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a mission or something is triggered when this happens, that can be annoying. What I've found is that the voices and vehicle voices will go, usually during some adverse weather (thunderstorms etc.) leaving you with just the sound of the rain and thunder and little else. This doesn't really affect gameplay that much and the most annoying effects of this glitch (lack of character voices during cut-scenes) can be negated by keeping the sub-titles turned on.

Graphically, the game does the job very well with the aforementioned weather effects and an upgraded game engine from Vice City, although the graphics work best when you're speeding around the various cites and landscapes at full speed and don't really bear up to close scrutiny. That's not to say that they're poor there's more to life than a set of flashy graphics (just ask DOOM 3). I've found that they're sufficiently speedy, even at higher resolutions, and don't slow down when there's lots of action onscreen. A friend, though, complains that he has issues when the game produces smoke and fog effects.

The Grand Theft Auto games have never been stunning aurally, and San Andreas is no exception. If you've played previous GTA3 games, then expect more of the same this time around. Weapon and car sounds are meaty enough and each weapon and vehicle have their own distinct sounds. The music and radio are again playing the sounds of the times with humourous (and sometimes sick and twisted) commercials. I didn't find these to be as interesting or as memorable as in Vice City and GTA3, but I loaded my own mp3s into the game fairly quickly as I wasn't interested in most of the music that was played on San Andreas radio stations.

I bought the Limited Edition of the game which I believe is special because it includes a hard back city guide/instruction manual. I've not really read this through, but it's fairly weighty despite being relatively free of vital information for the game. There's also the obligatory fold-out map included, but I found this one to be very flimsy due to the perforations used in the vertical folds. As a result, I used the in-game map (available from the main menu screen) almost exclusively.

There's no arguing that San Andreas isn't an enjoyable game, because if you're a fan of the previous episodes of the game, you're going to enjoy yourself. It's bigger, slightly more complex and will easily keep you entertained for many hours. At the time of writing, I've completed around 80% of the game and been playing

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