Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

To be released in October of this year, Rockstar's latest game in the Grand Theft Auto series, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has been announced, and boy is it looking good. The following preview will not only help you clinch your decision to buy this game (like you need to read the preview to know that your hard earned cash should already be set aside for this game), but it will provide a detailed look into the details we know about the world of San Andreas.

"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. Where filmstars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers. Now, it's the early 90s. Carl's got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster. On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets." Perhaps that's the best way to describe the situation and back story of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Taken from Rockstar's description of the game, it gives us a little hint of what we can expect when we get our hands on this game.

San Andreas will be set in the 90's, and much like the previous GTA games, it will take place in three main city areas. However this time, each area will be much larger and will be its own breathing, living community with smaller subsections inside that. In case you're still pondering what I'm trying to get at, San Andreas will be an impressive four to six (4 to 6) times larger than the entirety of Rockstar's previous game, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This means that each city featured in San Andreas will be approximately the same size as Vice City..each. The three cities which the state of San Andreas will include will be Los Santos (based on Los Angeles), San Fierro (based on San Francisco), and Las Venturra (based on Las Vegas).

Between each of these cities will be extensive countryside, featuring all types of interesting sights and objects from tumbleweeds to old broken down shacks. There will also be new vehicles for CJ to utilise in the countryside such as a quad bike and tractors. Can we expect quad bike racing? Will there be mud? We hope so. And with the ability for your vehicle to gain dirt on it, it's a very high possibility we will be seeing a whole lot of new types of racing.

As well as these vehicles for you to race around on, there will be inbreds and degenerates occupying the rolling hills, farms, rivers and forests of the countryside. The 'legendary' mountain will be between Los Santos and San Fierro being nearly half a mile tall, taking quite a while to get up and down it. Each city will be open to the player at different parts of the game, and once they are all open you will be able to travel to and from each one as you wish.

Las Venturra has been modelled after the casino laden, gambling capital in the world, Las Vegas. And what would Las Venturra be if you couldn't gamble. Yes, casinos will be available, and you'll also be able to run your own casino, which you will have bought and built. Building a casino you say? Well, yes, apparently you will be able to run your own casino and reap the rewards it brings. Los Santos and San Fierro should be much more hilly cities than Las Venturra, which will make driving in them a much larger part of the game. Talking about driving, Rockstar have stated they are looking to include a much larger range of vehicles this time around, although with helicopters, motorbikes, cars, and trucks in GTA: Vice City, San Andreas will really need a huge line-up of different vehicles to keep that promise. And so far, Rockstar have delivered. As already mentioned, quad bikes and tractors will be available in the country. Bikes have been confirmed in multiple screenshots, as well as police motorbikes, helicopters, trucks, low-riders, and all the vehicles from the previous GTA games.

Onto new features of the game, and San Andreas is loaded with new things to do and interact with. The biggest of all these could well be eating. Yes, eating. CJ will need to eat regularly to maintain your stamina. However, get a little too excited with this new feature and eat too much. CJ will put on a few pounds and will physically become fatter. Now the world of San Andreas will be completely different, pedestrians will mock you for being overweight. You won't be able to run as fast, and cars you get into will handle slightly differently due to carrying a heavier load. The extra beef burgers you ate to put on those few pounds can be rid of though, just go to a local gym and exercise. You'll slowly lose your lard and stamina will increase.

Another new idea in the GTA series is haircuts. Similar to the eating aspect of the game, you will be able to pop into the barber shop and get a new style for your hair. Pedestrians will then poke fun at you depending on how good your hair style is, and if it�s good, then they will compliment you. Along with this is the concept of swimming. In all the previous GTA games you were not able to swim. However due to Rockstar being bombarded with emails and letters asking why we couldn't swim, they added it in to San Andreas to prove all the disbelievers wrong. You will also be able to recruit gang members, to help you rob people's homes and steal cars. Four person drive-bys will be possible and each person involved will be able to aim at a different target if desired.

Lighting has changed and improved a whole lot from the previous GTA games. There will now be realistic smog (in Los Santos), and real-time reflections on cars, windows, mirrors, some floors and puddles, and also radial lighting will be used. Shadows will also be improved, allowing you to hide in the shadows and then leap out when a cop or gang member walks past. This means the game will have much more stealth techniques compared with the all out shooting techniques in the previous GTA games. There will be separate models for day and night for all the objects in the game, to give better lighting effects and shadowing. Ragdoll physics will also be used. As mentioned briefly earlier, a detail which will make the game so much more realistic will be the fact that cars can accumulate dirt and will corrode, meaning that not all cars will be in mint condition. This will mean that your favourite convertible or truck will mean so much more if you keep it in pristine condition.

As you can see, GTA: San Andreas will be much improved from its predecessors, and will have many new features and will be more realistic while still keeping the comical feel and go anywhere do anything gameplay which has made the Grand Theft Auto series so popular. And with that, we conclude our NZGamer preview for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is looking like it will be the game to beat this Christmas season. NZGamer will keep you updated with all the new additions and happenings related to San Andreas.