'Grand Theft Auto' guaranteed to please, outrage

By Monty Phan of Newsday

Get some earplugs. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas hit stores Tuesday, and the sound from cash registers ringing up copies of the video game could be deafening. Then again, so could the noise from the game’s critics.

After all, that’s been the story of the Grand Theft Auto series, which has sold 32 million copies worldwide since its 1998 debut and has generated its fair share of controversy.

Expect the same from GTA: San Andreas, which some analysts predict could eventually sell as many as 15 million copies after its release for the Sony PlayStation 2.

Such sales would generate the kind of revenue for its publisher, Manhattan-based Take-Two Interactive Software, achieved by the highest of Hollywood box-office grossers.

Numbers like those could make San Andreas the bestselling non-computer game ever, but if that happens, it won’t be without notice.

Although, like its predecessors, the game will carry a “mature” rating—meaning it’s not recommended for anyone under 17—critics complain that the rating does little to deter kids from playing it and being exposed to its violent content.

It’s an understatement to say the games have lived up to that rating. In Grand Theft Auto III, released in 2001, and GTA: Vice City (2002), players control a main character who must survive by performing missions for various gangs and crime bosses around the city, usually having to injure, maim or kill others in the process.

While both received rave reviews for giving players the ability to freely roam in huge virtual environments, critics said that allowing players to carjack civilian vehicles or kill cops was over the line.

GTA: San Andreas, the fifth game in the series, allows players to navigate an entire state, including three fictional cities.

In one respect, the series is comparable to “The Sopranos,” in that Grand Theft Auto has proven mature-rated games can be successful while also spawning inferior imitators trying to capitalize on that success, said Greg Kasavin, executive editor of Gamespot.com, a San Francisco-based online magazine covering video games.

“It’s often lost on people who only pay a passing glance at GTA games that the worlds of these games are loaded with style—they’re filled with clever, ironic humor, excellent music, memorable characters and all the sorts of things that make for a great entertainment experience for adult audiences,” Kasavin said in an e-mail interview.

The two most recent games in the series, Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, both landed at or near the top of the “games to avoid“ list warning parents of their violent content, according to the annual “Video Game Report Card“ put out by the independent, non-partisan National Institute on Media and the Family.