Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is Rockstar's third entry the series since bringing the game into the 3D world and has seemed to trump its predecessors in most every conceivable way. The first thing you'll note as you watch the opening cinematic is the visuals. This time around, the character models have been drastically over-hauled, the models look surprisingly good even when compared with some of the other big name games out there today. Though it isn't just the character models that have been treated to a facelift - the cars look that much more realistic which is rather amazing considering how well off they were in Vice City. Water effects are much better done, waves hitting off of your boat have never looked better and swimming (yes, you read right, swimming ) looks very natural. The only real gripe I had with my experience visual wise is the bland look of the buildings, which are still much too indistinguishable to warrant my memorizing them.

The controls are still a bit cumbersome and can still hamper the overall experience of the game. Your character will still run into walls, run in circles when inside buildings and combat is still an exercise in frustration. The targeting has yet to be refined and is still every bit as clunky as it was in Vice City. Your character will often times aim for the man a good twenty five feet away from you as opposed to the guy holding a glock to your face three feet away. Driving, flying and Biking start off as a bit jerky but don't chalk this one up to a blunder on Rockstar's part. San Andreas supports a rather interesting RPG element that allows you to build your character's stats up and as you progress further and further you'll notice that driving, biking and flying all become much tighter.

One of the many hallmarks of the franchise since its leap to the third dimension - the soundtrack - makes a strong push forward to the series but doesn't quite help encompass the feel of the era like Vice City's 80's tunes were able to. Everything you knew and loved (or loved then hate now) is back, with one major exception - there's little representation of the grunge movement that was gigantic at the time. This is a serious drawback to people who enjoy SA but aren't big on rap. Also, another major gripe I had was the talk station. Whenever I play any GTA I instantly switched to Chatterbox or the VCPR or KChat . I was hoping San Andreas would go that much further and add three talk stations to its resume but sadly it opts to only give us one that is rather lacking in the amount of shows. There's not much to really complain about the sound effects in SA, except for the fact that they remain virtually unchanged from VC. Explosions, car crashes, pedestrians talking etc. all sound exactly the same. Voiceovers are done just as well as VC which isn't a bad thing as Vice City and SA both sport some of the best voiceovers the gaming community has to offer.

The basic premise of the story is one of betrayal, you begin the game as a young Carl "CJ" Johnson, a man five years removed from his hometown of Los Santos but makes his return to the west coast from, you guessed it, Liberty City. What starts as a trip to go to a funeral explodes into an all out gang war that includes a major plot twist. Don't, however, expect this to be your basic gangster flick. When the story begins to branch out into the other two areas offered in the game the story gets much more complex as alliances are made and broken. You'll do everything from getting a garage up and running to pulling off a casino robbery ala Ocean's 11. The characters of San Andreas are every bit as memorable as the characters in any other game offering such a deviation from the norm that you'd be hard pressed to not find one character you'll fall in love with (mine being the blind leader of the Chinese mafia, Wuzi). With star names like Samuel L. Jackson and David Cross, you'd think a big name celeb would take the reigns as CJ, but this isn't the case. An underground rapper takes the helm and does a job that's Hollywood caliber. The way he portrays Carl is quite memorable and you'll find yourself connecting with CJ in a way that so few games are able to offer nowadays.

Before I go into detail about the game play let me just say this, San Andreas will take you at least 20 hours to complete. Even after that there are literally hundreds of things you can do afterwards each offering a totally different type of play. That said, I won't be able to tell you every detail game play wise but I'll touch on some of the biggest aspects of the game.

First, the missions are pretty hit and miss which is disappointing for a game in its third iteration. There are several missions you'll have a blast playing through and another large sum of missions that boil down to "Drive to X, kill guys, drive to X". Granted, San Andreas does a fantastic job of switching it up here and there but if you stop for a minute to pay attention you'll see that most missions boil down to that simple formula. Newly added to the game is the RPG-light system of improving your stats. All you more casual gamers don't be alarmed. There's nothing complicated to it and if you want you can avoid this all together, but if you're up to the challenge everything from your driving skill to your body physique can be toned to perfection. While on the subject of customization, the amount of changes you can make to CJ is quite impressive. Everything from his body type, what kind of outfit you wear (and there are hundreds of different combinations), right down to the hair cut can be fine tuned to your liking, so much so that I'd even go out on a limb to say that no two CJ's in any version of SA look exactly alike.

Offering one of the most diverse grab bags of game types in any video game ever, San Andreas will have you doing everything from smoking homies in a drive-by (and I promise you that's the only slang I'll use for the remainder of the review ) to parachuting down to a dam full intent on blowing it to high-hell. Rockstar has included so many different things to do that it's impossible to list them all but just know that you'll never get bored playing San Andreas. The only time you're coming off the game is when you realize that you've spent too much time playing the game, and that my friends is all that a gamer can ask for.