game’s dated look (despite several graphical enhancements) and the inner-city gangster theme, which may turn off some upstanding young citizens (though it lightens up a third of the way in).

Depending on your taste in music, the audio here tops what GTA3 and Vice City already did incredibly well. The soundtrack is bigger and reminds us of how good—and how absolutely terrible—some ’90s music was. And the voice acting is amazing, with several big-name personalities helping to cement videogames as legitimate an art form as many feature films.

It’s sad that the inevitable controversy surrounding the gang/violence/sex/drug content will outshine the game’s good points in the eyes of the general public. Because if you strip away all the vices, what you have left is still a brilliant piece of work—something the developers should be proud of and something gamers of all tastes will love.

OFFICIAL PS MAG—JOHN: I was prepared for “big,” but I wasn’t quite ready for “frickin’ enormous.” Rarely do you experience a game that is busting out new moves and experiences all the way through to the very end. Such is the scale of the game that major characters voiced by well-known stars don’t even make their first appearances until more than 40 hours in.

Unlike its imitators, GTA is not a slave to its star-studded cast, nor is it quite as pigeonholed thematically as you’ve probably been led to believe. We’ve all heard the “GTA meets Menace II Society” comparisons, but believe me: They’re wrong. For the first seven or eight hours, OK, maybe—but as you move through the game’s five major areas, the look, feel, and tone of the experience changes quite dramatically. At the beginning of the game, your problems are more immediate and simple, but as you progress, the scale of your tasks escalates as your character develops.

Main man CJ, it has to be said, is arguably one of the most well-rounded videogame characters ever to grace a screen. He’s not a one-dimensional caricature of an L.A. gangbanger; he’s much more than that. As you spend more time with him and affect his development, you realize that you actually like him. This isn’t the kind of admiration reserved for videogame heroes like Master Chief or Mario—it’s a genuine feeling of camaraderie with your on-screen buddy. Everyone will probably enjoy a unique version of CJ; not only can you alter superficial things like his looks, but you can also build up a huge range of stats based on how you play. Every action is tracked, and as you drive more, shoot more, swim more...or whatever, you notice that not only are you more proficient as a player, but CJ himself is also more proficient as a protagonist. Like Crispin said, San Andreas is an RPG. Maybe not the kind you’re used to, but an RPG nonetheless.

Expectations for San Andreas are understandably high, and the more cynical of you could be forgiven for thinking that the game can’t possibly meet them. Believe me when I say that it not only meets them—it absolutely shatters them.

The verdicts (out of 10)

Crispin

Shoe

John

Publisher: Rockstar

Developer: Rockstar North

Players: 1-2

ESRB: Mature

www.rockstar.com

Good: Gigantic world, limitless play variety, “Freebird”

Bad: A little janky at times

Going out with a gang: San Andreas is the last GTA until PS3