Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Genre: Racing/Crime
Platform: PS2
Developer: Rockstar North
Published by: Rockstar

The new Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is pretty good but all the hateful extra features are totally superfluous to the action. Things like being able to spray graffiti on walls and play as Steve-O on a bucking bronco machine are unnecessary, annoying and gay. They distract from the purity of one of my favourite ever games. All the fucking around with goofy Viva Le Bam! (how bad is that programme btw?) antics only makes me hanker for the simple days of Tony Hawk 1, where the only gimmicks came in the form of being able to decide on the looseness of your trucks. That's more punk rock than being able to listen to Jimmy Eat World's new single or designing your own ‘tag'. As Christopher Romano's dad told us in the last issue, graffiti is "a bunch of little queers running around the city writing their nicknames everywhere" (V2N10), so all these new spraycan missions don't mean anything to me.

That's why I was a bit nervous when Rockstar Games first gave us a preview of the new GTA game. At first, the only new stuff they told us about was the fact you could customise your character with tattoos and outfits. Big whup. Isn't that what Barbie dolls and Action Men are for? So it's slightly funny that you can go to San Francisco and get a handlebar moustache and buy a pink vest so you can blend in with homo-town, but what about the rest of the game? Eh? Eh? Answer me!

Ok, ok, sensationalist intro over. Because after getting through the ten minute intro, we quickly discovered that this game is AMAZING. If Rockstar Games was Slayer, then this is their Reign In Blood—an epic, genre-defining masterpiece that makes the last two instalments seem lacking in depth by comparison. It's literally the best video game ever made.

Why? Well It's three times as big as Vice City with more side games and sub-plots than any RPG on the market. The graphics are twice as good as the last one, with motion blur on the road, amazing clouds and huge, unending scenery when you travel between the three cities of Los Santos (L.A.), Las Ventura (Vegas) and San Fierro (San Francisco).

Things like renaming Inglewood ‘IDLEwood' are a bit rich, but when you take into account the fact that in this one you can SWIM, JUMP OUT OF PLANES and DRIVE A COMBINE HARVESTER OVER LITTLE KIDS, petty things like bad racist jokes are the least of your worries. You're too busy mastering BMX tricks or playing poker in one of the huge Las Ventura casinos or taking part in a four-man drive-by bloodbath to care.

You can also play pool and dance with a Cholo low-riding gang like some gangsta version of Britney's Dance Beat — which is a game that I play whenever I've got a lot of stuff to figure out in my head about feelings and relationships. The mind-numbing action combined with Britney's greatest really helps me to focus on problems.

Another bonus with San Andreas is that Rockstar have taken the brutal targeting system and weapon sounds from Manhunt into the GTA world, so all the gunplay is funner than it was before. It seems like they also put some of the never-ending desert chases of Smuggler's Run into it as well because the car chase scenes can last for days.

What else? Well, the soundtrack is mid 90s G-funk (Dre, Snoop, ‘Pac) to grunge and funk metal like Danzig, Soundgarden and Faith No More to something that even sounded like David Allen Coe in the bits where you drive the combine harvester and drive into people, mowing them down like human corn cobs.

The big downer is that I can't concentrate on work and my flat is a rancid pigsty.

SYRUP DAVIES