Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Special Edition) [PS2]

In the year since Rockstar Game's incredible Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released, a lot of unbelievable software has come and gone for the PlayStation 2. Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Devil May Cry 3 have all pushed the limits of our imaginations with their excellent concepts and mechanics, and have continued to set standards and expectations as to what a videogame should be. Of course, that left us with an interesting question: "With the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Special Edition in the midst of this summer's 'Hot Coffee' scandal, how does IGN's 2004 Game of the Year still hold up?"

The answer, not surprisingly, is still "enormously well." Though the game itself doesn't feature anything new by way of content, bug fixes, or storylines (with the exception being that the buried "Hot Coffee" mini-game has now been removed), it's still an excellent experience -- and other than a few extras that have been added outside of the software, it remains unchanged. With that in mind, we present below a modified version of the original review that ran more than a year ago with a couple of specific changes. One: the overall opinion of the piece has been skewed a bit to reflect the high quality software that's been released since, and Two: we have now added mention of the bonus extras included in the special edition package. Enjoy!

I'm not going to beat around the bush. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is among the best PlayStation 2 titles I have ever played. It's larger than most of the biggest RPGs, has more story than the heftiest adventure titles, and has almost as many mini-games as Nintendo's Mario Party. Additionally, it has a production value that's second to none, boasts faithfulness to '90s source material with an eerie accuracy, and provides more hours of entertainment than all the previous Grand Theft Autos combined. In short, it's a terrific unending masterpiece of a game -- and one that will never fall victim to an over-exaggeration of its lofty status. It's still one the defining pieces of software for Sony's successful sophomore system, and it's almost impossible to imagine a PlayStation 2 library without it.

Now I realize that with a statement like that, I leave a lot of expectations on the table. Immediate questions from longtime GTA players (and haters) will no doubt surface regarding what kind of problems San Andreas must have. Does the framerate still stutter? Is pop-in and draw distance still an issue? Are there any collision quandaries or other graphics-related bugs? Are the sound effects still tame by other action game standards? Does the AI ever have stupid moments or not perform the way you'd want it to? And is it true that there's absolutely no form of online play whatsoever? To be honest, the answer to all those questions is a definite yes. But an even better question to ask (and one that has a lot more of a direct impact) is, "Do any of the issues explored above really detract from the overall experience?" In a word: No.

But how is that possible? Isn't that a significant number of concerns for one game to handle? Sure it may sound like that's the case when they're all clumped together like that, but in practice it's almost completely unnoticeable. For starters, the frequencies at which the graphical hitches mentioned above appear in comparison to when they don't is so lopsided, I'm left unaffected. Additionally, there's literally so much to experience in the single-player game that the lack of online functionality isn't missed at all (while the minor sound effect kinks and other presentational issues get completely dwarfed by everything else the game does right). The big curiosity, of course, is just what is it that San Andreas does so right in the first place? To be brief, it's the first game I can ever remember that asks players to wonder "What can't you do" as opposed to "What can you?"