Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ( DVD-ROM )
by Rockstar Games
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ( DVD-ROM )
Customer Review: gta
Summary: 5 Stars
This game is very fun you cam make belive your a gangstor and beat up people put is you do the police goes after you and is you fight back they will try to kill you or if you dond't fight back you will be busted and go to jail.Customer Review: Rockstar continues to move its biggest franchise forward at a steady pace with this, the sixth incarnation of the GTA series.
Summary: 5 Stars
The main appeal of the Grand Theft Auto franchise has always been the freedom it gives the player to explore vast amounts of territory and cause mayhem as he sees fit. San Andreas contains by far the most audacious expansion on the landmass available to you. This time the action takes place in California inspired locales such as Los Santos, San Fierro and the Las Vegas inspired Las Venturas, all within the enormous state of San Andreas. The main inspiration this time around is the fascination with ghetto culture that was so predominant in the early 90's. This provides a great opportunity for Rockstar to take advantage of the setting and implement some new challenges for the player to conquer. New to Grand Theft Auto is the concept of territory control, as a member of a street gang the player has the opportunity to take over every available territory in Los Santos later on in the game. Perhaps the most notable additions to the franchise are the ability to customize your character's appearance and improve his varied skills throughout the game. These may seem like rather superficial additions but they are surprisingly satisfying when implemented properly. The character's skill growth happens naturally and rarely interferes with the freeform exploration that players have come to expect from the series. The customization of your avatar varies greatly and encompasses most fashion styles found during the early `90s in California. The lower tier stores offer the usual assortment of baggy pants and sports jerseys while the more expensive stores offer suits, expensive jewelry and trendy fashions. Your characters appearance can be as varied as you want it to be and it does not stop at just clothes and tattoos, his physical fitness can also be changed.
The Grand Theft Auto franchise has improved in almost all aspects with each subsequent release and this one proves to be no different. As the last game in the series to use this outdated engine it pushes it as far as it can go in terms of graphical prowess. The graphics are slightly improved over the previous installment but they remain sub par to the standard featured in most games released around the same time. Nonetheless the visuals are quite effective as the sunsets fill San Andreas in an orange tint and the game's color palette faithfully replicates the feel of the early nineties California culture.
The soundtrack aptly replicates the time period which San Andreas draws its visual style from and perhaps the one complaint on this subject would be that Rockstar seems to try and encompass far too many genres of music. The expected genres can be found, such as Hip-Hop and Alternative Rock, both of which had a strong presence in the early nineties pop scene. However, some stations seem oddly out of place in the game world's era. Dance music and Funk each get their own stations yet it hardly seems worth it, although too much choice is never a bad thing. Making a welcomed return are the various radio station DJs, who each pepper the time between tracks with hilarious chat and amusing observations. For those that would prefer to listen to nothing but banter there are two radio stations with a talk radio format, one public station holding discussions on the day's political events and another with light talk shows. Either one of these stations is more than enough to keep the player amused for hours but just in case the PC version gives you the added bonus of playing your own MP3 tracks by adding them to the game's music library.
The sound effects themselves seem appropriate but never particularly impressive. There is the usual banter among pedestrians and the complaints from motorists as you pull them out of their vehicle and run off with their ride. All these things add a little bit of life to the game's large cities and the voice work varies enough to cover all the different geographical areas that San Andreas contains. The thick southern accents of the countryside inhabitants and the snobbish tone of the civilians in the rich neighborhoods are all present. The gunfire and explosions sound average, with not much improvement present since Vice City.
Despite the controversy that seems to follow every release in the series San Andreas is a praiseworthy title in and of itself. An engrossing action game that continues to expand its limits while continuing to deliver what fans of the series have come to expect.
Customer Review: not for pc
Summary: 2 Stars
this just sucks the main person just keeps running around.
He just keeps running and or walking which is controlled thru the key board.no fwd bike control,he won't peddle, but gos backwards quite well.Tryed different setups reloads and nothing worked.
Atleast I bought it used and for not much money.Maybe ill find a fix and try it again later.
Customer Review: terribly overrated - here's why
Summary: 2 Stars
this game is highly highly overrated. at first i thought it was really good too, until i started playing more. when you think of grand theft auto, you think of riding around, doing whatever you want, mugging people and killing cops, right? well, this game seems to embrace those gaming ideals, but unfortunately it's all a lie. this game is actually completely linear. if you want to ride around doing whatever you want, i've got news for you - first of all you won't have much to do, and second you'll be dead or in jail really quick. mug or kill someone and the police are on to you. there's a 5 star level of how wanted you are. at 2 stars, you'll be chased all over the map no matter where or how fast you go. you will not be able to kill the police or evade them. your only choice is to go to a spray shop, pay $100 to get your car painted so the cops won't recognize you. this gets old really fast. it's linear because there are actually missions you have to complete, and you can't pick and choose which ones to do. the missions are cool, but just now i played one where you have to win a lowrider hydraulics contest. you have to keep your hydraulics in time with the music. unfortunately i couldn't figure out how to do this or if i didn't know some of the controls, so i fail the mission, and i can't move forward in the game until i win the contest!! in my opinion that's really lame. it reduces this whole game to a simple "press this button in time with this music" game. yes, the music, the atmosphere and the dialogue is all wonderful and hilarious. driving around listneing to gangsta music and shooting people is fun. the details and ideas put into this game are really cool, but the design of the actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Customer Review: Incredible City, Cludgy Controls
Summary: 4 Stars
At first glance the average person might assume that the appeal of Grand Theft Auto is in the graphic violence, swearing and mature content but the truth is the GTA series is revolutionary technological achievement and remains one of the most impressive experiences you can find in gaming. The first time I ever tried GTA: Liberty City I was absolutely blown away by the size and scope of the fully realized, living city. It was the same feeling I got the first time I played Mario 64 in that I recognized that I was witnessing a major leap forward. Now almost 10 years later Rockstar has treated us with their latest effort, GTA: San Andreas.
Liberty City was the prototypical big east coast city while Vice City was a combination of Vegas and southern Florida. San Andreas takes gamers to the west coast with shades of San Francisco, LA and points in between. As always the city is gigantic and fully realized in a way that the True Crime series could only dream of. In fact I noticed a billboard in San Andreas mocking True Crime. GTA has always been about freedom; the freedom to walk, drive or bicycle wherever you want, the freedom to walk up and pop someone in the mouth if you want. Sure it's violent but consider it wish fulfillment for those of us with an inner anarchist who desires expression without the messiness of accountability. The only other game that even approached GTA's scale was Mafia but Mafia was saddled by unforgiving law enforcement that wouldn't even allow players to run red lights.
Unfortunately, not everything is sunshine and palm trees in San Andreas. The vehicles are extremely difficult to control. The problem is that the vehicle movement and camera angle work independently which means that when you make a turn using the keyboard you have to quickly swing the camera around using the mouse to realign yourself. Even after considerable practice I still found it very challenging and awkward. Shooting is likewise rather challenging to perform and I just don't remember it being this hard in the two previous games. The other surprise was how taxing the game is on my PC. I played the first two GTA on a significantly weaker machine and was surprised that I couldn't max out all settings on San Andreas. I had to pull in the drawing distance significantly to keep the frame rate up while using a P4 3.0 GHz with 1 Gig of memory and an ATI RADEON X600 graphics card.
I have to knock one star off because of the awkward controls but GTA is one of those games you could spend a month on and never get board. Just exploring the city is worth the price of admission.