Well, I wasn' t even aware this came out today. Then after reading the GS review (9.6), I noticed that the release date on the site said said 10/26/04. So I called up EB, and lo and hehold, it was there.

So after about 5 hours of game time, here' s what I have to say so far:

-- First of all, San Andreas uses it' s culture-specific environment even more effectively than Vice City. The " hood" in early 90' s southern California is portrayed picture-perfectly (of course, I can only go by pictures myself, being from CT, but you know what I mean). The voice-acting and characterization is top-notch, as expected. I' ve also found that my apprehension was ill-founded; because I' m not really into the whole " getto environment" thing, I thought I wouldn' t be sucked in like I was with GTA III and VC. Thankfully, I was wrong. I may never have experienced the black and rap underworld in that area, but I' m guessing that this is DARN close.

-- As for the graphics, they' re fine. If you take into account the sheer size of the game (which is absolutely immense; 3 times the size of Vice City), and all the extra STUFF that you can now do, it' s actually a ridiculously great achievement. I' m guessing that if you went any more refined on the visuals, you' d be looking at insane loading times, major slowdown, graphical glitches during hectic action; any and/or all of the above. For what Rockstar intended, it' s great. It' s certainly a bit better than Vice City, although they are, of course, of the same style.

-- Speaking of the city and towns, this is by far the best I' ve ever seen, and I' ve only explored about 1/10 of it. The massively steep hills of southern CA are in abundance, the large variety of vehicles actually MOVE at the correct speed (no more running down a car on the highway, like you could almost do in the previous installments), and the countryside outside the urban areas provides a surprisingly pretty, and very rural, change of pace. Collision detection and particle effects are greatly increased; just look at the way a car now breaks apart or how a traffic light falls from its perch. The world of San Andreas? Pretty darn incredible.

-- FINALLY. RPG elements in a game and franchise that' s been BEGGING for them. Your main character has stats (muscle, fat, stamina, even sex appeal), and you must maintain your health by eating correctly and working. You must also hone your skills with vehicles, weapons, hand-to-hand fighting, etc, and it' s about time that you can SWIM. Falling in the water in either of the two installments meant instant death, and that has finally been remedied. Not only can you swim, but even that (lung capacity) is another stat to build, and you can also dive beneath the surface and explore.......as if this game needs anything ELSE that can be explored. LOL

Some other little things- Vehicle physics have been honed and refined; they are better than they had been. Vice City was an improvement over GTA III, and this is another improvement. It seems that the wanted level has changed a bit; while wandering a little astray, I stumbled upon a military restricted area, and my wanted level went immediately to four stars. But after running away and losing the authorities for a bit, it dropped to three stars. This is something that could NEVER be done in either of the previous games; if you wanted to get rid of the stars above a 1-star level, you needed to find a Police Bribe or a Pay ' n Spray. I' m going to have to look into this some more as I play.

So far, this is shaping up to be just as great as the reviewers say. I guess I shouldn' t be surprised. I do have to play a lot more to see how the future missions shape up, and where the story goes from here. Can' t wait.