San Andreas: It's Here! Final Preview

The biggest game of the year is finally on shelves this week. We take a final look at San Andreas before our imminent final verdict. New media & gameplay video!

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But despite the hard work invested into your vehicle modding, your ride will often get stolen, which can be pretty annoying when you've spent so much time making it the most pimpin' set of wheels in town. And if it doesn't get stolen, it's fairly likely to get toed into the nearest police impound if the 5-0 get a sniff. If that happens, you can try to break in to their impound and steal it back - a risk probably best saved for when you've really lost a pretty piece of tuning! But it's always nice to see the pedestrians walking by and eyeing up CJ's ride as a result of our fine artistry.

Hey! It's the Golden G- er, Gant Bridge.

Amazing San Francisco geometry, for example the famous Lombard Street, a place even the most cynical staff at Kikizo remember as the most crooked road in the world, means there are unique stunt jumping opportunities throughout the game, but particularly in San Fierro, which lends itself to insane showing off thanks to countless steep hills and all sorts of ramps. These opportunities are awesome, especially from some stairs nearby Lombard Street.

San Andreas version of Lombard Street

Just like past Grand Theft Auto games, the player will have safe houses throughout the game. The first Safe House in the game that CJ is introduced to is his Mom's old house. If you want to hang out for a while you can check out the consoles, or take the opportunity to change your clothes. Any clothes you have bought will be kept in the wardrobe of your safe house. The save marker is a 3.5 floppy disk (remember, it is the early 90's after all). So any time players want to save their game - they can come to these safe houses to save their games to their memory cards. Safe Houses are spread throughout the State of San Andreas, some are free to CJ, others will become available as you acquire property.

Save points are represented with a 3.5" Floppy Disk.

We ended up taking a trip down to Chinatown for the next mission, which sees CJ helping out a chap called Wu Zi Mu - resident Triad leader who tells us that some refugees are being held captive in an oil tanker out at San Fierro Bay. So we took a ride in a helicopter (as a passenger this time) to try to find them - and get them outta there. High in the air, we located the huge oil tanker with Bay Bridge in the background. It gats a bit hairy as an airborne shootout with villains on the tanker ensues, eventually taking us out - worryingly, our chopper plummets to the water, but CJ escapes alive and swims towards the ship to finish what they started.

As we already knew, it's the first time we've been able to swim in Grand Theft Auto. Do nothing, and CJ treads water, hold forward and he leans into a gentle breaststroke. Holding X adds a faster front crawl and tapping X speeds up your pace - while circle has you dive down into the depths of the water to check out some aquatic life - almost as detailed as life in the cities - we witnessed fish, turtles and dolphins, just on our first venture into the wet. A blue bar shows your remaining oxygen, which is dependant on your lung capacity and stamina, things which can be improved not only with more experience in the underwater terrain, but also more exercise, as explored in our other previews.

We made it back up onto the tanker, and the first priority was to avoid the armed defendants on board. If CJ fires a shotgun, the blast would be audible all around, all enemies would be alerted, and we'd have to deal with the consequences. In order to avoid detection, stealthy, silent kills are the order of the day as we sneak up behind our first enemy and attack with a quiet weapon like a blade.

There are a lot of shipping containers on board, randomly stacked up all around. In San Andreas, throughout the game, we can now grab onto anything with a ledge and climb - and that comes in particularly useful here.

Needless to say, there's a hefty mission on that tanker.

It's worth noting that elsewhere in the game, you may want to just drive a vehicle up to a ledge stand on it to gain access to previously unreachable ledges. Right now, it means we can climb these containers - an action that's beautifully animated of course.

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Catch up with our massive GTASA coverage here:

• Announcement (March 2004)
• Preview 1: First Preview (June 2004)
• Preview 2: Tasty New Screens, Diet Info
• Preview 3: Workin' Out, Jackin' Cars
• Preview 4: Another Massive Update
• Preview 5: Livin' Los Santos
• Preview 6: Shops and Robbers
• Preview 7: First-Hand Impressions
• Preview 8: Near Final Build Impressions
• Preview 9: It's Here! Final Preview
• Review - our final verdict