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I loved the previous games in this series and have played them all, from the original top-down Grand Theft Auto on the DOS-based PC with the add-on packs through to GTA 2 and the current trilogy, the GTA 3 trilogy.

My first recommendation is that, if you haven't already played any of the previous Grand Theft Auto 3 games (the original GTA3 or Vice City), then it would be best to start off with those games for two main reasons. The first is that the games do get significantly better as you get further on in the trilogy (and GTA3 is still a damned good game) and the second is that by jumping straight into San Andreas, you'll miss out on all the nice little in-jokes.

You're Carl Johnson, an ex-gang member who has recently returned to San Andreas from Liberty City for your mother's funeral. As you travel from the airport to your mother's house, you're forced to renew your acquaintance with Officers Tenpenny and Pulaski (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn respectively). They coerce you into doing dirty work for them by threatening to arrest you for the murder of a police officer and leave you in the middle of a rival gang's territory before driving away.

Welcome to San Andreas.

As with previous GTA games, you start off as a lone man in a dangerous, evil city. It's up to you to make something of yourself (usually by illegal means) while ridding yourself of the shackles of the people who control you.

San Andreas is not a brand new game, really. Vice City was an evolution of Grand Theft Auto and by the same token, San Andreas is an evolution of Vice City. Not only was the technology tweaked to prove better visuals and sound for each step, but the game also got a lot bigger. Unlike the previous two games in the series, San Andreas takes place in the state of San Andreas which contains three cities and surrounding countryside. There is a timeline involved with the three GTA games. Vice City was the "first", set in the 1980s, San Andreas is the second, being set in the early 1990s and the original GTA3 was set at some point after that, probably in the early Noughties.

The early 1990s "Los Angeles" setting means that San Andreas contains a lot of references to the gang culture from that time along with a lot of the music etc. The gang reference actually influences a lot of the early part of the game. New additions to the GTA game play this time around involve your character. As part of the game, your image is very important. To this end, Rockstar have implemented a basic

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