Did Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas really come out over two years ago? Only seems like last year to some of us - maybe that’s because I only got Vice City just before SAs release.

Anyway, I bought the PS2 version of GTA:SA last week (for a little under £15, along with Killzone and Lego Star Wars 2) because if I can’t play WoW and I’m wiling away time in a hotel room, I might as well play games. I was originally going to hold out for a PC copy because the PC versions of GTA let you put your own custom mp3 mix on the in car radio. There was nothing I liked better than cruising the streets of Vice City chilling out to the theme tunes from “Get Carter”, “The Professionals”, “The Avengers”, bits of the Matrix soundtrack and various other road tunes: music to do drive-bys to. Also, the PC version caters for the Hot Coffee mod which you can’t get for the PS2!

San Andreas is quite simply more of what went before in GTA3 and Vice City. This isn’t really a review because it’s been out so damn long and there are so many other reviews which all basically say “it’s fucking great”. And it is. The maps are huge this time around though. I mean really huge. I spent most of last night (after Scrubs and before and after BSG, obviously) wandering around doing some of the non-story missions (mostly spraying tags and the courier missions to get my BMX skills upgraded. Don’t ask!). The city is vast and I’ve only seen one quarter of it at the moment. But it’s so marvellously detailed, even if the graphics are a little dated by now.

One issue I do have with the game is the music. (For those that don’t know, when you get into a car in the GTA games, you can change the radio stations which all play real music interspersed with the DJ doing voiceovers or listen to Talk Radio channels and so on). The script is as fantastic as ever, a real dig at contemporary culture and very funny to boot. My problem is that, unsurprisingly, a lot of the music is hip hop and gangsta rap or soul music. There’s only one channel, Radio X, that I can listen to for any length of time and that’s because they play Faith No More, Alice In Chains, Depeche Mode, and a lot of other stuff that regularly makes my play lists. Disappointed that they didn’t include the AFI cover of NIN’s “Head Like A Hole” that appears on the soundtrack CD though - well, not that I can find.

The script, as ever, is fantastic - a real dig at contemporary culture and amazingly funny to boot, especially the Talk Radio channel:

Recently, a large field of marijuana in Flint County was set on fire. This has been rather unfortunate for the local wildlife, most of which was found eating chocolate, listening to the same band over and over, and buying fractal art.

They’ve even got people like Axl Rose and George Clinoton as some of the DJs and they’re the minor celebs taking part - Samuel L Jackson is in there, the late Chris Penn, James Woods, Ice T. It’s not as extensive a cast list as Vice City had, but still impressive enough.

I should talk about the morality of playing a game where the primary goal is to become the foremost criminal ganglord in the city, through prostitution, drugs, killing, stealing and other misdemeanours - but when it’s this much fun, who gives a shit?