Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto III defined the 3D open-world genre, and Vice City gave it style, but Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas perfected the formula. It stands as a monumental sequel that realizes the potential of its open-world sandbox more successfully than all of its predecessors combined. Even decades later, its legacy looms large over the gaming industry, setting a benchmark for ambition, expression, and scale that few games have managed to match.

A huge part of that lasting impact comes down to the narrative and cast. While Vice City had a cohesive story with real characters and driving motivators, San Andreas connects on a much deeper level thanks to CJ. His voice actor delivers an incredible performance that makes him witty, endearing, ambitious yet cautious, and highly relatable. You feel connected to CJ immediately as an underdog fighting for his place in the city and within his own family. The supporting cast is equally brilliant, anchoring this massive interpretation of California and Nevada. Samuel L. Jackson oozes charisma as Officer Tenpenny, making every moment with the corrupt antagonist memorable.

Driven by this incredible cast, the game feels like an odyssey and a real adventure. It pushes and pulls you all across its huge map, from Los Santos and San Fierro to Las Venturas and the woods and deserts in between. I never really disliked the empty areas, as they offer enough time and room to breathe between missions, take in the sights, and enjoy some classic 90s hip hop. The sheer scale is easily one of its greatest strengths, adding up to make the entire journey feel grand.

The missions that populate this world are punchy, varied, and full of Rockstar's trademark satirical cynicism, constantly keeping you on your toes. One moment you are controlling RC helicopters or sneaking through a rapper's mansion stabbing goons in the shadows, and the next you are chasing trains on dirt bikes, running from gangbangers on a bicycle, or running into a burning building to save a girl who later becomes your girlfriend.

To complement the gameplay, San Andreas introduces numerous RPG and customization systems that give the player massive options for expression, though they can be a mixed bag in execution. You can visit barbers, tattoo parlors, clothing stores, and car mod shops, or eat at restaurants and work out. I love that actions have stats tied to them acting as slow progression rewards; upgrading gun proficiency to dual-wield pistols or strafe with a rifle adds real mechanical depth. However, the game expands so quickly that veering off the story path often offers very little gain, and the menus are annoyingly padded with slow unskippable animations for buying food or trying on clothes which made me feel discouraged from participating in them. Car customization feels like an utter waste of time and money since abandoned vehicles disappear forever, prompting me to just steal cars as I went. The stats also lead to questionable design choices: once buff, it feels impossible not to stay buff by accident, and hunger eventually stops mattering entirely (which might be a Definitive Edition bug). The absolute worst offender is a mid-to-late game mission requiring a high swimming stat to proceed. Because the game never pushed you to swim beforehand, it forces a twenty-minute grind that could have been avoided by sprinkling mandatory swimming sections into earlier missions.

This issue of backloading mechanics rears its head again near the end of the game with the gang warfare system. The game introduces the player to the system of turf wars very early on— basically you enter a rival gang's turf, kill some of those gang members, and boom: turf war. Three waves of enemies will come at you within that turf and when you kill them all, that turf is yours and you net a little bit of recurring profit from it. The issue is that after this tutorial, you could (and probably will) completely forget about this system because it's simultaneously unimportant (driving and wandering through rival turf doesn't amount to anything really) and inconvenient (as the story pushes you out of Los Santos later in the game) until you are required to take over a bunch of turf right at the end. This doesn't sound too bad and perhaps may even sound fun, but the issue is that you are entirely at the mercy of the NPC spawn system which determines when and how many friendly gang members spawn that you can recruit for the war, as well as the rival gang members required to initiate that war. This process is made drastically worse by the fact that the city is in a state of riot at this point in the story. Cars are exploding, random fights are breaking out, and your recruits are constantly dying to the chaos while you desperately look for the three rival gang members necessary to start a war. Like the swimming stat, mandatory turf defense should have been sprinkled throughout the story so you aren't forced to grind it all at the end. Furthermore, the property system did not learn from its implimentation in Vice City; you still have to visit assets in person to collect earnings instead of the money funneling to your home base, which is especially egregious in San Andreas due to its extremely large map.

Despite these design frustrations and a handful of Definitive Edition dings, it is hard to stay mad at San Andreas. The remaster still suffers from missing radio song titles, a lack of innovations such as fast travel taxis, and auto-aim that is too sticky and poor at target prioritization. Yet, these are mostly just minor speed bumps. It genuinely feels like San Andreas was Grove Street Games' favorite entry to work on, seeing as it received the most quality-of-life improvements and even lent its sound effects to the other games in the trilogy package when it first launched. And that labor of love is obvious because this is a great way to play the game.

The sprawling ambition pays off spectacularly in the final act, making those early character investments incredibly rewarding. Spoiler hits hard, leading to a satisfying final boss fight even if I wish his endgame dialogue explained Spoiler a bit better. This is immediately followed by a fantastic, action-packed final chase against Spoiler driving a fire truck with Spoiler dangling from the ladder, ending with the antagonist's demise right back in the Grove.

San Andreas is a 90s hip-hop odyssey where the only thing more dangerous than a five-star wanted level is waiting for the cashier to hand over your fast food.