Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is probably one of the most memorable PlayStation 2 titles most people will remember even to this date. Chronologically San Andreas is set sometime in the early 1990s, a few years after Vice City in Rockstar’s 3D Universe timeline.

Like its predecessor, San Andreas puts you in the shoes of a central character about to embark on a life of crime. However, CJ or Carl Johnson as you like it is no career mobster like Tommy Vercetti from Vice City. In fact, he's been away from “the hood for five years” to try and escape the gang violence that’s been plagued in his home city of Los Santos. He's brought back by his mother's untimely death. Hooking up with his brother Sweet and old friends, CJ is inevitably drawn back into the world he had left behind a world of guns, drugs, territory, casual violence and respect.

Rockstar Games took the satirical drama to the next level. The scope and size of the game is incredible. It will literally take you hours to explore the entire map on foot (which is pointless because of the large array of vehicles available). The story, mood and setting are heavily influenced by the hip hop culture of the 90s, and many rap artists are prominently featured on the soundtrack.

Rockstar really pushed the bar for video game standards with rich detailed open world with three expansive areas that feel very distinct from one another. When people say Rockstar Games is the “king” of open world games it’s because of this reason right here! It has got everything you would want in an open world game! The graphics, the music, the voice acting, the mini games, open world activities. When everything is put together it is phenomenal if you think all of this was possible on PS2!

We have famous voices such as Samuel L. Jackson who voices Officer Tenpenny, James Woods who voices Mike Toreno, Ice T who voices the in-game rapper Madd Dogg, and Chris Penn who voices Officer Eddie Pulaski. Our main character Carl, is voiced by Chiris Bellard who does a marvelous job of voicing Carl).

There are also many surprising cameos and references to Vice City and GTA3. This is one of the few games that managed to really flesh out even the small supporting characters. Hats off to the writers who took effort on character development for over 3/4th NPCs involved in the game’s story. The cast of characters, posters, memes, videos are some of the most iconic you’ll see on social media and internet.

Despite being a huge success, this isn’t a game I would recommend to new gamers simply because it hasn’t aged all that well. Some of the minor annoyances are:

-There are tons of problems with the Steam version. You might have to download some fan made patches, mods and fixes to make it work on your Windows 10 PC. There are quite a few bugs and glitches here and there that were never addressed by the developers. Additionally, bugs present in the Steam version were patched on retail version. Worse the steam version also doesn’t support the great mods so make sure to downgrade the game to retail version before trying to mod it. There are many detailed guides on this.
-Many soundtracks were removed on the game’s 10th Anniversary in 2014 to avoid licensing issues.
-The game is hard locked to 25 fps, trying to mess with it will fundamentally break the game and cause some massive physics glitches making some missions impossible to complete. Other classic Rockstar Games also suffer from this issue. Not a great PC port.
-Some of the missions can be a bit unfair and a real pain to deal with! There are no checkpoint saves so each time you fail a mission you’re forced to get back to the mission marker icon and restart the mission from scratch. Flying planes can be a real challenge and some of these missions also have mandatory training levels as well which can be a nightmare. You can’t progress the story forward without completing these.
-PC Controls are terrible and haven’t particularly aged very well in my opinion. Newly added features such as target aiming needed some polish and clearly shows the game engine being push hard.

GTA San Andreas is a complete AAA package for 90s/00s gamers with amazing production value. The game sold over 25 million copies on PS2 alone. I think the audience response alone speaks volumes. Absolutely a great and fantastic way to have fun if you’re stuck with an old, low spec PC or a laptop. After checking out Cyberpunk 2077’s launch I can confidently that San Andreas offers more RPG elements and fun time than most actual role-playing games! It’s a cinematic story rich game, It’s a life sim, it’s open world game, it’s a driving game! it’s an immersive sim, it’s a fully customizable, moddable sandbox/playground! It’s all things combined into a single game! Highly recommend this game to everyone who missed out on this blockbuster title due to…whatever reason. Dude this is San Andreas!! Why are you even reading this!

MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE!!