Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Scored 15/10. One of the best games of all time. The scale broke the scale, so the score did too.
Yes, the score says 15 out of 10. No, that is not a typo, and no, we are not fixing it. Some games max out the scale. San Andreas walked through the top of it.
THE WORLD SHOULD NOT HAVE FIT
Rockstar put three full cities on one disc in 2004: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas, with countryside, desert, and mountains holding them together. Then they filled it. Lowriders and jetpacks. Gang wars and flight school. A story that starts with CJ coming home for his mother's funeral and turns into a state wide climb from the Grove to the top of the whole map.
Every system in this game talks to another system. You eat, you train, you dress, you ride, and the world answers all of it. Games twenty years newer ship with less ambition than San Andreas shipped with on a PlayStation 2 disc.
WHY IT BEATS EVERYTHING AFTER IT
The case is already on this site and it stands: San Andreas was 100x the game GTA V ever was. V is prettier. San Andreas is bigger where it counts: heart, guts, and sheer stuff to do. CJ's story lands because the game earns every mile of it, from a bicycle in Grove Street to a jetpack over the desert.
THE VERDICT
15/10 for sure. One of the best games of all time. The ten point scale is a good scale. This game is the exception that proves what the scale is for.
THE INDUSTRY NUMBER
Two scoreboards live on this page and they never mix. The score at the top is Moe's, argued above and signed. The industry's number, the collective critic aggregate, sits here for reference: Metacritic 95. Same game, two verdicts. Read both, then play it yourself.
