June 7, 2005 - On October 25, 2004 I spent my evening waiting in line with many other avid gamers for 7 o’clock to roll by and my local EB Games to begin selling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PS2. It was an eye-opening experience for me. You’d have thought that Elvis himself was back from the dead for another comeback tour. It was electric. And although I had played video games for a long time, I had never considered it mainstream until I stood in that line between a 40-ish year old man and a wide-eyed mother sent to pick the game up by her sons. This truly was an event. This was a Springsteen concert for the gaming crowd. This proved to me that gaming had finally come into its own and was truly accepted as a medium in our society. And looking back on it, I don’t think any other game could have done it; not Halo, not Metal Gear and not Final Fantasy. GTA has become more than a game. Everyone has heard about it; good or bad. GTA has defined a generation and is solidly ingrained within our culture. It may take place in the 80’s or early 90’s but it has always been a barometer for our current trends. How many other games can claim such a mass appeal and reach? How many other global events can? GTA has changed us as a culture and experiencing it again on the Xbox has made it even sweeter than ever.

There are two groups of people that will read the Xbox reviews for GTA: San Andreas; those who have waited to buy it on the Xbox and those that are waiting to buy it again on the Xbox. Whichever group you fall into, the story hasn’t changed. You are still following the story of CJ (Carl Johnson) who is returning from Liberty City in the early 90’s, after a five year exodus, to bury his mother, clear his name and reclaim his territory. If San Andreas only followed CJ’s story it would still be enough to warrant a purchase. The story is gritty and mature and eclipses many of Hollywood’s current offerings. But the GTA series has always been about letting you do anything you want and San Andreas furthers this concept with so many ideas that you’d expect it to stumble. But the simple fact that it succeeds with such authority and determination at everything it attempts is proof enough that Liberty City and Vice City were no accidents. Rockstar Games loves making Grand Theft Auto and they will not compromise in any way regardless of the scope or difficulty of their ideas.

And where GTA3 and Vice City allowed you enough freedom to fill 10 different other titles, San Andreas easily trumps them both. How many games will let you drive any car, bike, plane or boat, sky dive, play basketball, date, pimp your ride, play DDR-type games, play mini videogames, work out, eat out, get tattoos & haircuts, buy clothes, take over a neighborhood, be wanted by the cops, do drive-by’s, travel anywhere, burglarize houses and so much more? None. But San Andreas does it all and does it brilliantly. On the PS2 it was almost mind-numbing to see San Andreas run. How could a game look so good on a system that was thought to be at its limits? Regardless, gamers knew that much like the GTA3 and Vice City ports before it, the Xbox version of San Andreas would look even better. So how does it fare?

Sound-wise, San Andreas on Xbox is very similar to its PS2 counterpart. The radio stations sound loud and crisp but some of the in-game voiceovers sound muffled. This is common when in a car (with the radio blaring) but also during cut-scenes. This may be attributed to the simple fact that all music levels seem much higher than voice levels. A little tweaking in the Options Menu would fix this, but then the music wouldn’t sound as loud! As with the two previous GTA ports to Xbox, custom soundtracks are supported. While driving around it is also possible to toggle songs forward and back and also to switch user soundtracks on the fly. Oddly enough, my custom soundtracks have never sounded so good in any game before. Whatever audio settings Rockstar sets its EQ’s to, they sound great!

Voice-work and music selection has always played a paramount importance in the GTA series. While the music has always been quintessential to setting the tone and vibe of an era (and sell CDs as well) the voice work has always been without equal. From Hollywood talent to simple pedestrian one-liners, the audio portion is always well written and well delivered. In this iteration you will find The Game, Ice T, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda, Chris Penn, James Woods and Debi Mazar lending their vocal muscles to the cause. While Vice City will always reign at the supreme as The Perfectly Cast voice acting with its clever choices (Ray Liotta, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Philip Michael Thomas, Jenna Jameson and Lawrence Taylor) San Andreas is no slouch. CJ may not have the clever one-liners and maniacal determination of Tommy Vercetti but he does sound authentic and believable.

The Xbox version doesn’t look as different from the PS2 version as it should! There, I said it. While GTA3 was leaps and bounds sharper and more detailed on the Xbox and Vice City’s draw distances were greatly improved, the line between PS2 and Xbox is a lot blurrier where San Andreas is concerned. To begin, the Xbox version suffers greatly from he same cutscene pop-ups that Halo 2 is famous for. In both cases, I believe the game is trying to load its levels while playing in-game CG cutscenes. The trade-offs is a slower level load-time versus scenery that appears with a slight delay. While this never detracts from the overall experience, it is noticeable whenever palm trees are present in the background or shadows are rendered to telephone poles. In-game graphics aren’t played by this at all except when the “cinematic camera” is used. Apart from that small nitpick, the Xbox is a lot brighter than the PS2 version. On Sony’s console, every texture seemed shaded to a certain extent to add depth to walls and cars and chairs. On the Xbox, lines around items seem crisper (in 480p anyways) with less “contour” used around them. It makes every item in San Andreas seem brighter but at the same time sometimes shows how bland a texture really is. On PC textures seem even more generic. But considering the size of the game, a few bland textures here and there mean nothing. The simple fact that you can use the camera to zoom in on every magazine cover, painting, restaurant menu, etc and see its rich detail will make you love your Microsoft console. The Xbox also adds more detail to hands and to signs (at least it seems like they are easier to read) and handles lighting with greater ease. The draw distances have also been considerably improved and it’s breathtaking to stand on a high mountain and look out at the cities below it (and then jump off with a parachute). On any console San Andreas will never be mistaken for Doom 3, but then again, we are talking apples and oranges. As it stands, San Andreas is amazing to look at and I can’t imagine the amount of work that went in to creating every vehicle, pedestrian, sign, restaurant, hill, court, fence, light, etc found throughout a city that is 5-6 time larger then Vice City. I can only think of Morrowind as having a larger playing field and all things equal, I prefer GTA’s.