Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas review (PlayStation 2)

One of the many interesting wrinkles in GTA's gameplay is that the game now has a two-player cooperative mode. Now, before you get too excited about this, you should know that you can't actually play the entire game with a friend. Instead, you'll run into little two-player icons in certain spots in the gameworld. Walking over one with a second controller plugged in lets you start up a series of special objectives that work sort of like the rampage icons in previous GTA games. You and a friend will be able to wreak havoc in a car or on foot, though the game requires that both players remain on the same screen. While the concept of a multiplayer mode in GTA is pretty mind-blowing, the implementation here makes it more of a fun little addition that, along with all the other crazy things you'll come across as you play, contributes to the feel that the game has a million different things for you to uncover. OK, while there aren't quite a million side missions in the game, it seems to come pretty close, offering everything from a basketball minigame, to pool games played for money, to arcade machines that pay homage to classic games like Gyruss and Gradius.

Some of the missions that have been with the series for years reappear here. When you enter a police vehicle, you can hit the R3 button and take on some vigilante missions. The same thing goes for fire trucks and ambulances. If you get into a moving van at night, you can embark on a home-invasion mission, which is a stealthy task that requires you to enter a home and make off with some goods without making noise. Walking when crouched is the order of the day here. You'll also find an assortment of races, ranging from the good old dirtring to well-hidden mountain-bike challenges. Another interesting facet of the game is that you'll get to hook up with a variety of women. The story requires you to dabble in the game's dating system, which sets you up with specific women at different points in the game, but there are plenty of other girls you can take out, if you have the look and style they're searching for. Dates are usually pretty simple: You pick up the girl, and usually she wants to eat. It's up to you to drive her someplace. If she's thinking lobster, but you're thinking Burger Shot, the date's not going to go particularly well, but there are a variety of nice places to go. You don't usually take any control during the date other than driving her to the location and back to her house, but if she wants to go dancing, the game launches into a simple Dance Dance Revolution-like timing minigame. In an awesome touch, this same type of minigame appears when you enter a lowrider-hopping contest, which is a good way to earn a little extra cash.

The Grand Theft Auto series has always been rather stylish, visually speaking. Vice City did an amazing job of capturing both the look of Miami and the feel of the mid '80s. San Andreas has to live up to that standard while creating four unique landscapes--one for each city, and one for the countryside between cities. Fortunately, the game does this very, very well. The parts of Los Santos that you call home have a very realistic ghetto look that fits perfectly. The other cities in the game also look a lot like the towns they're modeled after, but the most dramatic difference occurs when you leave town. The countryside is unlike anything you've seen in previous GTA games. The winding country roads, the small towns that pepper the landscape, plenty of off-road action, and lots of nice-looking foliage make these areas look pretty amazing. Outside of Las Venturas, the area is much more desertlike, which also looks really great. And there's no loading time separating up all the landmass.

The architecture looks outstanding, and the game has some new effects to match. The old trails effect from Vice City and GTAIII is history. Now, you'll see everything pretty clearly, but when you're in warm areas, the game has a nice heat-shimmer effect. When you're moving at or near top speed in a car, the screen blurs a bit, which does a fantastic job at conveying an extreme sense of speed. Also, the game takes on a grainy, filtered look when it rains, which also looks really good. The character models throughout San Andreas look very good as well, though some aspects, like the characters' blocky hands, look a little weird at times.

It's not all fun and sun when it comes to San Andreas' graphics, though. As in previous GTA games, the frame rate in San Andreas is pretty unstable. It always runs at a playable rate, but depending on what you're doing, how fast you're doing it, and how many other objects are onscreen, the frame rate can vary wildly. Additionally, there are some occasional level-of-detail issues, where you'll be able to get pretty close to an object before its "looks good up close" texture can load in. This sort of problem will probably vary, depending on the condition of your hardware. If your PS2 is new and fresh, you probably won't see it too often. But if your system has seen better days, it might have trouble keeping up with you when it comes to streaming in the new textures and landscapes. The draw-in distance seems a lot further out than Vice City's, but you'll still see some structures pop into view, especially when flying overhead at high speed. But even when you take these issues into consideration, San Andreas delivers a really impressive-looking graphical package on the aging PlayStation 2 hardware.

The sounds of San Andreas are, as you'd expect, many and varied. The game does a really strong job with things like engine noises. Vehicles like jets (yes!), fast cars, and motorcycles all deliver deep, throaty tones that make them sound as fast and powerful as they really are. Gunfire sounds about like you'd expect, and the game's Pro Logic II support does a fine job of positioning the audio properly. San Andreas doesn't have DTS support, as Vice City did, but you probably won't notice any real difference. On the other hand, you'll surely notice how the quality of the voice work has improved since that game.

In a story-driven game like San Andreas, the voice cast has a profound effect on the story's impact. Rockstar has assembled a fantastic cast for the game that, down to a person, does a great job with the dialogue. While there are definitely some recognizable names on the cast list, the game doesn't go overboard in this respect, casting a relatively unknown rapper by the name of Young Maylay in the role of CJ--and he delivers an excellent performance. MC Eiht, an inspired inclusion to say the least, does a great job with the role of Ryder. Samuel L. Jackson does some fine work in the role of the dirty cop, Officer Tenpenny. Comedian David Cross is pretty funny in the role of the nerdy hobby store owner, Zero. Peter Fonda is very strong as a hippie/conspiracy theorist known only as "The Truth." Charlie Murphy, best known for his appearances on Chappelle's Show, does well in the role of a pimp named Jizzy B. Even Ice-T turns up as a rapper named Madd Dogg. But the best role in the game goes to James Woods, who is absolutely incredible in his role as Mike Toreno. To mention too much about his role in the story would give away a plot point or two, but your time spent with Toreno--both in the cutscenes and in the actual missions that surround this segment of the story--is some of the best and most uniquely rewarding that San Andreas (and, therefore, Grand Theft Auto) has to offer.

The in-car radio was one of the most effective tools that GTA: Vice City used to make the game feel like it took place in the '80s--having hours and hours of great music to choose from was among the game's most noteworthy features. San Andreas contains some pretty strong radio stations, but the overall selection is a little too scattered. The rap station, Radio Los Santos, is the most fitting, at least for the gang-related segments of the game. With songs from Dr. Dre, Compton's Most Wanted, and Tupac Shakur, this station does a good job of sounding like Los Angeles radio, circa 1992. The other stations, however, don't set the tone nearly as well. There's a classic-rock station, a classic-rap station (Did classic-rap radio even exist in 1992? Heck, does classic-rap radio exist today?), a country station, an alternative station, a funk station, a talk-radio station, and so on. While the rap station and the alternative station do passable jobs of delivering the music of the era, you'll probably be able to quickly rattle off 10 or 15 songs you would've liked to have heard instead. With the inclusion of things like a country station and a classic-rock station, it almost seems like the game's developers felt the need to offset the game's thuggish subject matter, and ended up with a soundtrack that isn't quite as cohesive as Vice City's.

One neat thing is that the radio sounds different depending on which vehicle you're in--so, for example, the radio will sound appropriately tinny on a dirt bike. You can even go purchase a bass boost for your car at the mod shop, but considering the disposable nature of vehicles in a Grand Theft Auto game, we recommend you save your money. Also, it's worth noting that the radio stations are the same, regardless of where in the gameworld you are. It would have been neat to have seen some of your station selections change as you drive from one city to the next.

The DJs on the radio do a good job, and the radio commercials feature the same style of tongue-in-cheek humor that you've come to expect from the series. Some celebrities make appearances as DJs. Public Enemy's Chuck D plays the DJ of the classic-rap station, George Clinton mans the funk station, and Axl Rose turns in a low-key but appropriate performance as the DJ of the classic-rock station. The talk radio in the game is, for the most part, pretty good. The most impressive thing about the talk station is that the news breaks update as you play the game. So you'll hear updates about, for example, a "mysterious" ship full of dead bodies found floating out at sea shortly after that swimming mission of yours. Lazlow returns with some great "celebrity" interviews, but you'll also hear a sports show, a matchmaking program, and a gardening show whose host is played by the never subtle Andy Dick.

Usually, when a game tries to do a million different things, it's an overambitious hodge-podge that can't manage to get its different parts down cold. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has you doing many, many more things than any previous GTA game, and while some of them do work a little better than others, the strength of all these different gameplay elements--too many to count--makes for a powerful package that does not disappoint, despite the extremely high standards that Grand Theft Auto established and that San Andreas needed to live up to. With its strong story, well-written dialogue, terrific voice cast, impressive graphics, great in-game sound, and extremely entertaining and varied gameplay, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a stupendous thrill ride that shouldn't be missed.