{"id":14637,"date":"2026-09-25T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/?p=14637"},"modified":"2026-09-25T23:58:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T20:28:55","slug":"grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-the-legacy-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/2026\/09\/25\/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-the-legacy-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas \u2013 The Legacy Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we\u2019ll be putting together won\u2019t be traditional re-reviews, and they won\u2019t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA\u2019s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series. <\/em><\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s time to go home to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether you remember it or not \u2013 or were too preoccupied being spoon-fed pur\u00e9ed fruit from a jar at the time \u2013 it\u2019s impossible to understate what a banner year 2004 was for now-legendary video games. Just look at the line up. World of Warcraft. Half-Life 2 and Halo 2. Burnout 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3. Gran Turismo 4 and more \u2013 much more. I could absolutely go on. To emerge as the bestselling game of what may well be the greatest year we\u2019ve ever had \u2013 in an era where it felt like the rulebook was being torn up and rewritten every other month \u2013 you had to be remarkable. You had to be rich, surprising, innovative, and essential. Simply put, to be the bestselling game of 2004, you needed to be more than great. You needed to be Grand.<\/p>\n

Name a better month in video game history than November 2004.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While GTA III defined the fundamentals of 3D open-world design, and Vice City layered that sandbox with vibrant \u201980s style and a big dose of yacht rock and yayo, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas pushed the formula to the very limits of what was actually possible on the world\u2019s then-favourite DVD player. Despite shipping just two years after Vice City, San Andreas expanded Rockstar\u2019s formula exponentially by introducing three <\/em>full-scale cities \u2013 all housed in what amounted to an entire fictional US state: the titular San Andreas. Best of all, it was still retro-tinged, set in 1992. A slightly less dramatic leap into the past than Vice City but, as someone whose adolescence was forged in the \u201990s, an awesome period to revisit.<\/p>\n

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas pushed the formula to the very limits of what was actually possible on the world\u2019s then-favourite DVD player.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

At the time, it was a mindblowing achievement. The state itself covers an area roughly six times larger than Vice City. Its three major metropolises \u2013 Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas \u2013 each have their own unique visual identity. Los Santos is draped in smog, giving the whole cityscape a distinct orange haze at certain times of day. On the hottest days, a shimmering heat rises from the asphalt \u2013 a fabulously effective flourish that gives the city a truly tangible sense of temperature. San Fierro, defined by its severe hills and stretches of tramline, features an entirely different sort of climate. It\u2019s more akin to GTA III\u2019s Liberty City, where the tall, dense skyscrapers of the CBD create quite a bit of shade below. Las Venturas, San Andreas\u2019 gambling haven, is dry, flat, and is at its best at neon-lit night. Each city is connected by open stretches of rolling fields, redwood forests, and rocky desert. There\u2019s even a selection of tiny towns, farms, and factories between the major hubs. <\/p>\n

However, while the size of the map was one thing \u2013 the fact that you can travel all over it and move from one major city to another without a single loading screen is something else altogether. Coming from Vice City, where you couldn\u2019t cross from one island to the other without being briefly stalled by a loading screen, it was a genuinely amazing advancement. Rockstar had concocted a way to constantly stream in the world immediately around us in real-time. For its debut on PS2 \u2013 the platform that accounted for more than 17 million of San Andreas\u2019 27.5 million sales \u2013 this meant a neverending juggling act with the system\u2019s limited 32MB of RAM and a relentless assault on its disc drive. You probably could\u2019ve forgiven the Rockstar North team for not <\/em>adding a high-speed fighter jet to a game perpetually pulling data from its dual-layer DVD in a non-stop race against time to rapidly build the world in front of you before you reached it. <\/p>\n

They added one anyway. <\/p>\n

Talk to me, Goose.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some Kind of Wonderful<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s arguable San Andreas\u2019 greatest victory isn\u2019t simply the immense geographical scale it boasted for its era. Rather, it\u2019s the remarkable density of its various systems, ideas, and side activities. <\/p>\n

I played an aggressive amount of San Andreas back in the mid 2000s. I tortured my PS2 until it started making weird noises, then I borrowed my sister\u2019s and tortured it, too. Perhaps the ultimate testament to how supremely stuffed San Andreas is with things to do is just how many side modes I\u2019ve encountered over the last week of playing that had honestly slipped my mind over the last 20 years. The valet activity? Forgot that. Trucking missions? Forgot those. Duelling lowriders? Oh, yeah! It\u2019s like putting on an old pair of trousers and finding $20 notes in every pocket. <\/p>\n

San Andreas almost never stops giving.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

San Andreas almost never stops giving. Take its vehicles, for instance. Not only do they all handle with a genuine sense of heft that puts most GTA clones to shame \u2013 seriously, just watch as they subtly wiggle on their springs if you jerk them to a sudden halt \u2013 but there are also around 200 of them. From the minute it puts you on a bicycle, new vehicles are in virtually constant supply. Combine harvesters. Quad bikes. Articulated semi-trailers. Monster trucks. Functional forklifts. Hovercraft. A jump jet, and <\/em>a jetpack. No, not one or the other. Both. It\u2019s like someone took a bunch of scribbled brainstorm notes and executed on every suggestion, without trimming any of them.<\/p>\n

My kind of jetpack joyride.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be honest, there are times playing San Andreas where it almost feels like no idea was trimmed. Rob a house, go dancing, and stop at a minimart to play an arcade machine. Hit the gym, then hit the casino. Run a triathlon, and run a business. Go parachuting, unwind with some pool, and\u2026 role play as a pimp. I guess, strictly speaking, there was at least one idea that was <\/em>famously pulled out at the last minute: a sex minigame. It just wasn\u2019t pulled out enough, so to speak. Ruled out so late in development it was impractical to completely remove it without jeopardising San Andreas\u2019 vast, precarious, and otherwise interwoven code, Rockstar locked off the minigame beneath a non-interactive wrapper \u2013 keeping the camera entirely out of the room where the magic was happening. Modders discovered and re-enabled it in time for the PC version in 2005, triggering what became known as the Hot Coffee controversy. <\/p>\n

The pearl clutching and hand wringing that followed was deeply embarrassing, even by mid 2000s standards. The US ESRB re-issued all versions of the game a commercially crippling Adults Only rating, and Australia temporarily banned it until the abandoned content was removed. It didn\u2019t matter that it literally wasn\u2019t even accessible for the majority of players on console \u2013 the matter had become politicised and the subject of massive media attention. The concept of two blocky PS2 characters goofily grinding against each other was apparently too much for adult gamers to bear. We would have to be content with wanton vehicular homicide and burning cops to a crisp. I\u2019m hopeful that things would go a little differently more than two decades on, but I guess we have our own problems. These days I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m still killing people in video games, or if I\u2019m only unaliving them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas \u2013 The Legacy Review Screenshots<\/h3>\n