On one level, San Andreas feels very familiar to the previous two installments in the series, but there are also plenty of new additions to keep it from feeling like a retread. A mini-RPG system allows you to see how far your skills have progressed in categories like driving, stamina, respect and various weapons, and while you'll build these stats up over the course of normal gameplay, you can also hit driving schools, shooting ranges or gyms to speed things up. There are tons of options to customize CJ's wardrobe, ink yourself up with tattoos, get new haircuts and buy bling to pimp yourself out. You can romance girlfriends in your free time in the hopes of getting invited in for "coffee," and turf wars allow you to take over areas of Los Santos with fellow gang members a few blocks at a time. Best of all, while all of these additions add depth to the basic formula, they're almost completely optional -- they only add to the fun, and don't get in the way of it.

Rockstar also deserves credit for once again building a world that's just interesting. San Andreas is a warped parody in itself, from Gap-inspired Zip clothing stores to Cluckin' Bell chicken shacks and a ton of similar spoofs. Some parts of the story are so off-the-wall bonkers that you can't help but laugh, and yet you'll still want to see how it all turns out, with some good surprises even as you reach the game's final missions. (There are a number of major ties to Liberty City and Vice City that fans of the series will particularly enjoy.) Like Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, the world of San Andreas is one laced with violence and profanity, and it isn't a game any 10-year-old should be playing, but that doesn't make the experience any less compelling for adults.

Cause too much of a commotion, and expect the police to show up unhappy.

A huge cast is on hand to bring the characters to life, starting with relative unknown rapper Young Maylay doing a fantastic job as CJ. Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Penn play crooked cops Tenpenny and Pulaski, Peter Fonda provides some memorable moments as a way-out hippie named The Truth, and James Woods is the unforgettable Mike Toreno, a government agent of sorts that CJ gets mixed up with. (Be sure to do every mission you can find for Toreno as soon as you can.) The amazing soundtrack, with 8 different radio stations and over 100 songs, covers the best of the early 90's, including Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Boyz II Men, En Vogue, Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine, and provides perfect backdrop to the action. In short, the presentation is top-notch on every level.

Well, almost every level. It's frustrating that, even after all the success of the GTA games, San Andreas still looks a generation or two behind in the graphics department. Even with support for higher resolutions and antialiasing, San Andreas only looks worse depending on how good your hardware is: once you've gotten used to playing Half-Life 2, DOOM 3 and even World of Warcraft at 1920x1200, it can be jarring to see an abundance of stretched textures and blocky geometry that permeates the world. The Mulholland mansion of rapper Madd Dogg, for example, which becomes a central location in the game, is an embarrassingly outdated bit of level design, like a practice level someone built for Half-Life five years ago. It's clear that some textures were upgraded for the PC version, and we'll happily take the tradeoff of San Andreas' superior gameplay at the expense of some eye candy, but our question is: why can't we have both? Hopefully the incoming wave of next-gen consoles will give the GTA series the graphical upgrade it so sorely needs.