REVIEW OF GTA SAN ANDREAS

 You will 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.

The game opens with Carl returning to Los Santos after spending the last five years in GTA III's Liberty City. Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas.  a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs and corruption. Where filmstars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers.

Now, it's the early 90s. Carl's got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster.

But his homecoming isn't a happy one. On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.

 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.

San Andreas is an island containing three cities. Rockstar did an excellent job in offering breath-taking landscapes, preferring to go for more subtle colors and a satirical presentation of famous locations from Los Angeles, Las Vegas or San Francisco rather than a high accuracy of the details.  This latest installment takes place in 1992 in the West Coast-themed state of San Andreas.  There are plenty of things to do both in and out of the cities, which makes all this real estate matter. Your first order of business in Los Santos is to put your set back on the map.

Just when you think you're getting used to gang warfare, everything goes sour. Rockstar has decided that the times of superheroes is over and that only practice makes perfect, so if you want have a hero that is able to take down every enemy, to drive like a race pilot, and to shoot as well as a trained assassin, then you have to practice.

We're certainly not interested in spoiling the game's many interesting plot twists, so we'll leave out the details, but it should suffice to say that you'll eventually need to get the heck out of Los Santos. You wind up in the country outside the city, where you'll encounter many more great characters and officially embark on your quest to put right what's gone wrong.

Another important change is related to the main character. CJ can be customized in every way: from the type of cloths to the number of tattoos and bling blings. And our hero is not some sort of super-villain, he’s you ordinary gangster who has to be fed and taken to the gym to stay in shape. If up until now, the GTA series employed Caucasian ferocious males with some Italian influences, San Andreas proposes something completely new: an Afro-American hero, CJ. This change has a lot of consequences related to gang members and their censorship free language. After a few hours of playing, the coarse language and the idiosyncrasies of the black people, not to mention the Spanish bits which are delightful, will certainly get into your system.

 

Your gang, the Grove Street Families, has fallen into disarray over the last five years, and their influence is minimal at best. So you, along with the three other leaders of the gang--the long-winded Big Smoke, the dust-smoking Ryder, and your stubborn brother, Sweet--set out to take back the streets from your rivals, the Ballas, who have turned to dealing crack to earn money and gain influence in the hood.

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.

Once you get out of Los Santos, you won't really have to worry about gang warfare for a while, and the game settles down into a more GTA-like feel.CJ can be customized in every way: from the type of cloths to the number of tattoos and bling blings. And our hero is not some sort of super-villain, he’s you ordinary gangster who has to be fed and taken to the gym to stay in shape.

Rockstar has decided that the times of superheroes is over and that only practice makes perfect, so if you want have a hero that is able to take down every enemy, to drive like a race pilot, and to shoot as well as a trained assassin, then you have to practice.

And things are even more complex, because CJ will evolve in the same way as a RPG hero does. If you complete a mission, you get your buddies out of a mess, you go to the gym and you shoot some enemies, you gain some respect, some stamina and all sorts of things.

The missions CJ will have to accomplish are divided in two categories: those that are connected to the main story and those that aren’t.
Given the huge of the city, you will always find things to do, making GTA San Andreas a game you will be able to play for days.

The biggest novelty is that CJ has learned to swim and this gives the game a whole new perspective.

Another important thing to notice is that unlike previous titles from the GTA franchise, in GTA San Andreas your objectives are much more detailed, which greatly simplifies missions.

You set out on a series of missions to take back your territory, starting small with things like spray-painting over other gangs' tags (which is one of the many new types of actions that replace previous GTA games' more-generic hidden package collecting here), but quickly moving up to drive-bys and other acts of extreme gangsterism.

But this doesn’t mean GTA San Andreas is an easy game and as things evolve, the missions will become more and more difficult. Some of them will be similar to the ones from previous titles and you’ll even encounter familiar characters.
The first thing GTA San Andreas amazes you with is the impressive size of the universe where Carl Johnson aka CJ will have to struggle with the perils of a gangster’s life.

If you thought that GTA San Andreas will be just as equel to GTA III or to Vice City, after the first moments spent in the game, you will think the previous titles were more like beter versions compared to Rockstar is offering now.

Each of the cities that make the GTA San Andreas universe: Los Santos, Las Ventura and San Fierro are larger than the famous Liberty City and this is just one of the concepts employed by Rockstar to make San Andreas a better game than its predecessors. Obviously, the larger the universe the more missions and challenges you will have.

Moreover, if you thought GTA Vice City had a wide variety of vehicles, know that in GTA San Andreas you will be able to take even bicycles, or any others means of transportation which will ensure you the supremacy of the city.

Although the graphics is a little bit old-fashioned, and actually this one of the reproaches that can be brought to this game, my opinion is that is preferable to have continuity rather than wait endlessly for bits of the game to load.