Good work, Xbox GTA fans. You've now made it seven months without ruining San Andreas. You've covered your eyes when the adverts have come on TV. You've avoided all contact with anyone playing it on PS2. And you've covered your ears every time your spawny PS2 owning mates have been raving about the tattoos and the pimped lowriders and the harrier jumpjet and the girlfriends and the fast food and the gym and so on and so on.
Congratulations. Your wait is almost over. On June 10 you'll finally be able to sit down and play the latest and greatest addition to the GTA series on your beloved Box.
So what's your reward? Well, if you were expecting new missions, vehicles, secrets or Easter eggs then you've wandered into the wrong 'hood, homes. It feels wrong to immediately point out what a game of Xbox San Andreas' magnitude is lacking, but like PC owners you won't be getting any extra game content for your money - or your patience.
Does that suck? In a way. Rockstar's reason for not adding anything new is that the PS2 version is already so chock-full of stuff that nothing else was needed for the Xbox and PC ports.
It's hard not to be a little disappointed, but it's also hard to argue with Rockstar's logic. Whether you like GTA or not, it's impossible to argue that San Andreas is one of the most ambitious, accomplished and staggeringly successful games ever made.
Don't hate the player...
So to use some San Andreas-style lingo, we're not playa-hating. Xbox San An has everything the PS2 version had - and that's a hell of a lot. To put it in context, San Andreas is six times bigger than Vice City. It's not a city at all - it's a state made up of three main cities (Los Santos, your birthplace and homage to LA; San Fierro, a San Francisco-style hippie and yuppie paradise; and Las Venturas, general den of gambling, whoring, and other assorted iniquities), countless redneck towns, and the wilderness in between.
It's the mid-90s and you play CJ, a young black bloke back from Liberty City to bury his murdered mum. Within this staggering free-roaming playing field you can, as in previous GTAs, do pretty much whatever you want. The mission structure remains the same but Rockstar has added an RPG-style attribute system that automatically ups your skills as you drive, ride bikes, shoot guns and so on, and you can customise your character with tattoos, clothes, hairstyles, fast food binges and sessions in the gym.
It's huge, it's deep, and it's the game you want it to be - just like it was on PS2. But let's not forget that there's a hefty chunk of extra processing power under the Xbox's hood, so everything the PS2 could do the Xbox can do faster, smoother and prettier.
In technical terms San An Xbox has a new 480p progressive scan mode, new high resolution textures that add sharpness and character to the environment, increased draw distance that all but eliminates the tooth-grinding pop-up, and new lighting and shadow engines that react in real-time to the day/night cycle. But the important thing is that Xbox San Andreas looks richer, sharper and more atmospheric than the PS2 version.
It's not stunning, mind. When we saw the PC version in high res it looked like a totally different game (read our full impressions here), but the difference between the PS2 and Xbox version is far less noticeable. It's the little things that add the most, though, like the way shadows track the sun and shading is more pronounced. The cars look significantly better on the Xbox version too, with the higher polygon count allowing for less boxy-looking and more detailed models.
Pop-up? We're glad it's gone, and it definitely means you can catch some beautiful views of the state of San Andreas. Where in the PS2 version your view of San Fierro from across the Garver Bridge was a couple of indistinct grey blocks, in the Xbox version you can make out the entire city skyline and individual windows on 'The Big Prick' - if it's a clear day, and while we're on the subject we should mention that the weather effects are also much nicer on the Xbox version.
You'll suffer less from loading delays, too, but considering the age of the PS2 architecture it's amazing that they were so short in the first place. On Xbox we're talking a couple of seconds at most between missions and as you go in and out of buildings, and you'll still never see a single loading screen as you explore the state.
Don't hate the game...
There are a couple of other new features. First up, Xbox San An lets you replay the last thirty seconds of game time so you can enjoy your ridiculous stunts and frenzied killing sprees as often as you like, and you should be able to save the replays onto your hard disc.
Second is the customisable soundtrack, which does what it says on the tin. Slightly cooler, you can actually create your own radio station by letting the game splice in adverts and station shout-outs between your tracks. Everything should sound better too, since Dolby Digital 5.1 comes as standard.
These features are nice bonuses, but are unlikely to have PS2 owners weeping into their DualShocks. Which brings us nicely onto our main criticism of San An on Xbox - and, unfortunately, it's a problem Rockstar couldn't do much about.
While the DualShock controller sports two shoulder buttons on each side, the Xbox pad only has one and the dreaded black and white buttons. This severely hampers you every time you need to bust a cap. Bear with us here - this gets quite complicated and you might want to hold an S-Pad or DualShock while you read.
While switching targets on PS2 was handled by slick taps of the L2 and R2 buttons while holding L1, on Xbox you need to use black and white while holding the left shoulder button and using the right shoulder button to shoot. That's not too bad, but far worse is the drive-by controls - try maintaining your speed with the right shoulder button, steering with the left analogue stick, holding the black or white button to look to the side, and pressing B to shoot. Unless you've got eight fingers on your right hand it's not happening.
Control issues and the disappointment of no new features aside, GTA: San Andreas on Xbox is exactly the game we expected - and exactly the game we wanted. While it doesn't make the PS2 version look quite as obsolete as the PC version does it's still a big technical improvement. It's just unfortunate for Xbox owners that, having patiently waited seven months for their slice of San Andreas, that a technical improvement is about as far as it goes.
But like we said, don't player-hate on the Xbox version of San Andreas. It was most definitely worth the wait.
Everything the PS2 version was - and that's a whole hell of a lot - and more besides. The lack of new game content is disappointing but San An on Xbox is still the hottest game on the block.
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