Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

by Rockstar Games

Product Features

• Drive through the largest GTA environment ever -- The game has three cities players can explore, for a gaming area 5 times larger than Vice City
• Recruit new characters into a street gang and take over by leading drive-by shootings against rivals
• Steal all-new vehicles, including bicycles
• Improved fighting elements -- smoother hand-to-hand combat, plus the ability to hold a weapon in each hand
• New graphic elements as cars get dirty and even rust, the longer you drive them

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007ZD79E
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: June 6, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,095 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Five years ago, Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas, a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption. Now he’s back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But Carl's family is in dire straits and his friends are headed for disaster. To make matters worse, he's just been framed for homicide. Join Carl on his journey across the state of San Andreas as he fights to save his family and take back control of the streets.

Features:

• Sights: Become part of Carl's world through the astounding graphics of the Xbox. Experience dynamic weather, from sunshine to smog. Relive the last 30 seconds of outrageous gameplay with instant replays!
• Sounds: Listen to San Andreas, now sonically invigorated for the Xbox. Use custom soundtracks to craft your own personalized radio station of early 1990s anthems.
• Space: Explore three huge cities on San Andreas, an island almost six times the size of Vice City. Visit deserts, rolling countryside, truck stops, secret military base, forest, mountains, and dozens of small towns.
• Speed: take control of BMX bikes, motorcycles, aircraft, trucks, cars, boats, hovercraft, and more.
• Style: pimp your ride with a custom sound system, nitro packs, rims, bumpers, upholstery, and other options.
• Sports: play mini-games like basketball, pool, dancing, low-rider hopping, Vegas games, and old-school arcade games.
• Support: use two-player cooperative mode for certain objectives.

Product Description

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas brings back the incredible action of the hit game series. Carl Johnson left the San Andreas neighborhood of Los Santos five years ago, when it was being ripped apart by drugs and gangs. When he returns in the early 90s, his mother has been killed, his family has fallen apart and childhood friends are criminals. Crooked cops frame Carl for murder, and he decides to save himself and his family - by taking over the streets. Advanced role-playing elements -- Unlike previous GTA characters, Carl can swim and he needs to eat to survive Side missions help develop skills that come into play later -- from working out at the gym to gambling in a casino

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great game with just a few flaws, October 19, 2005

By 

E A Glaser (Delft, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Video Game)

I hadn't played any of the other Grand Theft Auto games before I got "San Andreas" for the Xbox, but I pretty much knew what to expect before I started playing it. Still, the game exceeded my expectations and is a blast to play. Allow me to list the things I like about it, before I make a few complaints:

You control a character named CJ in a free-ranging storyline that takes you to three different cities. The game world feels big, and the quests will take you to every part of the map. Although the three cities are just a tiny fraction of the size of the real cities they're representing (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas), they still contain lots of different neighborhoods and it will take ages to explore each one. (And you will have an incentive to explore each city carefully, as each one is full of a different kind of easter egg you can collect to improve your final score.) The ghettos of Las Santos, the hippie areas of San Fierro and the neon glitz of Las Venturas all nicely reflect the popular images of the cities they're imitating. In between the cities there are woods, a desert, waterways, mountains, farms -- the design of the game world was done with lots of care and attention to detail.

I love the multiple radio formats. It's great to cycle through the stations and pick appropriate music for the current setting and mission. And I normally listen to rock and hip-hop, but even the reggae and country music stations in "San Andreas" sound good to me. They obviously spent some time in assembling the songs to get a representative list for each genre, and I dig being able to hear stuff from bands like L7 and Black Uhuru that I'm not familiar with. The DJs do fine work as well; Chuck D as the bombastic old-school rap DJ ("I don't even get paid to do this! I spin these records as a public service!") and Axl Rose as the classic rock DJ (and former lead singer of ersatz band "Crystal Ship") are wonderfully self-aware parodies. I would have liked to have a classic jazz station too or a spoof on NPR, but really -- I have nothing to complain about because the radio aspect of "San Andreas" is exceptional. Even the commercials are wickedly satirical.

I love the varied gameplay. Of course you do a lot of driving in "San Andreas", but there are over 100 different vehicles, from monster trucks to sports cars to bicycles to helicopters. Bouncing through the streets of hilly San Fierro on a motorcycle is a genuine thrill. Many of the quests are of the "deliver this package" or "kill that informant" variety, but there are plenty of more original ones, such as one where you have to drive around with a Mafia guy tied down to your hood until he's scared enough to squeal, one where you street-race a souped-up low-rider through Los Santos, and even one where you have to dance to the rhythm of a particular song to allow you to jack a van full of audio equipment.

The optional side quests are also terrific -- you can assume the role of an ambulance driver, a delivery courier, a vigilante policeman, a fireman, a car thief, a taxi driver -- there are always things you can do outside of the main quest line. There are minigames galore, such as training sessions for driving and flying; you can play pool for money against the shark at the local bar; arcade games at the convenience store; even a demolition derby. You can also get extra money for doing "insane" stunts, like driving off the side of a mountain and bailing out with a parachute.

The details are well-realized too. There are about seven classes of guns in the game, from a pistol-with-silencer to a sawed-off shotgun to a sniper rifle. You can perform melee attacks with items such as a pool stick, a samurai sword, a chainsaw or a bunch of flowers. You can buy all manner of clothes for CJ -- I have him wearing the "Helmut", a spiked metal helmet that makes him look Prussian, sort of. You can get different tattoos and hair styles. You can date different girls with different temperaments. You'll recognize a lot of Hollywood stars among the voice actors, but even the non-famous voice work is good.

And my niggling complaints:

I know that "shooty" games are harder to interface with on consoles than on PCs, because joysticks don't allow as much accuracy as mice when aiming, but "San Andreas" makes it TOO easy by allowing you to press a button to auto-aim at enemies in front of you. I know this game is cartoonishly violent (that's one of its strong points), but it still seemed unbalanced to me that I could single-handedly mow down ten or twenty enemies just by crouching and quickly cycling through them with the auto-aim.

Also, I know that this is very much an adult game, with tons of swearing and violence -- I don't mind that. It seems slightly strange to me though that "bitches" and "hos" are so common (one mission description even says "Take the ho downtown to the hotel"), but I've heard no racial epithets in the game. These characters would definitely be throwing around the "n-word" to each other if their slangy conversation were true-to-life. I guess it wasn't worth the controversy to include it.

And I seriously wish you could drive a bus in the game. How funny would it be if CJ was able to jack a school bus and do a mission where he had to pick up a bunch of kids and take them to school? I don't blame the makers of the game for not including kids anywhere though -- it's not a game for (or about) children in any way.

But as you can see, my complaints are pretty small. "San Andreas" is hilariously profane, over-the-top violent, satirical, varied, open-ended, detailed, funny -- it's practically the perfect game.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very fun game with only minor flaws., July 2, 2005

A Kid's Review

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Video Game)

Grand Theft Auto is the latest game in the GTA series. It has incredibly better graphics and features not 1 city but 4 making it the largest in the series. When finishing missions unlike in the previous GTA games sometimes you will earn respect instead of or in addition to money. Respect reflects how the other people in the gang think of you and in turn, how many you can recruit to follow you. The custimization of your cars and character has been added including paint jobs, hydrolics, eating, haircuts, tatoos, and thousands of combinations of clothing. Another new feature is the "sim like" ability to eat and get fat, work out, etc. There are also many more vehicles in SA including bicycles, ATV's, dune buggys, many different kinds of planes, a Hunter helicoptor that doesn't take forever to get like in Vice City, and the ability to parachute from high places. The ability to recruit gang members to follow you is a bonus, for you can use their help when taking over other gang territories in the city or in completing missions. The character is very original and the environment and story give you a feel for what it is really like there. There are no major flaws in the game, although i found the multiplayer lacking. The two players are on one screen with an overhead view, making aiming difficult. The cheats that can be used in this game are incredible varying from one hit kill punches, to instantly spawning a Hydra (plane with homing missles). I want to add that to people who say this game is terrible and it should be banned, that your are idiots. There's something a little thing called freedom of expression that you might want to check out. It is one thing if you don't want your own kid playing it or something, but to try to take it away from people that are mature enough to play it is wrong. It's only a game and just because someone plays a violent game doesn't make them a violent person. And I think that a lot of kids are mature enough to play this game and know that it is only a game and not something you should do in real life. If your kid can't see the difference between the game and real life than that is an excuse to not let them play it, but don't take one kid being stupid after playing a voilent game out on those of us kids who know the difference. In conclusion this is a game I strongly recommend to anyone who is mature enough to play it.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So much to do, so much time., June 6, 2005

A Kid's Review

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Video Game)

GTA San Andreas is a big improvement over the past GTA games in the series! There are just so many things to do. My personal favorite is the co-op mode. I also like customizing my ride, doing drive-bys (in cars and helicopters), jumping off of a building and parachuting, plus the simple goodness of shooting the hell outta whoever you want. Also the Xbox version has smoother graphics than the PS2 version and you can add your own custom soundtracks to the game. Overall, the Xbox Version of GTA San Andreas is much better than ANY other game of the GTA series, even the PS2 version of San Andreas. Buy NOW! (P.S. I'm not a kid, I just lost my password.)