Since 2001 when Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto III, they’ve managed to keep gamers totally addicted to crime and mayhem. How terrible! Shame on you! Shame, shame, shame. With the latest game in this awesome series out, can our pals at Rockstar deliver? Absolutely, and they’ve improved on their last works to boot!

This series has come so far, but there have always been these little quirks that made the experience a little…degraded…from its stardom. With all the glorious features and addictive morsels of the last game, things like bad graphics, horrible glitches, and the better-but-not-quite-perfect targeting system plagued it. But with the coming of this game, we’ll see nearly all the series’ little “skeletons in the closet”, If you will, made up for.

Remember those horrible graphics of the last games? Made better. While the character’s fingers are still all connected together like some carnival freak show reject, they’re detailed much, much better. EVERYTHING is detailed better. I can remember looking at the horrid renditions of “grass” and wondering if these guys had ever even been outside! In this game I found the details to be a dramatic improvement. While they could always do better in the next game, this is a welcome improvement.

Oh, and all those glitches and bugs? Totally fixed. I can remember driving through town when all of the sudden the road decided to change into some crazy blue screen. What in the world? Well, I think I ran into REAL glitches like two times in this game. There was one little tiny texture issue, but it never became a real problem and thus, I can’t penalize the game for it.

What about your character’s little “phobia” of water? Out with those wimps who couldn’t stand a little H2O and in with a man’s man—not afraid of such a pansy issue. My character’s newfound swimming ability came as a huge relief. I can remember screaming “BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!” as I veered off the road into the depths below back in the last games, but this time I was more like “WEEEEE!” as I sunk into the ocean. All I’d have to do is tap the triangle button and swim to the surface. Nifty, eh?

Really, everything I had a problem with was fixed. Even things that didn’t particularly bother me were touched up! They really wanted to “wow” us with this game. It’s the “little” things that count.

Little things like not being able to leave the city. How terrible is it that you’re confined to one relatively large city? Well, not really that terrible, but Rockstar decided to give us a whole state to travel around in. The state itself, obviously titled “San Andreas” consists of three main cities: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturras. Each city is well designed and significantly different from the others, making for a unique experience in each.

That’s just the cities! I mean, I can’t even list all the back roads, rural areas, and hick-towns, etc. that litter the areas outside the big city. You can literally get in a vehicle and head on out to the open road to just…drive…and drive…and drive…for miles and miles. I was happy with the last games’ cities, but this time they went a step further. It kind of makes you wonder… I mean, now that they’ve conquered a whole state, will the next game be an entire country; an entire planet—what?

Also, you can now add more customization to your character. Don’t like CJ’s wife beater and jeans? Head on down to the clothes store to pick up some new garbs and live phat! What about that lame hair cut? Well go on down to the barbershop and get you a pink Mohawk! You can also get accessories like tattoos, watches, and facial hairstyles in the game, too.

To even go a very unnecessary step further, you can customize you character’s body type as well! You feel you’re too scrawny? Go to the burger joint and put some meat on them bones. But watch what you eat—don’t want to get too fat. If you get to used to fast food, you’ll turn into a human blob. That’s okay; you can always go to the gym. Turn that fat into muscle and challenge Randy Savage to a wrestling match. Well, unfortunately you can’t fight famous 1990’s wrestlers…but you can look like them if you want.

Other “little” things to mention: the parachute, bicycles, graffiti tagging, home invasion robbery, claiming territories, special two-player modes, secondary fighting styles, girlfriends, and much more! These are just a few, people.

The games staple music is back, too. We get several radio stations peppered with a variety of music including gangster rap like Snoop Dog, and even rock like Alice in Chains. All the themes of the 90’s breathe through the music the game has. Remember, 1992 was host to the whole “gangsta” trend as well as the “alternative” one. And let’s not forget the little jokes poking fun at those trends. “One day, everyone will wear clocks around their necks!”

You can literally play this game forever. The game includes God knows how many missions; all the free roaming; secrets galore; the sheer size of the map to discover…Wow, the list goes on. You might be able to get a good 40 hours out of this game—something that’s unheard of for anything but RPG games.

While there is always room for improvement, I’m simply blown away by this game! This is going to be a great challenge for Halo 2—which one will be named #1 this holiday season? When you throw in some pretty good graphics, great music, huge environments, so much replay value, so much customization, a nice shooting engine, a nice fighting engine, so many extras…and all of that, you get a masterpiece; a true rarity in gaming history. Don’t miss this game people—it’s a truly beautiful game.