If you’re familiar with the Grand Theft Auto series, San Andreas will not need much introduction. If you’re not, the main points of the series are; stealing cars, killing cops, picking up hookers, and becoming the criminal overlord of town. San Andreas is not much different in that regard. But San Andreas is 100 times the game that the previous title, Vice City, was.
Released in the UK on October 29th, San Andreas is set in a fictional Los Angeles-style city in the early 90′s. You play as Carl Johnson, a young black guy who has recently returned to his hometown of Los Santos after the murder of his mother. He, his brother, and friends live in the slummy suburb of Ganton – loosely based on South Central LA.
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.
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.
On first glance, the game appears to be quite similar to Vice City. The graphics are a little better, but not considerably (the GTA prerequiste “block hands” are still present). It’s more the little things that appear visually improved – the skies, facial features, the grass and weeds – and they make quite a big impact on the game. For instance, the yellow/brown haze of Los Angeles makes a great background to this game, which also makes the landscape fog look like it was put there for a reason. But on further inspection, there are quite a few differences to San Andreas.
First of all, the game map is absolutely massive. It has to be at least twice the size of Vice City – for instance, there are three airports in San Andreas, and only one in Vice City. Load times are much improved, which was one of my annoyances with Vice City. The driving physics are much better, but you can no longer use the directional pad to drive, which is annoying and takes a little bit of getting used to. But the main difference is that San Andreas is more of a realistic environment, whereas Vice City is a “just” game with missions.
The player environment in San Andreas is very Sim-like, in that you have to gain respect, muscle, stamina, sex appeal, driving skills, shooting skills, and almost anything else you might imagine. Instead of finding health boosts, you have to go to a restaurant and eat food, or get drinks from a 24-7 corner store or vending machine. You can go to the gym to build muscle, the barber to get a new haircut, and one of the many clothing stores to try on and buy new clothes. The game is much more interactive, with arcade games to play at the local hangout, and random two-player minigames to waste time on. And as per usual, the soundtrack is perfect, with great early 90′s classics – Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains – the list goes on with a total of 10 radio stations to choose from.
When I first picked up this game, I felt it didn’t have quite the same charm as Vice City. Vice City is set in the 80′s and is camp and glam and almost silly, and it doesn’t seem to matter that the lead character is male. On the other hand, San Andreas on first look seems much more of a “boy’s game” (which could possibly be partially the reason I didn’t get into GTA3 as much, although in reality it’s probably more the fact that the driving physics sucked a bit).
However, after playing for a little while, San Andreas again proves to be a one-up on the previous title in the GTA series. If nothing else, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is going to have a lot of white people saying “nigga”.
So who are you gonna vote for?