Every week, we publish a classic PC Gamer review from the '90s or early 2000s. This week, Ben Griffin provides context and commentary followed by the full, original text of our GTA: San Andreas review, published in the July 2005 issue of PC Gamer UK. More classic reviews here.

We're enjoying the height of summer now, but as temperatures plummet and skies darken, Rockstar promise respite from Autumnal misery: GTA 5 on PC. With improved framerates. And increased resolution. And cats! It took no time at all for resident GTA enthusiast, Andy Kelly, to go all CSI on its launch trailer (hammerhead sharks: confirmed).

In light of that, I've decided to delve almost a decade into the past and unearth PC Gamer's San Andreas review. At 94%, it's our highest-rated Grand Theft Auto ever, beating out Vice City by a whole 1%. Why? How? Well, as our reviewer Ross Atherton puts it, the game is, "at once a giant, living playground and a smoothly contoured story. San Andreas still manages to be coherent despite giving the player the opportunity to ditch and pick up the storyline at will."

Pouring over these admittedly rough screens, I'm reminded of a time when a sprawling playing space meant necessary compromise. It was accepted back then look at Morrowind and True Crime. Open world? You'll have a blast, sure, but expect glitches and graphical issues. Since San Andreas the bar's been raised. Even in a game as mind-bogglingly massive as GTA V, we don't expect so much as a stretched texture. And, thanks to Euphoria, we're treated to some of the most convincing physics of any videogame, open world or otherwise.

Nine years on, San Andreas doesn't have great graphics. It doesn't have great physics. It doesn't even have cats. What it does have, though, is a sublime silly streak. It's a bouncing playground filled with sights and delights, whether that's bombing through Red Country on a jet-pack, crop dusting with Guns 'N Roses on the radio, or pumping iron at the local gym. With a staggering amount to see and do, wrapped in in Rockstar's trademark cultural satire, we strongly recommended it then and we strongly recommend it now.
GTA: San Andreas review
Welcome to GTA as it was always meant to be.

Forget the fact that GTA San Andreas started life as a PlayStation 2 game. The ugly caterpillar has become a beautiful (if foul-mouthed) butterfly. The fifth in a series that since its 2D birth on PC (back in 1997) has celebrated despicable gangsters and drive-by/-thru/-into and -over crime. San Andreas reaches new lows of depraved morality, senseless violence and alpha-male aggression. But it s the fact that it s one of the best games ever made that has already propelled it to console ultra-success.

GTA 3 struggled to make the technical leap to PC with its code intact, but months of finger-crossing and animal sacrifices to nameless gods have paid off. San Andreas runs like a dream, with the excellent mouse and keyboard control system of Vice City, extended visual range and atmospheric effects.

Like its two more recent predecessors, San Andreas puts you in the shoes of a central character about to embark on a life of crime. However, CJ aka Carl Johnson is no career mobster in the mould of Vice City s Tommy Vercetti. In fact, he s been away from the hood for five years to try and escape the gang violence endemic 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 .

Respect is actually a measured factor which is raised by performing notorious criminal acts. High respect means you can reinforce CJ with extra gang members when attempting to take over enemy territory. Although, initially, CJ doesn t even get respect from his brother. It s a good system, which draws you further into the game. As you complete missions, you start to gain the grudging respect of those around you. Eventually they adore you. San Andreas is no conventional RPG, but there s a definite feeling of character progression in this game.


Or is it an RPG? CJ has several other stats which have subtle but noticeable effects on the game. Driving, cycling, stamina, motorcycling, flying, pistol, rifle... every mode of transport and every type of weapon has an associated skill which increases as you employ it.

Better gun skills mean more accuracy with that weapon, while a higher motorbike skill means you won t fall off as easily if you nick a car or lamp-post. There are even scales for fat, muscle and sex appeal, variously dictated by what and how much you eat; your work in the gym; what you wear; your haircut and your tattoos. Some of this is frippery, but it ll also affect whether you can attract girlfriends (and their subsequent side missions), how much damage you withstand (fatties can take more lead, apparently) and some people s responses to you. Like so much in San Andreas, these statistics are carefully woven into the game s structure.

If you thought that Vice City s twin islands offered a huge playground, prepare your mind for a boggling. San Andreas offers a whole new world of largeness. There are three cities: Los Santos, a version of Los Angeles and your home town; San Fierro, standing in for San Francisco; and Las Venturas, a dusty, neon-bright Las Vegas squatting in the desert. Not only is each vast in its own right, but the intervening space is expansive and packed. After the first ten hours or so, you re encouraged out of Los Santos and introduced to a world of hicks, country music, tractors and remote, winding roads. The game s sense of place is so distinct that, as black CJ, you actually feel out of place in the small towns that dot the countryside.

As you get sucked further into the nefarious scheming of the corrupt cops excellently voiced by Samuel L Jackson and Chris Penn, you re dragged through the rolling countryside and north into San Fierro, all the time meeting and working for bizarre and intriguing characters. With a much more memorable layout than the first city, it s an even more exciting place to be, and you ll be rushing back and forth between the cities too, through the countryside. Eventually you ll progress to Las Venturas and then back to Los Santos to tie up the loose ends of the story.


Throughout the game, the variety of the 100-plus missions never fails to delight. Steal a combine harvester. Infiltrate a secret army base. Chase down thieves on quad bikes. Rob a bank. Shoot down remote-controlled planes with a minigun. Rescue a bunch of stoned English rockers from the desert. Fly a plane to Liberty City to carry out a hit. From the simple to the devilish, from the grimly criminal to the comedic, from the sublime to the ridiculous, San Andreas retains the power to surprise and entertain throughout its lengthy structure.

Not just in terms of the missions, either: you ll be infiltrating, burgling, flying, following, swimming, and shooting as a passenger as well as the more usual shooting and driving. My only quibble is that CJ never questions the reasoning behind the hundreds of casualties he s asked to inflict. Kill that man? Aiight, sums up his usual response, and at times it s hard to empathise with such a cold-blooded hero.

As in the previous two GTA games, you can invest your cash in properties, some of which will provide an income once you ve established a business there, and others which just act as new save points. These special locations often require you to complete a series of missions, offering yet another avenue to pursue. At any given time you ll have between one and half a dozen mission paths on offer, for you to take up in any order you want, or ignore completely in favour of a spot of pimping, exploring, police-baiting, male grooming or just riding around.

At once a giant, living playground and a smoothly contoured story, San Andreas still manages to be coherent despite giving the player the opportunity to ditch and pick up the storyline at will. The world doesn t have to depend on cutscenes for consistency, because there s always something going on, even if just in the background, to provide colour, life and atmosphere. The radio stations, legendary in GTA 3 and Vice City, are back with a dozen to choose from. As ever, Rockstar s cultural references are spot-on, and anyone older than their mid-20s will be powerfully reminded of their youth with the likes of Public Enemy, Primal Scream and Guns N Roses. The interludes and chat shows are superbly scripted, if not quite as bizarrely hilarious as Vice City s. Again, the PC version enables us to supply MP3s and have them played on a dedicated radio channel.


San Andreas does the simple things well. Just stand on any given street, and within seconds you ll see little tableaux developing. Pedestrians bump into each other, pass comments at you and others, and get run over. If you re in an unfriendly hood, thugs wearing enemy gang colours will swagger up, offering threats, and eventually attack.

Just existing is more gripping than before. Your wanted level is again represented by stars, but here just one star will have the cops shooting and crashing cars like their doughnuts depended on it. Wanted stars are harder to get rid of, and even civilians will react angrily if you nudge their cars. As a result, you can t afford to be too carefree while cruising the streets. This, combined in particular with Los Santos gritty, often run-down atmosphere, makes the overall experience quite different to Vice City s cartoon world. Actions have consequences seems to be the moral message.

That s not to say that San Andreas is humourless: quite the opposite. From the missions and cutscenes, to incidental dialogue and even tiny signs in obscure shops, you ll see Rockstar s trademark comedy style, ranging from the juvenile to the very explicit. San Andreas isn t afraid to say anything. Minor graphical scars left from its painful transformation into a PC game do nothing to dull San Andreas inner beauty. The best of the series, and already a contender for game of the year.

Y'know what's cool about PC gaming? Besides the absurd graphics and the pinpoint accuracy afforded to us by our peripherals and, well, everything? It's the fact that even games never intended for PC eventually make their way to us anyway. That's what's happened with the formerly PlayStation-only Vice City Stories, which is today playable by PC folks thanks to a new mod, currently in beta testing.

The mod, codenamed "Blue Hesper," aims to transplant the entire game into a PC install of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They're not quite there yet, but a lot of engine tweaks have been made, and most of the first chapter is available for completion.

The 768 MB of nostalgia-stirrer's now downloadable at ModDB. All you'll need is a clean, modless install of San Andreas on your system. Let us know if you give this a try—I'd like to know how my boy Vic Vance is doing.

An emerging theme in the games industry is developers engaging the idea that games may be disproportionately violent or too derivative. Deus Ex creator Warren Spector spoke out about the latter recently, launching off the reveal trailer for the new Wolfenstein: A New Order. Joining the conversation now is Jeremy Pope, a veteran of Rockstar Games and former production manager for Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and Max Payne. In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Pope explains why he will never work on a violent game again.
“I would always kind of defend the games we were making and I was pretty proud of being involved,” he said, “but then when I would visit my grandmother in highly religious Alabama and have to explain what I do for a living, I didn't feel so great about explaining to them that I was a part of 'that game' they've been hearing about."
Pope says his decision to avoid violent games is about working on projects he can "feel a bit better about," but doesn't disparage Rockstar's accomplishments.
"I definitely want to make a point of saying that I actually love Rockstar's games," he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Pope discusses the perception of games in the mainstream news media and how gaming is so often used as a convenient scapegoat for political topics like gun violence.
“We had the same problem 10 years ago and it still persists today,” Pope says about the NRA blaming games for high-profile gun violence. “We don't really have a great ambassador, if you will… And then you see the NRA has one guy who goes up on a podium and gives a talk, and whether you agree with it or not there is a clear single voice and something to react to.”
Check out the full interview here.

After the release of the new GTA 5 trailer, we became conspicuously aware, once again, of the absent PC release date for Rockstar's next open world fiasco. So we reached our hands into the mists of Grand Theft Autos past, crunched some numbers, and came up with the best possible estimate of when the game will be announced and released for the PC.

If we look at all games in the Grand Theft Auto series since Vice City, we can see that it's about 462 days, on average, between the announcement of the game and the announcement (not release) of the PC version. It's a slightly more reasonable 212 days between the first console release and the PC release. You can see a game-by-game breakdown in this handy chart:



If we take the average time between console and PC announcement and add it to GTA 5's original announcement date of October 13, 2011, that should have put the PC release date announcement around January 17, 2013. No such luck. Assuming they're going to make us wait just as stupidly long as they did for GTA 4 (821 days from the first E3 tease, for the record), we'll be hearing about a PC release date around January 11, 2014. Every main series entry since Vice City has failed to announce a PC ship date until after the first console version shipped.

In terms of when we might actually be able to play it, the gap between console and PC release has been consistent(ly frustrating) at around 212 days, without the kind of crazy deviation we see in the release date announcement window. 212 days after the currently listed ship date for GTA 5 on the consoles would be April 17, 2014. If the gap is as long as it was for San Andreas, we would have it by April 30 instead.

On the off chance that Rockstar makes us wait as long for a PC announcement as they did on GTA 4, and as long between PC announcement and PC release as they did on San Andreas, we've been shoved back to July 4, 2014. Not to say that they couldn't try to annoy us further by breaking their own records, but that's our official prediction for the most distant date to reasonably expect the game on PC.

There you have it: by our highly scientific reckoning, you'll probably be loading up GTA 5 just in time for the 238th anniversary of America's independence. As to when we may be free from the tyranny of waiting months for our Grand Theft Auto ports (we still haven't forgotten about Red Dead Redemption, by the way), we don't have enough data to speculate. At least we always get the best version. We're willing to wait for the ability to mod in stuff like this.

Video game music is occasionally labeled as "just a bunch of bleep and bloops." But if there's a company that's demonstrated how well music and games gel together, it's Rockstar. Bully, Grand Theft Auto, L.A. Noire, and Red Dead Redemption all exemplify the company's discerning musical taste—a group founded by the sons of the owner of a famous British jazz club, coincidentally.

It's with that in mind, the Rockstar has taken the tunes from Grand Theft Auto's many in-game radio stations and slapped them onto Spotify and iTunes. Most of the music from GTA IV, San Andreas, Vice City, GTA III, Liberty and Vice City Stories, and Chinatown Wars has been collected neatly there, so go give it a listen if you're feeling a bit nostalgic, or if you just want some background jams for a thrilling police chase through the streets of your favorite American City.

Electro-Choc carries my highest recommendation, probably because I like listening to dance music when I type. It makes my fingers feel like they're tearing it up at a club, but saying that out loud makes me think I should be getting out more.

My pathetic social life aside, I'm hoping these stations get popular enough to add the soundtracks from Bully and L.A. Noire. I've been looking for some good tracks for my skateboarding adventures and drug ring busts.

From the "people are still talking about this?" files today comes an interview by The Guardian with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser that touched upon Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee scandal. The ensuing media scrutiny and negative pressure wound up "draining and upsetting" company members facing "a tough time" keeping relationships with the press civil.

"The massive social decay that we were supposed to induce hasn't happened," Houser said. "So, in that regard, a lot of those debates that used to go on, they're not such a big deal now. We never felt that we were being attacked for the content, we were being attacked for the medium, which felt a little unfair. If all of this stuff had been put into a book or a movie, people wouldn't have blinked an eye. And there are far bigger issues to worry about in society than this."

Hackers rooting among San Andreas' files unearthed an abandoned yet mostly intact minigame where main character CJ would have sex with his girlfriend at the prompting of certain...er, "movement" commands. The resulting outcry involved the Federal Trade Commission investigating Houser and the rest of Rockstar's staff. The ordeal was recently documented in detail in a book by David Kushner titled Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto. Kushner is also the author of the excellent Masters of Doom.

While Rockstar may simply be biding its time until the appropriate moment to unleash its fomented armageddon of entropy, its current efforts on Grand Theft Auto V look extremely promising, though a PC version lingers in uncomfortable "consideration" territory for now.

We know that Grand Theft Auto V's anti-hero is a father who relocates to San Andreas' Los Santos, and we can guess at themes of economic depression from the trailer. That's it. In its typically coy fashion, Rockstar is only serving nibbles of information - appetizers to makes us salivate over the imagined deliciousness of the main course.

As usual, it's working. GTA III's ground-breaking polygons and GTA IV's heightened fidelity give us reason to expect a big jump ahead for the series' next numbered game, but our famished dinner party can only speculate. Here's what we're hoping for while we wait for Rockstar to stop teasing us with amuse-bouche.

GPU-melting tech

The GTA V trailer is never ugly, but how much better could it look while still running smoothly on high-end PCs? Based on what modders have achieved with GTA IV, we think it could be pushed further. The GTA IV iCEnhancer mod is very pretty. That stylistic result may not align with Rockstar's vision, but we at least want high-res textures and the option to slide up the draw distance until our machines smolder.



Also crucial are dramatically increased pedestrian and traffic counts, as mods did for GTA IV.

...And all the other PC-specific features we want
Save. Anywhere. Please. Restarting missions from the beginning doesn't make the game more fun.

On the topic of repetition, we'll probably be doing a lot of shooting, so give us third-person shooting that feels right with a mouse. Mass Effect 3 and Max Payne 3 have the advantage of tightly-scripted, forward-directed action, but they execute some fundamentals that GTA could do with more of. A more intelligent camera, maybe?



We do at least expect that GTA V will throw out Games for Windows Live and replace it with Rockstar Social Club, and we at least hope the networking is improved. More of the excellent sandbox multiplayer mode with less hideous networking? Yes, please. Also probable is mod support (why stop now?). It's a must, or else how will horses take it to the limit?



A world beyond the city limits
The recent screenshot dump confirms this desire, but just for the record: we want to cruise on the highway outside city limits, as we did in San Andreas.



And, if Los Santos is the only initial city, make it big. According to a supposed ex-Rockstar employee, the map is five times larger than GTA IV's, and the city of Los Santos covers just under half of it. If that's the case, there should be plenty of space to fly jets around. We'd also be happy to see San Andreas' other two cities, Fierro and Venturas, return as expansion-sized DLC.

Non-linear missions and important decisions
Why are missions in gaming’s leading open-world franchise so damn linear? How about Deus Ex style missions with multiple paths to victory? And while you’re at it, why not let player decisions affect the story? Moral agency can go further than one canned kill-or-don't mission for every 20 hours of required despicable behavior.



And if not, at least offer a story which isn't 70 hours of CSI: New York-level writing, and unlock the entire world from the start, so we can experience it without first doing prerequisite odd jobs. If we choose to dodge the story for a while, we could also use more intricate side-missions and activities. Chauffeuring an endless cycle of idiots with taxis and random vigilantism got stale after a while.

Greater freedom and fidelity
How about this: start your own Breaking Bad-esque drug empire separate from the main story. Manage supply, distribution, and fight rival dealers for territory, just for the hell of it. You'd need something much more closely approaching a simulated economy, too. No more “being a poor immigrant who has $289,000 in their wallet." That would be amazing.



But even if it isn't taken that far, at least expand on GTA IV's player agency. Riding in the backseat of a cab through Liberty City's bustling streets was one of GTA IV's most singular pleasures. Have more public transport options in GTA V, both for the scenic relaxation and to give real choice over whether to steal cars or be a good guy.

What do you want to see in GTA V?
Those are our broad GTA V wants, but there's much more we'd like to see. Share your own deepest desires in the comments and we'll compile a list to literally pin to Rockstar's door. Well, not literally. That kind of thing is generally reserved theology-related protests and can cause restraining orders.

The GTA V trailer provoked a lot of intrigue here at PC Gamer. Are characters from other GTA games going to make appearences? Will it be a retro setting, or will it, like IV, take place in the modern day? Will there be a poorly optimised PC mission where you have to awkwardly pilot a remote control helicopter into a maze-like building?

One element of the game that’s looking increasingly certain is the lead character, and - more specifically - the voice actor lending his tones to him. According to Eurogamer, Ned Luke’s IMDb page currently lists him as “Albert De Silva” in Grand Theft Auto V, and a tweet from actor Jimmy Taenaka said, “My fellow thespian Ned Luke is the lead voice and profile in the upcoming game by Rockstar Grand Theft Auto 5! Way to go Ned! Wholly Molly!”

Luke certainly looks the part - the nose and jawline match up with the character seen 40 seconds into the trailer. This character is obviously beefy, and approximately matches Luke’s age of 53. He’s looking over the city like he’s conquered it, like he owns it. Is this Albert De Silva?

But something doesn’t add up. GTA’s characters - from III’s Claude to IV’s Nico Bellic - have always been aspirational young men. The plot usually follows the rise-to-power-through-crime arc, but if De Silva is the lead character his rooftop posturing feels like a foregone conclusion - the crucial question at the heart of a GTA story is whether or not the protagonist makes it to the top.

Rockstar could be trying one of two things. GTA V’s story could be told in flashback, which would explain how San Andreas’ CJ shows up without being absolutely ancient, and could tie into Tom's multiple protagonists theory. The exterminator shown immediately afterwards has the same hairline and eyes as the possible De Silva, but he also looks more youthful and less paunchy.



There’s also the possibility that Luke is voicing a different lead, and that his likeness has just been used for an incidental character.

The internet probably has an opinion on this. What is it?

In a post on their official site, Rockstar say that GTA 5 will be the "largest and most ambitious" title they've developed yet. They also confirm the setting, saying "Grand Theft Auto V focuses on the pursuit of the almighty dollar in a re-imagined, present day Southern California."

GTA 5 will take place in "the city of Los Santos and surrounding hills, countryside and beaches." Just the one city, then. No mention of San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas), which featured alongside Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Rockstar say that GTA 5 represents "a bold new direction in open-world freedom," and confirms that there will be online multiplayer.

Those are all the solid facts so far. It's been less than a day since the debut trailer landed, and the rumour mill has already gone into overdrive. Are you looking forward to returning to Los Santos?

After a lot of excited pointing at mountains and dogs, the PC Gamer office got chatting about the sneaky hints Rockstar have dotted throughout the new GTA 5 trailer.

You've probably noticed the narrator sounds a lot like Ray Liotta, who voiced GTA Vice City's player character Tommy Vercetti. But the greying middle-aged man we see in the footage isn't the only one in player-character situations. There's also a shaven-headed youth in a car chase with the police, and a tattooed black guy running from a cop chopper. And hey, isn't that all three of them together breaking into the jewellery store? Click below for a full size image of the evidence.



Chris Thursten points out that GTA IV used a deal gone wrong to link three characters that you ultimately ended up playing: Niko in the main game, Johnny Klebitz in the Lost and the Damned DLC, and Luis Lopez in the Ballad of Gay Tony. GTA V might give us a choice of three protagonists from the off, each with their own stories, and use this robbery as the flashpoint that links them.

It'd make for a more interesting story structure, and of course it would set them up beautifully for a co-op campaign that ties into the single player.