San Andreas Crime City

San Andreas Crime City is obvious with its attempts to recreate the Grand Theft Auto series for mobile platforms, but it lacks the sense of a diverse and open world that the series is so well known for. Despite drawing its name from one of the GTA franchise's most well known cities, San Andreas Crime City isn't developed by Rockstar Games, and it's unfortunately missing the level of dedication and polish that the famous studio is known for. But you might be tricked into thinking it's a triple A game from just a glance. This is an impressively pretty game for something made by an indie studio. The fully three dimensional graphics look like one of the higher end experiences from the Playstation 2 era.

And San Andreas Crime City doesn't just look like a Grand Theft Auto game. It does a decent job of replicating the feel of one as well. Your avatar can hijack cars, assault random civilians, and engage in shootouts and high speed chases with the cops. The traffic and physics effects aren't perfect, but they get the job done, and the artificial intelligence is surprisingly smart given the clear limitations of the system. All in all, the core fundamentals of a solid open world crime game are baked right in to San Andreas Crime City.

But the game falls flat with its lack of scope. Loading up the game may leave you with the impression of a big open world you can explore to your heart's content, but the real estate itself is exceedingly small. The two maps available only cover a few city streets each, and that quickly deflates any notion of high octane high speed getaways. The variety of cars are similarly limited, and while there's an in game store for buying weapons, players are limited to four different types. For what it's worth, the shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, and sniper rifles all have unique controls that feel good to wield. A mini map and a fast travel button that allows you jump straight into missions are thoughtful additions, but they're made mostly obsolete by the compact size of the map.

While San Andreas Crime City doesn't have the scope to work well as an open world action game, it could potentially have redeemed itself with the inclusion of a story mode. Unfortunately, there's not a lot going on here in terms of missions. The narrative itself is largely non-existent, and the paltry amount of missions are lacking both in terms of personality and variety. San Andreas Crime City has a lot of potential, but until it expands with a dramatic amount of new content, it's unlikely to hold the attention of most gamers for very long.

Pros:

• Polished and high-quality three dimensional graphics
• Strong vehicle physics and guns with a real sense of weight

Cons:

• Maps are too small to really constitute an open world experience
• Limited number of missions, vehicles, guns, and activities

Version 41

- APK size reduced to 57 MB

- Brand New Map

- Mini Map Added