Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas(tm) Official Strategy Guide (Signature) (Paperback)

by Rick Barba (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Let BradyGames Be Your Partner in Crime in San Andreas!

BradyGames' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide features a step-by-step walkthrough. Mission strategies to achieve every objective and detailed maps. Coverage of new character abilities, plus a showroom of all vehicles. Game secrets and hidden packages! Signature Series guide includes bonus content, a premium foldout, and much more! BradyGames is Official and Exclusive on this title. Platform: PlayStation 2 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the latest game in the world-renowned Grand Theft Auto franchise. The game features several new elements and revolves around three cities--Los Santos (based on Los Angeles), San Fierro (based on San Francisco), and Las Venturas (based on Las Vegas). Each city is relatively the size of Vice City--making it clear what the magnitude of the game is. Some of the new elements in this game include four-person drivebys, house break-ins and robberies, character abilities such as eating and swimming and more. The visual effects have also been improved with things like real-time reflections, fully rendered interior environments, and new camera controls. The storyline, set in the early 90s, centers on Carl Johnson, a man who escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas, five years ago. Now Carl's got to go home, and on his return to the neighborhood, he is framed for homicide.

About the Author

Take Two Interactive Software, Inc., headquartered in New York City, is an integrated global developer, marketer, distributor, and publisher of interactive entertainment software games and accessories for the PC, PlayStation®, PlayStation®2, Xbox , Nintendo Game Boy Color, Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Game Boy Advance. The Company publishes and develops products through various wholly owned subsidiaries including: Rockstar Games, Rockstar North, Gotham Games, Gathering of Developers, TalonSoft, Joytech, PopTop, and Global Star. The Company maintains sales and marketing offices in Cincinnati, New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Copenhagen, Milan, Sydney and Auckland. Take-Two's common stock is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the symbol TTWO. For more corporate and product information please visit our website at www.take2games.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: BRADY GAMES (October 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0744004292
• ISBN-13: 978-0744004298
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,318 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars They should have modeled it after the Vice City guide..., December 15, 2004

By	Steve Wainstead (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews

In addition to the things others have pointed out -- the inaccuracies in the maps and screenshots -- I find the guide hard to use. For example, the map for all the hidden horseshoes in Las Venturas is about 100 pages away from the screenshots of all the locations. The Vice City guide was a great guide, very high on usability. You'll spend a lot of time flipping back and forth with this one. The typeface is really tiny, and the mission descriptions tend to be very simplistic (at least the VC guide gave you some actual strategy tips; much less so, I think, with this guide).

It's big and slick and pretty to leaf through... but that can't justify its cost. You will find less than 50% of what the game has to offer without it, so you're stuck with buying it. Brady should publish a second edition with corrections, or at least publish online corrected versions of the maps and an errata page.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars One Of The Worst Guides Ever Written, June 28, 2005

By	Matt Benecke (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This strategy guide was so bad that I actually wrote a letter of complaint to BradyGames. I am a huge fan of their guides and purchase them for nearly every game that I own that has a BradyGames guide. The San Andreas guide, however, is an embarrassment to what is usually a very thorough and respectable company.

For someone who is simply playing the game and needs maps to get around then this guide should be perfect. If, however, you are a fanatic who is seeking to get 100% in the game then there are some major concerns that you should know about.

1) The number of Horseshoes that you need to collect is 50, not 100 as it is stated in the book.

2) Something like 4 or 5 of the photos for the Horseshoes are incorrect. I think they are taken from a Beta version of the game.

3) Nearly ALL of the Photo Op pictures are associated with the wrong locations.

4) There are at least a dozen weapons locations that are incorrect and three locations list weapons that do not exist in the game.

In terms of strategy and graphical content the guide is great, but outside of that I don't feel it is really worth the purchase. You can find many other guides that are more detailed (and correct!) for free if you look online.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some inaccuracies, especially where it counts, November 3, 2004

By	Erik R. Impson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Odds are you are buying this guide to complete the game to its fullest. While it will certainly get you closer to completion a lot faster than just running around aimlessly, you should know that there are a lot of errors in it.

It will get you through the missions okay, but the maps leading you to collectible items are horrible. One map has the items marked half an inch to the left of where they actually are. On another the numbers do not match up to the corresponding screenshots AT ALL, and it's the one where you need the screenshots the most. There are numerous other incorrect pictures and descriptions. And the screenshots are tiny! They wasted a ton of space printing artwork from the game, but skimped on the useful stuff.

Also, in several places you can see that they had a slightly different version of the game to work from. Detail on the maps is terrible and does not always match what's on your screen.

If you are looking for a guide I would still recommend it simply because there is nothing else out there. Just don't expect this to get you to 100% completion.