South Central LA
At the start of the game from a variety of cutscenes you find that your old gang have pretty much fallen apart and lost a lot of control and respect in the ‘hood. It’s up to you to team up with your brother, Sweet and two other gang leaders, Big Smoke and Ryder take on your local rivals, the Ballas. This introduces an evolving storyline the use of which we first saw put to good use in GTA:VC. Your first few missions are pretty easy and range from driving various gang members here and there to beat up a crack dealer or even go get a haircut or do some shopping… no really, GTA:SA has you shopping for clothes… honest!
The idea of these missions is to help you learn the game’s mechanics and as each new item is introduced the game pauses and tells you what’s what. This is a bit frustrating for seasoned GTA players like myself as we already know most of this stuff, especially if you’ve played GTA:SA on the console versions (which, as usual, were released ages ago). But the point behind getting a haircut or shopping for clothes is that you can customise the look of your character from your hair cut and what tattoos you have even to what CJ is wearing… and in the tradition of the gangs of LA, your colours are important and are even used in the gameplay later on.