Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas review

Without languishing in plot details, you soon get involved with your old gang the Grove Street Families and, despite early resistance from your old pals, need to return the gang to its former glories. A deft plot twist and 10-15 hours later, you're cast into the countryside to meet up with an old friend, before kicking on to San Fierro and slowly starting to amass some property and respect. Eventually, the game moves to the desert - for your first taste of some special vehicular action - and shortly after to Las Venturas, the GTA: SA version of Vegas. There's a final twist in terms of geography - well, two, but that would be spoiling debatably one of the biggest shocks in console history - and a finale (panned out over five hours) that outstrips the collected work of Hollywood action gurus Simpson and Bruckheimer. Other shocks? More than you can imagine. But let's just say you'll get to meet a lot of old faces and amass a very interesting arsenal of weapons and transport - of which ground vehicles are but a tiny part. James Bond? Pah.

Best of all, the missions rarely get repetitive. Insanely difficult missions are counter-balanced with comedy, diverting sub-games or rambling exploration where you get to soak in the beauty of the world. And, boy, it is beautiful. Whether you're scrambling up Mt Chilliad on a dirt-bike and surveying the huge draw distance (rolling hills, freeways, buildings, the aching sunset...) or rolling across the featureless alkali flats of the desert on a Wayrider cruising bike, soaking in the purple sunset and rocking out to America's A Horse With No Name, you'll never get bored. It's a game that doubles as a virtual holiday. And it's big - at least six times the size of Vice City. Fact. They even give you a camera to take snaps and record your fave moments to memory card. And even that's not peripheral, since it's directly related to the secret packages in San Fierro.

We could go on. We could fill pages with gushing praise. But we can't spoil the (many) surprises. Just know that every element, from pumping iron at the gym (whack X and Circle like Track and Field), to flexing in your lowrider car (a solid Bemani game), to playing pool (a full-on simulator letting you pick angles, alter shot strength with the right analogue like Tiger Woods and - get this - apply spin before playing for money) and piloting your chopper (L1 for the... ah, sorry), works: at worst competently; at best, as well as the finest individual examples of the genre. Except, of course, this is all in one game. It's staggering.

We haven't even mentioned the random occurrences that make every session a unique, thrilling, experience. Like when we were traversing the countryside on foot (after crashing our 4x4 off a cliff) when - BANG - we suddenly hear a terrible explosion before being showered with mysterious debris, looking across to see that a plane has randomly struck the mountain. Or driving through a narrow tunnel, snagging the side rail and causing a 20 car pile-up (like the Crash junctions in Burnout 3), getting out of the car in time to see a - wait for it - tractor flying overhead. Or seeing the cops race up behind us at the end of a nefarious mission, only to realise they were chasing a speeding car up ahead. Or strolling past pedestrians in Las Venturas in our finest $1500 Victim suit, blinged out with a gold Gnocchi watch and a giant yellow afro, only to hear them coo, "I want to be that guy". There are over 60,000 lines of pedestrian dialogue. The mind boggles.