I’m having a look again at every of the core Grand Theft Auto video games and replaying them within the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be placing collectively gained’t be conventional re-reviews, they usually gained’t include any new IGN rating, however they may re-examine what made every GTA exceptional upon the time of its launch. By the top of the undertaking, utilizing GTA’s beforehand six-star needed stage, you must be capable of get an concept of the place every of those video games roughly rank in my long-term love for this sequence.
As we speak it’s time to go dwelling to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Whether or not you bear in mind it or not – or have been too preoccupied being spoon-fed puréed fruit from a jar on the time – it’s unattainable to understate what a banner 12 months 2004 was for now-legendary video video games. Simply have a look at the road up. World of Warcraft. Half-Life 2 and Halo 2. Burnout 3 and Steel Gear Strong 3. Gran Turismo 4 and extra – far more. I might completely go on. To emerge because the bestselling recreation of what could be the best 12 months we’ve ever had – in an period the place it felt just like the rulebook was being torn up and rewritten each different month – you needed to be exceptional. You needed to be wealthy, shocking, modern, and important. Merely put, to be the bestselling recreation of 2004, you wanted to be greater than nice. You wanted to be Grand.
Whereas GTA III outlined the basics of 3D open-world design, and Vice Metropolis layered that sandbox with vibrant ’80s type and a giant dose of yacht rock and yayo, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas pushed the system to the very limits of what was truly doable on the world’s then-favourite DVD participant. Regardless of delivery simply two years after Vice Metropolis, San Andreas expanded Rockstar’s system exponentially by introducing three full-scale cities – all housed in what amounted to a complete fictional US state: the titular San Andreas. Better of all, it was nonetheless retro-tinged, set in 1992. A barely much less dramatic leap into the previous than Vice Metropolis however, as somebody whose adolescence was cast within the ’90s, an superior interval to revisit.
On the time, it was a mindblowing achievement. The state itself covers an space roughly six instances bigger than Vice Metropolis. Its three main metropolises – Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas – every have their very own distinctive visible identification. Los Santos is draped in smog, giving the entire cityscape a definite orange haze at sure instances of day. On the most popular days, a shimmering warmth rises from the asphalt – a fabulously efficient flourish that provides town a really tangible sense of temperature. San Fierro, outlined by its extreme hills and stretches of tramline, options a wholly totally different kind of local weather. It’s extra akin to GTA III’s Liberty Metropolis, the place the tall, dense skyscrapers of the CBD create fairly a little bit of shade under. Las Venturas, San Andreas’ playing haven, is dry, flat, and is at its greatest at neon-lit evening. Every metropolis is linked by open stretches of rolling fields, redwood forests, and rocky desert. There’s even a choice of tiny cities, farms, and factories between the main hubs.
Nevertheless, whereas the scale of the map was one factor – the truth that you’ll be able to journey throughout it and transfer from one main metropolis to a different with no single loading display is one thing else altogether. Coming from Vice Metropolis, the place you couldn’t cross from one island to the opposite with out being briefly stalled by a loading display, it was a genuinely superb development. Rockstar had concocted a option to consistently stream on the planet instantly round us in real-time. For its debut on PS2 – the platform that accounted for greater than 17 million of San Andreas’ 27.5 million gross sales – this meant a neverending juggling act with the system’s restricted 32MB of RAM and a relentless assault on its disc drive. You most likely might’ve forgiven the Rockstar North crew for not including a high-speed fighter jet to a recreation perpetually pulling information from its dual-layer DVD in a continuous race towards time to quickly construct the world in entrance of you earlier than you reached it.
They added one anyway.
Some Type of Fantastic
It’s debatable San Andreas’ best victory isn’t merely the immense geographical scale it boasted for its period. Quite, it’s the exceptional density of its varied programs, concepts, and aspect actions.
I performed an aggressive quantity of San Andreas again within the mid 2000s. I tortured my PS2 till it began making bizarre noises, then I borrowed my sister’s and tortured it, too. Maybe the last word testomony to how supremely stuffed San Andreas is with issues to do is simply what number of aspect modes I’ve encountered during the last week of enjoying that had actually slipped my thoughts during the last 20 years. The valet exercise? Forgot that. Trucking missions? Forgot these. Duelling lowriders? Oh, yeah! It’s like placing on an outdated pair of trousers and discovering $20 notes in each pocket.
San Andreas nearly by no means stops giving. Take its autos, as an example. Not solely do all of them deal with with a real sense of heft that places most GTA clones to disgrace – critically, simply watch as they subtly wiggle on their springs should you jerk them to a sudden halt – however there are additionally round 200 of them. From the minute it places you on a bicycle, new autos are in nearly fixed provide. Mix harvesters. Quad bikes. Articulated semi-trailers. Monster vans. Practical forklifts. Hovercraft. A leap jet, and a jetpack. No, not one or the opposite. Each. It’s like somebody took a bunch of scribbled brainstorm notes and executed on each suggestion, with out trimming any of them.
To be trustworthy, there are occasions enjoying San Andreas the place it nearly looks like no concept was trimmed. Rob a home, go dancing, and cease at a minimart to play an arcade machine. Hit the gymnasium, then hit the on line casino. Run a triathlon, and run a enterprise. Go parachuting, unwind with some pool, and… position play as a pimp. I assume, strictly talking, there was at the least one concept that was famously pulled out on the final minute: a intercourse minigame. It simply wasn’t pulled out sufficient, so to talk. Dominated out so late in improvement it was impractical to fully take away it with out jeopardising San Andreas’ huge, precarious, and in any other case interwoven code, Rockstar locked off the minigame beneath a non-interactive wrapper – preserving the digicam totally out of the room the place the magic was taking place. Modders found and re-enabled it in time for the PC model in 2005, triggering what grew to become often known as the Scorching Espresso controversy.
The pearl clutching and hand wringing that adopted was deeply embarrassing, even by mid 2000s requirements. The US ESRB re-issued all variations of the sport a commercially crippling Adults Solely ranking, and Australia briefly banned it till the deserted content material was eliminated. It didn’t matter that it actually wasn’t even accessible for almost all of gamers on console – the matter had turn into politicised and the topic of large media consideration. The idea of two blocky PS2 characters goofily grinding towards one another was apparently an excessive amount of for grownup players to bear. We must be content material with wanton vehicular murder and burning cops to a crisp. I’m hopeful that issues would go a bit otherwise greater than 20 years on, however I assume we now have our personal issues. Nowadays I don’t know if I’m nonetheless killing individuals in video video games, or if I’m solely unaliving them.
Killing within the Title
The explosion of aspect actions remains to be solely a part of the San Andreas equation, as Rockstar additionally launched various gentle RPG mechanics. This goes past the flexibility to customize main man Carl Johnson’s look, through outfits, haircuts, tattoos, or munching down too many burgers. CJ additionally has numerous improveable abilities, and the extra you do one thing, the higher and extra environment friendly he’ll get at it. Flying, preventing, driving, diving – you identify it. Have a weapon you like? Use it as a lot as doable to stage CJ as much as ‘Hitman’ proficiency, the place you’ll be able to transfer and strafe whereas taking pictures, your lock-on vary will lengthen, and (within the case of the 4 particular weapons) even twin wield them.
The enhancements to the third-person shooter element in San Andreas are vital, with many of the clumsiness that tended to characterise GTA III and Vice Metropolis ironed out. A bulk of that’s because of the flexibility to lastly use the appropriate analogue stick to regulate the digicam at will – versus the earlier video games, the place the appropriate stick was solely used to go searching in a stationary first-person digicam. It’s the primary GTA recreation to really feel akin to a contemporary third-person shooter on this regard, which makes it a breeze to get accustomed to in 2026. You may as well purpose all weapons freely now, somewhat than only a choose few – and the auto lock-on is in any other case clever sufficient to mechanically prioritise and goal threats somewhat than random civilians or, worse, your personal gang members. Mild stealth was even launched, on the again of Rockstar’s personal experimentation with the controversial Manhunt earlier the identical 12 months. CJ is ready to crouch to scale back noise, a suppressed pistol has been added to the arsenal, and there’s a easy stealth kill you’ll be able to carry out on the unaware, indicated by the identical raised-arm set off utilized in Manhunt.
Specific Your self
With extra cities, extra vehicles, and extra depth than ever, you might need been questioning simply how far more extra San Andreas might presumably have in retailer.
Nicely, I haven’t even touched on the radio stations but, that are neck and neck with Vice Metropolis as the most effective they’ve ever been within the 30-year historical past of the sequence. It’s an impeccably curated soundtrack that’s one half good ’90s time capsule, and one half historic hip hop odyssey. That’s, it didn’t simply characteristic a number of the most iconic rap tracks to emerge from the early ’90s, but it surely made positive to incorporate stations devoted to the complete ecosystem of complementary music hip hop discovered itself drawing inspiration from. Funk and soul. R&B and New Jack Swing. There’s maybe no higher instance of that than the actual fact San Andreas didn’t make a alternative between Charles Wright’s signature hit Specific Your self, or the 1988 reimaging from N.W.A. It merely included each. Eleven stations and over 150 songs is the bullet level, however there’s a lot extra to it than that. It’s the truth that they now air dynamically, that means the tune order adjustments and also you gained’t all the time hear the identical slice of DJ banter introducing them.
Need extra? Nicely, how about arguably the best arsenal of cheats codes ever assembled? Cheats to make the sport simpler. Cheats to make the sport tougher. Cheats to spawn all the best autos. Cheats to arm civilians with rocket launchers. Cheats to set off a map-wide riot. Cheats to show off the gravity!
Nonetheless need extra? How a couple of similar display co-op mode that lets you carry a pal into the world to wreak havoc alongside you. Is it barely janky? Sure. Did that cease my associates and I from messing round with it consistently? Completely not.
Apparently, about the one factor San Andreas appears to have fewer of is main Hollywood celebrities in the primary roles. Following Vice Metropolis, San Andreas moved away from having a big-shot movie star on deck to star because the lead character. As a substitute, CJ was capably and memorably performed by an LA-based rapper named Younger Maylay, with no earlier performing expertise. There are a variety of recognisable names right here as aspect characters, although, together with James Woods, Peter Fonda, Charlie Murphy, Ice-T, Chris Penn, and the inimitable Sam Jackson because the iconically slimy Officer Frank Tenpenny. Is there a greater GTA villain than Jackson’s Tenpenny? I don’t suppose there may be.
Verdict
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the only bestselling recreation on probably the most profitable console within the historical past of the enterprise. That’s not an accolade you’ll be able to simply earn by chance. Its unprecedented scope and astonishing depth have been nothing wanting witchcraft, and the unbelievable consideration to element was staggeringly spectacular for one thing of its measurement. Its skill to assist limitless experimentation stored my associates and I busy for years, playing around with its industry-leading record of cheats and its same-screen co-op chaos lengthy after we’d all completed the story mode a number of instances. Its soundtrack is the stuff of legend; so one-of-a-kind that not even Rockstar itself might fairly reassemble the entire factor for subsequent re-releases. In 2004, GTA San Andreas was one of the vital extraordinary video games I’d ever performed. In 2026, the hood accomplished took me beneath over again. Positive, the technical limitations of the mid 2000s are all the time apparent by way of a contemporary lens, however you’ll be able to’t measure ambition in polygons – and GTA San Andreas is overflowing with it.
For extra reflections on the unbelievable Grand Theft Auto sequence, you’ll be able to learn our new Legacy Evaluations of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, Grand Theft Auto III, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice Metropolis, with extra to observe earlier than November.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN critiques crew. You may observe him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him issues about stuff.