Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is truly an epic. It is an adventure in an interesting setting: The streets of Gangland.
The most noticeable aspect of the game is its truly epic scope. When you finally leave the city of Los Santos is when this aspect becomes truly remarkable. Three incredibly detailed and well-developed cities contained in one game! Amazing! Yet, designers didn't simply stop with three cities. In between these metropolises are small towns, rivers, lakes, the wilderness, dams, abandoned airfields, and a myriad of other settings just waiting to be explored.
While the story and the missions make the Grand Theft Auto games great, I think the music makes them outstanding. I found the Vice City soundtrack to be superb, so much that I would sometimes stop driving just to listen to the song. When I looked at the track listing for San Andreas, I was not impressed, but after spending a lot of time playing the game, I have to say that I find the music thoroughly enjoyable. The rap songs on the game are very well chosen, including greats such as Cypress Hill's "How I Could Just Kill a Man" and Da Lench Mob's "Guerillas in tha Mist." Also, Radio X contains some great rock songs, such as "Plush" by the Stone Temple Pilots and "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode. Overall, there was never a dull moment in the game, because driving around provided for some great tunes. Also, the talk radio and commercials are hilarious, just like Vice City, and contain some celebrity voices.
As for the missions themselves, they really do branch out in the game to include as many different scenarios as possible. Some missions may be to eliminate everyone, others to kill no one. Yet violence is only a part of some of the missions. Sometimes you are stealing cars, boats, or planes. Other times you are racing motorcycles or dirtbikes. You can take the women of the neighborhood out to eat or go gambling in a Vegas casino. The variety of the missions is amazing.
Speaking of variety, the vehicle variety is great as well. Of course, the game has a huge scope of cars and trucks to drive. Yet, the game also contains motorcycles, dirt bikes, dune buggies, airplanes, jets, helicopters, boats, jet-packs, and plenty of other enjoyable modes of transportation.
There are only a few less than stellar aspects of the game. The graphics are good but not great. However, I feel that enhanced graphics probably would have made this game too difficult to develop or include on a disk (I don't know). The graphics are never a drawback, however, and I can't think of any instances when I noticed any deficiencies. And of course, there are the couple of missions that just seem entirely unbeatable. For me, I found the Training Missions for Flying to be the toughest. Flying a plane within the game is not hard at all, there is little or no skill involved. Yet, those missions require some real skill to pull off. I can't think of any time in the game when I actually used any of the goofy tricks and maneuvers they made you pull off in the training. I found that one mission, which took me a very, very long time, to be entirely unnecessary.
Overall, I would say that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a "must own" for anyone interested in action, adventure, fighting or combat games. As long as you can handle the violence and cursing, this game is highly enjoyable.