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You definitely don't need to, but it's nice to know that it's there. There are literally hundreds of hours of content in San Andreas if you choose to complete everything. You can engage in voluntary gang turf wars to expand your territory, participate in an almost endless variety of side missions, and embark on challenges like stunt jumps, driving school, and more. Over the course of the story, CJ works with his childhood gang to fight against other factions and increase their control. You can steal cars, get into shootouts, fight off cops (or just run away), and roam around the world however you'd like. This means that you can go to the gym to get buff, build up your breath control to swim longer, and even learn a plethora of unarmed fighting styles. CJ, the game's protagonist, can be leveled up like an RPG character. In terms of activities, San Andreas almost has too much stuff to do. This means that San Andreas actually looks better on phones than it ever did on the PlayStation, and it'll run great on just about any hardware. The game's AAA development team took asset optimization and art design quite seriously when they made the game, and the PS2 was far less powerful than your phone. In fact, San Andreas looks better than a lot of the modern mobile clones that it's inspired. While it looked great for 2004, these days San Andreas looks like a phone game. Today, playing the game on a PlayStation or other game console might lead you to criticize the graphics. San Andreas' re-release on phones and tablets isn't perfect, but it captures all of what made the original game great. The game's throwback 90's vibe helps it remain relevant today, allowing it to feel nostalgic instead of dated. These cities all have their own distinct feel, whether it's the desert and casinos of Las Venturas, the urban sprawl of Los Santos, or the winding hills of San Fierro. In San Andreas, you're allowed to freely travel between three cities based on Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and Los Vegas.
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San Andreas improved on the mechanics of the previous games, tightened the controls, added a plethora of minigames and side activities, and featured what was probably the biggest map at the time in an open-world game. It was a sequel to Grand Theft Auto 3 and GTA3: Vice City, highly successful open-world games that focused on freedom and hijinks.
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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released in late 2004 for the PlayStation 2 game console. Steal cars, fight rival gangs, go to driving school, fly RC helicopters, date women, exercise, and more in this massive sandbox game, but don't forget to play through the ambitious, well-written story while you're at it. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is one of the most influential open-world games of all time.
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