Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

aka: GTA: San Andreas, GTA:SA, Grand Theft Auto: Sin City
Moby ID: 15393
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

The events of the game take place in the early 1990s. The player takes control of Carl Johnson (C.J.), who had moved to Liberty City in order to distance himself from his past as a member of a gang in his home city, San Andreas. But the past catches up with him in a way he had not imagined: he finds out that his mother was killed by a rival gang. He goes back to San Andreas to attend her funeral. Realizing how corrupted local police is, seeing how his relatives and friends need him, determined to avenge his mother's death, C. J. has no other choice but to revert to his old ways.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the fifth game in the GTA series. The basic premise remains the same: roam the "sandbox" environments, hijack cars, and complete missions to advance the story. The game's world is significantly larger than in its two immediate predecessors, encompassing three cities and a vast countryside between them, with smaller towns, mountains, rivers, and other places of interest. The interactivity with the environment is enhanced since the player character can now swim and dive, being able to access every corner of the game world.

The missions vary in structure and gameplay, including chases, races, longer and more intense third-person shooter sequences, as well as a wide variety of vehicles to navigate, which range from different new types of cars (such as lowriders), bicycles, motorcycles, to boats, helicopters, planes, trains, and exotic devices such as monster trucks and jetpacks. Some of the missions involve recruiting gang members and attacking turfs belonging to rival gangs.

As in the previous games, there are many activities to perform outside of the missions. Working as a taxi driver, taking part in races, delivering sick people to the hospital, etc., return from the preceding games in the series. San Andreas adds many new activities of its own, some of them with a role-playing flavor. C.J. can go to the gym and work out, increasing his stamina. From time to time he has to eat - though overeating will make him look fatter. He is also able to have romantic relationships with certain female characters, asking them out for dinner, giving them presents, etc.

Spellings

  • 侠盗车手:圣安地列斯 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 俠盜獵車手:聖安地列斯 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 93% (based on 138 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 431 ratings with 10 reviews)

The gaming mecca.

The Good
San Andreas has beautiful graphics, from the sun rising to every single rain drop falling it looks amazing. The vehicles are incredibly realistic with bumpers, doors, headlights and windows can all be broken. There is a lot of missions that will keep you hooked and plenty of side-missions. It has a soundtrack for everyone's taste and the True Grime billboard is hilarious.

The Bad
The incredible amount of glitches like falling through the floor, the unmarked pay n' spray and if you kill someone when they're on the floor they stand up and suddenly fall. The missions are a bit too long, hard and sometimes boring.

The Bottom Line
If you can afford one game, buy this. It's the greatest game ever made.

PlayStation 2 · by James Kitson (2) · 2005

I am a bit too mature for this.

The Good
The Grand Theft Auto series is always one of the best sandbox games out there and you could probably lose hours in this game by just driving around, fighting gang members and police officers. I used to play a lot of Vice City and I know how great it feels to take down helicopters with the rocket launcher and fight off hundreds of soldiers afterwards before driving off in one of their tanks. The fun of dicking around has remained intact with this new installment and with new additions it only got better.

If you ever get bored of the same boring old town there is the option to take a car and head straight for the countryside. This redneck-infested land full of farms and tractors is a very welcome refreshment and home to some of the most insane missions in the entire story mode. The best thing about it is that like in Red Dead Redemption it is different enough by removing a lot of the buildings, but it stays interesting due to the rough and dangerous nature of the outside world.

There is the option to play this game with a friend, allowing you to tear up Grove Street with not one, but two crazed murderers. The trick is that there are these symbols which allow you to have a second player join in, this will have both of you on a shared screen (so you can't move too far away from each other) and both of you play like you normally would alone. The fun thing is that it doesn't limit your options too much, you can still use cheats and do all the stuff you'd otherwise do alone.

The Bad
I am usually the one defending video games, but I have to admit that San Andreas is as racist as it can possibly get. You take on the role of Carl Johnson, a black ex-gangster who returns to his city to join up with his old gang again. I swear almost 90% of the characters in this game are black and every single one of them uses more than three swear words in every sentence they say and every single one of them is either using drugs or constantly talks about gang violence and murder like an eight year old after watching a Mission Impossible box set. There is simply nothing dignified about any of the characters, you are in no way any better than the people you are trying to kill and, like other reviewers have pointed out, the things you are ordered to do border on the psychotic.

Every single mission within the story mode has to be finished in order to complete the game, there is not a single one you can skip or reserve for later, you have to do every mission within a chapter to unlock the next ones. Most of the time it doesn't even make sense, such as the missions from OG Loc which all involve stealing stuff for him or killing people he doesn't like to boost his rap career (that he doesn't have). There are like four missions and none of them help the gang and he never does anything for it in return.

This also adds the problem that you are naturally not going to be good at everything, especially not in a game with such a broad supply of mechanics. You might be good at gunning down people, but a sniper might be too much for you. Or you might be really good at sneaking, but suck at driving. The mission where I decided I had enough of this game was in the earlier mentioned countryside where I had to race over the rocky terrain against insanely fast cars that I couldn't steal anywhere in the area. I think I managed to drive like eleven cars into the water at one godforsaken turn before I banished the disc to the back of my collection.

If you fail a mission you don't just start it over, hell the option is not even given to you. If you die during a mission you are transported to a hospital where they take a part of your money away and ALL your weapons. So if you died during a very tough mission with lots of combat, you'll get to eat shit when you have to do that all over again with maybe the starting pistol and a SMG if you are lucky. However, if you simply fail the mission because a character escapes or a friend dies, you will simply have to drive ALL THE DAMN WAY back to the location where you started the mission.

The auto-targeting was probably what caused the most deaths that I encountered. In the heat of battle it is very likely you are going to want to quickly switch between targets, but the targeting system has no sense of priority and will assume that after murdering one of the twelve gang members firing at you, you will be in a rather cruel mood and switch to a random NPC located somewhere behind a wall. I suppose you could say that I should aim myself than, but that doesn't work very well either.

A game should really be ashamed when missing textures and rendering problems are not the exception, but the standard. I am not really one for graphics, but roughly 70% of the time there is always something wrong with this game and its textures. Sometimes they get all blurry, sometimes they are somewhere they shouldn't be (too high or too low) and sometimes they are just not there, leaving me walking on thin air or hitting a wall at full speed that appears five seconds afterwards. It looks terrible, it creates huge problems for gameplay and it shows the developers took no time to polish this game at all.

The game is rather determined to make you date some of its characters, but as you might have expected after reading the first problem I mentioned none of the characters are really likable and this includes the females too. At first I wanted to ignore these missions altogether, but then the game would throw me to death with notifications telling me their status with them had decreased. I tried to ignore it, but when I arrived on the countryside I was FORCED to do missions with one of most despicable characters ever, each and every single one of them was a "date" in its own psychotic way. I felt insulted to be saddled up with this stain of a character and then I was even forced again into hearing one of those off-screen "sex-scenes" that is just two minutes of female moaning. This is sickening, this is displaying a lack of respect for the female race and for the personality traits she had been given (won't spoil) and this can't be justified solely by pointing at the rating on the box.

Finally and fatally, there is a severe lack of pacing. I already mentioned that the story is stuffed with missions that don't have anything to do with it, but to top it off the few missions that do have something to do with them are very repetitive and show little to no progress. You just go around robbing places, killing a few enemies and going to a few meetings until the chapter ends with one or two missions that actually change the world around you. After robbing a military base I couldn't see any gang-members using new guns or after doing a drive-by on some local enemies I didn't notice a decrease in enemy presence, so why did I have to do them? I tell you why: It is too pad out the game as much as they possibly could.

The Bottom Line
San Andreas could be a pretty decent game if it would focus on what made Vice City so much more edible: organized crime, dignified characters and humor that relied on absurdity rather than on swearing. Instead the game suffers heavily from psychotic and immature design and writing that displays a severe lack of respect for the problems it addresses and gives enemies of the industry more ammunition against us. I have nothing against a game that wants to play to the violence crowd, but at least Vice City did it with a sense of restraint.

If you are in dire need of a ton of violence and you are one of those people who skip every cut-scene and enter entire lists of cheats before firing at a single enemy than this game is quite edible due to the fact you will miss all the idiocy anyway. Anybody with a sense of self-respect and with an intelligence higher than that of a plank should stay far away from this game and try Red Dead Redemption instead.

PlayStation 2 · by Asinine (957) · 2011

A great game with a lot you can do.

The Good
In one word, this game is: Freedom. Freedom to do anything you want. Be anything you want. Do-gooder. Fireman. MEDIC!!! Delivery man. Pimp. Arsonist. Scene kid. Some gay hobo who stands at a corner all day. And, best of all, criminal.

The gameplay is, in my opinion, the definition of a "sandbox style game". R* did not have to put all of the stuff they put in it. But they did anyway. That is what I wish all game producers would do: focus on the game, not the fancy-shmansy graphics.

Speaking of graphics, they're... wellllll... not horrible. But not great either. Granted, it is quite old. But they do quite suck badly. But they aren't bad.

The story is your typical "gang vs. law" story. Not too bad, but kind of generic to me. But story isn't too important. A good story is nice, but it's still gameplay that counts. The characters are funny and memorable, however (especially Caesar and Wu Zi Mu).

The music is a mixed bag for me. I hate rap, but even I heard a few decent ones here. I find country utterly repulsive and bad, even here. The funk station has catchy songs. The classic rock station is okay. The alt. rock is pretty good. Master Sounds is also very good. But WCTR, while it has no music, is all of the music I need.

However, the sound isn't too great. Most weapons sound nothing like their real versions. For instance, the rocket launchers in game are like "Fwoooooo... boom.", but real ones are more like "PWOOOoow.... BOOM!" (I think...lol).

One of the best parts of the game in the sound department is definitely the dialog. Lines such as "You're between me and the joohnn!!!!!!" and "I'm too high fo' dis shit- MOVE!" make this the only time traffic jams are good. Many others like "Do ya showa in doo-doo?" and "Don't matta 'cus I'm short, I hit hard!" make me laugh very hard.

The Bad
There was very little I had to complain with. The camera was not very good and there were the occasional frustrating deaths. Also, you clearly can't put mods here, so that REALLY sucks. That is why I'm getting the PC version soon.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this game is an absolute masterpiece of games this style. I recommend it to any one who like shooting, spying, laughing, and having fun.

PlayStation 2 · by Deleted (197) · 2021

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
This... damn... Learning To Fly mission!! Unicorn Lynx (181780) May 17, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Australian release

Sex and nudity in computer games is unacceptable in Australia. As if to prove this, the Attorney-General of that country launched an investigation into claims that users who owned GTA: San Andreas could unlock a hidden sex scene in the game using the "Hot Coffee" mod. On July 29, 2005, this investigation saw San Andreas lose its MA15+ rating, which means that the game can no longer be sold in the country.

However, a revised version of the game was submitted on September 12, 2005. This modified version had the offending content removed.

Big Foot

Thousands of Gamers, are Looking for a "Big Foot", and attempting to take pictures of it from the in-game camera. No one has yet confirmed its existence, but many photos gamers have taken resemble an rather big feature in the woods. Trees uprooted, and weird noises can be heard in the section of the map called "Back o Beyond". Also many alien and ghost sightings have been reported.

Billboard

One of the missions early in the game (in Los Santos) ends with your gang jumping out of the car just before it goes right through a billboard and explodes on a highway. Before this happens, the billboard bears a standard commercial with the inscription: "Taste of things to come". However, after the car has passed through it, you'll see that the middle part of it has been destroyed. If you examine the billboard again, it will read: "Taste of... come". Try pronouncing the sentence without thinking of the spelling, and you'll realize it is another example of the game's "nasty" sense of humor.

Cities

The three cities in San Andreas and other areas in the game represent real locations in western America. Los Santos represents Los Angeles, with its high crime rate and street gangs, as well the "Vineland" sign hanging over the north of the city representing the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. San Fierro represents San Francisco, and includes many striking similarities with San Francisco like the Golden Gate Bridge, the fort under the bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Lombard Street, and the steep streets of San Francisco. Las Venturas represents Las Vegas, with its casinos and the "Las Venturas Strip".

Also, many other areas in the game represent areas in western America. The woodlands in San Andrea represent the great redwood forests found in California. In the desert area, the restricted area section is obviously Area 51, the dam is the Hoover Dam, the big satellite represents the SETI program, the Indian reservation pokes fun at Indian casinos, and the abandoned airfield is reminiscent of aircraft graveyards found throughout the southwest. All of these things can be found in the southwest of the America.

As well, the initials of San Andreas's cities are the same of those of the cities in real life. While Los Santos does not work for it, San Fierro has the same initials and first word as San Francisco, and Las Venturas has the same initials and first word as Las Vegas.

As well, when turned to the side, the map looks strikingly like the state of California next to the state of Nevada, with the river between being the state border.

The Watts Towers in East Los Santos should have been placed in Ganton because East Los Santos is based on East Los Angeles and Ganton more resembles the Watts district found in South Central Los Angeles, where the famous towers are located.

Gangs

The gangs of San Andreas are based on real gangs in California and elsewhere. They are changed around by colors and names. * Orange Grove Street Families: Color is Green, located in Ganton. Based on Crips. Their color is Blue and located in Compton. * Temple Drive Ballas: Color is Purple and located in Greater Los Santos. Based on Bloods. Their color is Red and located in Compton. * Varrios Los Aztecas: Color is Turquoise and located in East Los Santos. Based on Los Surrenos XIII. Their color is Blue and lcoated in Southern California. * San Fierro Rifa: Color is Green and located in San Fierro. Based on Los Nortenos XIV. Color is Red and located in Northern California.

Golden Gate bridge

If you search in the surroundings of the "Golden Gate" bridge (going from the north and taking a path to the left), you will find a sign with interesting information about the bridge that connects Las Venturas and San Fierro. This sign shows us the "bridge facts" which are:* length - 150.7 m * height - 60.3m above sea level * 16000 polygons inc. LODs * 600m draw distance * 11 textures * Takes up a staggering 1.27mb of disc space.

Guinness World Records

As of 2008, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is listed by Guinness World Records as the game with the largest in-game soundtrack and the largest voice cast in a video game.

Hot coffee mod

During development, "girlfriend missions" were planned. You could not only stop for coffee at their house, but also have a "mini-game" with them. All you needed to do was tap the keys to build up the excitement. Rockstar disabled this before shipping, but the Dutch gamer Patrick Wildenborg hacked into the PC version and re-enabled it. The mod can be downloaded here.

Said mod, dubbed "Hot Coffee" mod, became the downfall of the PC version. It sparked a huge controversy where politicians from all corners, including Hilary Clinton, starting bashing onto the ESRB.

Rockstar at first blamed the hackers for inserting the minigame into the code, but GameSpot later confirmed that the code for the minigame was already in the PS2 version and could be unlocked using hacking tools like Action Replay Max.

Following an investigation, the ESRB re-rated the game from M to AO, Rockstar stopped manufacturing the game immediately and worked on a new version that allegedly removed all traces of the mini-game.

Following the new AO rating, after the Hot Coffee scandal, several retailers such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City and even GameStop took the game off their shelves, as part of a policy not to sell Adult-Only software.

Hunter

The Hunter is AH-64A Apache. The only flaw is the cockpit isn't as big and it holds only one person, instead of two.

References

  • In the mission titled Wrong Side of the Tracks there are some of the Hispanic gang standing by a billboard before they jump onto the train. The billboard has an advert which says True Grime - Street Cleaners the font is identical to the title of True Crime: Streets of L.A.
  • In the mission Madd Doggs Rhyms you have to sneak around Madd Doggs mansion. When you sneak past one of the gangsters who is playing a computer game he says "Tanner you suck". This is a poke to the main character in the Driver games.
  • In Zero's RC Shop there are action figures for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Manhunt on the shelves as well as other titles by Rockstar.
  • If you choose to steal oil from a gas station as the first mission for Catalina, you'll see, for a brief moment, the words "Max Pane - Bulletproof Windows" on the window, which is a reference to Max Payne series.
  • In Los Santos, head to the cemetery in Vinewood. Go into the crypt. Inside there is a couple of tombs, a TV set and some pizza boxes. This could be a reference to Spike's hideout in the TV series Buffy, The Vampire Slayer.

References to the game

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 10/2005.

Ryder

Ryder is influenced by the late rapper and former N.W.A member Eazy-E, who also founded Ruthless Records. The character design looks just like the rapper's signature look: Jheri Curls, black sunglasses, and the famous "Compton" cap replaced with San Andreas. But he is voiced by MC Ehit of Compton's Most Wanted, who provided the track "Hood took me under" for Radio Los Santos.

Eazy-E died March 26, 1995 at 6:35 PM from AIDS. He made peace between Ice Cube and Dr. Dre right before his death. His prodigy, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, made a song in honor of their mentor. By order of the Mayor of Compton, Eazy-E day is celebrated every year in Compton.

Sales

San Andreas eclipsed the sales of every other game in the United Kingdom on its launch weekend and even beat the UK's biggest ever film box office opening weekend, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It also received extensive mainstream media coverage, unlike any other game.

Tie-ins to the predecessors

  • The original Grand Theft Auto included three cities: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. Since the first two cities were remade for the PS2 (Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City), it made sense that the third city, San Andreas, would be the third game in the PS2 series. This, of course, held a huge role in the ongoing debate on whether the game would be titled "San Andreas" or "Sin City".
  • This game features numerous characters from the previous games built on the Grand Theft Auto III engine, including (but not limited to): Fido (main character from the first game), Salvatore Leone, Maria, Ken Rosenburg, Kent Paul, Maccer (from Lovefist), Catalina (who shoots Fido at the beginning of GTA3), and more.
  • In the mission "Farewell, My Love", Carl Johnson meets a man before entering a race. He does not say a word. This man is the "Silent Guy" or "Fido", the main character from GTA3.
  • The mission "Saint Mark's Bistro" has CJ travel to Liberty City to deal with the Forellis at the restaurant of the same name. The restaurant exterior is faithfully remodeled from Grand Theft Auto III.
  • A large neon sign of Avery Carrington can be found in downtown Las Venturas, a tribute to the real estate capitalist from GTA: Vice City. Being a real estate mogul, Carrington would have obviously wanted to get a piece of property in booming Las Venturas.

Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton got his role as Richard Burns after being interviewed by Lazlow Jones, the primary script writer for the Grand Theft Auto video game series. Wheaton admitted his abundant admiration for Jones' work on the games, and Jones eventually worked out the Richard Burns character specifically for Wheaton. He recorded the voice work in a Rockstar Games studio in about two hours.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Console Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Best Console Action Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Best Console Direction of the Year
    • 2004 – Best Console Voice-Acting of the Year
    • 2004 – Best Console Successor of the Year
    • 2005 – Best Licensed Soundtrack of the Year
  • Computer Games Magazine
    • March 2006 - #8 PC Game of the Year 2005
  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – #3 Game of the Year
    • 2004 – PS2 Game of the Year
    • 2004 – PS2 Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
    • 2005 – #3 Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2005 – #4 PC Game of the Year
    • 2005 – PC Action-Adventure of the Year
    • 2005 – Dumbest Controversy of the Year (PC) (for „Hot Coffee“)
    • 2005 – The Maxwell House Award for Hottest Coffee (Xbox)
  • GamePro (Germany) February 2004 - Best Console Game in 2004* February 2004 - Best Console Action Game in 2004

  • PC Powerplay (Germany)

    • Issue 04/2006 - #1 Action Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
    • Issue 02/2006 - #2 Best Game in 2005
    • Issue 02/2006 - #2 Action Game in 2005

Information also contributed by B14ck W01f, EboMike, Emepol, festershinetop, Matt Neuteboom, MegaMegaMan, Robb Sciere, tbuteler Tiago Jacques and Unicorn Lynx

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Baza.

Windows Phone added by Chris Jeremic. PlayStation 4 added by Flapco. Xbox One added by Kennyannydenny. Xbox, Android, Windows Apps, Windows, iPad, PlayStation 3, iPhone, Fire OS added by Sciere. Macintosh added by Kabushi. Xbox 360 added by Parf.

Additional contributors: rstevenson, Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, tarmo888, Sciere, Tiago Jacques, Big John WV, Paulus18950, SGruber, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, FatherJack.

Game added October 30, 2004. Last modified March 13, 2024.