GTA: San Andreas

By: Sean Beauchaine

Friday March 17, 2006

If you've fallen in love with the 'GTA' series, you've probably fallen in love with the variety of vehicles as well. Rockstar took a huge step forward with this, providing San Andreas with vehicles ranging from a farm tractor to a Learjet.
It's finally here, one of the most highly anticipated games of the year, and my heart goes out to you if you're a GTA fan and do not have this in your hands yet. Standing on a strong foundation of previous entries of GTA3 and GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas takes us to the early 1990's. San Andreas is modeled as a state holding San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas in a map vastly larger than anything we've seen in a GTA game. We also see the additions of loads of new mini-games, vehicles, and missions that you would have to see to believe. You may be wondering how this game compares to its previous entries, and that's what I plan to show you right now. Buckle up, it's going to be a long ride.

You play the role of Carl Johnson, or CJ for short. CJ had been living in Liberty City to escape the street life of Los Santos, the Los Angeles-modeled city in San Andreas. Unfortunately for CJ, his mother gets murdered and CJ comes back for the funeral, as well as finding the culprit who took his mother's life. As soon as he gets back, some corrupt cops frame him for killing a police officer. They restrict him to Los Santos, and CJ's only option is to go back to the life he left many years ago. Welcome to Los Santos.

As I said above, San Andreas consists of three cities: Los Santos (L.A.), San Fierro, (San Francisco), and Las Venturas (Las Vegas). You are restricted to Los Santos in the beginning, but as the roads are blocked to the other cities, you can fly or swim across to the other cities. Doing so gives you a four star wanted level that can't come off, so expect to be constantly hunted while exploring areas that are yet unlocked. As you progress through the missions, the other cities will be unlocked for you, coinciding with the storyline. The storyline and main missions are incredibly varied. I won't spoil anything, but you can expect pick-up's, deliveries, drive-by's, fly-by's, assassinations, spray-painting, and a few missions are DDR- style, requiring certain buttons to be pressed at certain times. It's hard to go into detail without spoiling anything, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

Gangs play a huge role in San Andreas, and more specifically, Los Santos. You and your friends make up the GSF, or Grove Street Family. While CJ was away, the GSF slowly faded away and now are being pushed almost into oblivion by many rival gangs surrounding your neighborhood. The Ballas, your rival gang, are surrounding almost every side of your territory and will not hesitate to attack you or your fellow gang members on sight. Gang wars are very common, and gangs separate themselves by wearing their gangs color. Sometimes you may get mistaken for a different gang member, and sometimes civilians will be shot down by accidentally wearing a wrong color in a wrong neighborhood. Unfortunately for them, the majority of Los Santos is the wrong neighborhood.

If you've fallen in love with the GTA series, you've probably fallen in love with the variety of vehicles as well. Rockstar took a huge step forward with this, providing San Andreas with vehicles ranging from a farm tractor to a Learjet. Why a farm tractor? Well, surrounding all three cities in San Andreas is countryside, and in all that countryside lay many small towns. You'll see farms, hicks, and trailer parks to name a few attractions that await you, and CJ can interact with all of them, as well as taking any farm vehicle you'd like. Not that you won't have enough to enjoy in the city, as there are hundreds of different vehicles, including cars, trucks, helicopters, boats, and planes. The Caddy makes a return, as well as the heavy duty Hunter. Many vehicles are recognizable from Vice City, and loads of new ones make their first appearance. Certain vehicles are now customizable, to which you can add spoilers, rims, body effects, as well as nitrous or hydraulics. Planes are easier to fly than ever, and the Dodo makes a return as well for the third time in the series, and a handful of other planes are available to nab.

The gameplay is fantastic. The pedestrian A.I. was revamped, and supposedly pedestrians have over 65,000 comments to make. As a nice touch, you can reply to what pedestrians say with the D-Pad, with a positive or negative comment. Of course you can always put a bat to their face as well, if that's the kind of person you are. Pedestrians will comment based on your appearance and weight, which comes from the clothes, haircut, or tattoos you buy, as well as the food you eat. That's right, you have to eat, and you have the ability to purchase various merchandise from various shops around San Andreas.

This time around you have various stat meters, which track attributes such as respect, stamina, fat, driving/flying/weapon skill, and even sex appeal. Respect is earned from missions, killing drug dealers, killing rival gang members, and many other actions. Fat comes from your diet, and you have to eat to stay healthy, and you have to eat to regain health. There are no health pickups this time around, you have to eat to get your health back. You can control your Fat level by going to the gym and working out, which is actually more fun than a chore. Each city has it's own gym, and at each gym you can learn new fighting styles. There is a driving school which can help boost your driving level, although just driving around a lot will also increase it. This is the same for flying, and using various weapons will increase your skill with that weapon. Does this all mean that CJ sucks at life in the beginning? Not necessarily, as CJ will have the same skills as Tommy Vercetti did in Vice City. Gaining skills will just make you better in that category, making you quite the speed bump in your enemy's path.

Finally, there are the loads of new minigames added to San Andreas. Along with the familiar firefighter, paramedic, and vigilante side missions, you can now make truck deliveries, pimp, rob houses, and much more. Each of these are a lot of fun and will keep you busy for quite a while, and completing a certain number of each will give you certain benefits. The hidden packages are gone, but are replaced with city-specific goals. In Los Santos, there are 100 gang signs that you have to spray paint over with your gang's sign. In San Fierro, there are 50 attractions that you have to photograph. And finally in Las Venturas, there are 50 horseshoes around the city for you to collect. Combine this with 50 oysters in certain bodies of water for you to swim and collect, and you'll be collecting everything for a long ass time.

If you're a GTA fan, this certainly won't disappoint you. This will keep you busy for a long time and is almost guaranteed to drop your GPA just because you want to skip class/studying and play. There is a little problem with framerates at certain times of the game, mostly when there is a lot of action on the screen at once. Also there is a few pop-up, mostly when flying at high rates of speed. Other than that, the game is near perfect. Controls may take a while to get used to compared to previous entries, and although targeting is slightly re-done, the game doesn't always seem to target the hostile targets first. Other than that, this is a very well-done game and a great follow-up in the GTA series. I honestly don't know how Rockstar will top this, and am rating this game four stars.