Grand Theft Auto San Andrea - Game Review

Its every game developer's dream for their game to make headlines and get people excited, but no other game has received as much attention, controversy, popularity, and success as GTA: San Andreas. The entire franchise was already a huge success, and gamers worldwide were excited to see what Rockstar Games had in store for them.

They had to make it bigger than the already larger than life GTA: 3 and GTA: Vice City. And boy, did they deliver –big time. This iconic game was such a hit that it was a major success on s variety of platforms –PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. So, let's dive in deeper and understand how Rockstar Games created Carl Johnson and captured the hearts and attention of every gamer worldwide.

To start it off, I loved how huge this game is, while still leaving me amazed at how I managed to memorize the extremely large map of this game. This GTA title wasn't based on one city, but it covered three major cities that were similar to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. In the fictional U.S state of San Andreas, they're called them Los Santos, Las Venturas, and San Fierro respectively.

I loved how they meticulously designed each city to be similar to the real-life counterparts, but with their own special twists of course. It didn't need to be accurate, but they did an amazing job presenting to us the parts they thought were important and were worthy to see. I think the world design was perfect; it had a few glitches here and there, but it was amazing to explore and travel across those three cities.

The game starts off with Carl going back home to bury his mom, after receiving a call from his brother Sweet telling him about her passing. CJ was very reluctant to go back home, but he had to any way out of respect and because deep down he loved his mom. But of course, old habits die hard and he bumps into officer Tenpenny, a dirty cop who manipulates a lot of the gangs in the city.

CJ and his family are part of the Grove Street Families gang and they are the mortal enemies of the Ballas gang. I loved how the story pans out and the plotline was just too good compared to the previous games. Even though it's based on gangster culture from the early 90s, it was still very fun to play and see what happens. I thought it was a major shock and surprise the first time I played it to the end and found out that Smoke was a bad guy all along. 

I loved how each character had a story and had special interactions with CJ. You can see that there was a bond -hatred, and love- between CJ and most of the people he interacted with. The game follows the notion of family and camaraderie and is not just about one person.

I loved how diverse the characters were and it was so unique and interesting to see this many. I think they did an excellent job with the voice acting. Everyone did a great job, especially Samuel L. Jackson's officer Tenpenny   

The graphics in this game were better than the previous titles and it showed some texture updates, but it followed the same pattern of simplicity. It wasn't showing us a real hand or finger movements and if interactions weren't in a cutscene, then you didn't see a lot of mouth movements or facial expressions either.

But honestly, I didn't mind that. The minimalistic style gave the game more character and the developers made up for that with its amazing setting and captivating storyline.