Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas may be the next Titanic. The biggest video game yet in an autumn of blockbusters, San Andreas is expected to sell more than 4.5 million copies worldwide in its first week of release. That, crossed with a retail price of about $60 (CDN), would ring up sales in the neighbourhood of $270 million. If it manages the kind of business its 12-million-selling predecessor Grand Theft Auto: Vice City did, it will gross a full $720 million. For comparison, a movie with a take like would rank No. 25 on the all-time global box-office list, right between Men in Black and The Passion of the Christ. So clearly the thing is going to make somebody very rich.

First, however, it is going to make Carl "C.J." Johnson rich. He is the protagonist of San Andreas, the small-time hoodlum who dreams of running his own criminal empire that spans all of San Andreas, the fictional U.S. state where all the action takes place. As the game begins, C.J. is freshly returned to Los Santos, which is just like Los Angeles except that its Hollywood is called "Vinewood" and its police tend not to react when you run over pedestrians in plain daylight.

C.J. fled Los Santos five years ago, we learn, to escape the thug life and make a clean start. But news of his mother's violent death brings him back, and he's still not out of his airport taxi when a pair of corrupt cops pulls him over, framing him for the murder of an officer. If he's going to survive, he realizes, he's going to need the help of his old gangland pals. Mayhem follows.

Some background: The original Grand Theft Auto appeared in stores in early 1998. Its object was simple: You were to steal cars, and then you were to use those stolen cars to commit dozens of other crimes. It drew middling reviews and the attention of some eager fans, but failed to make much of a splash, culturally speaking. A few sequels followed, with similar results.

Then, at about this time of year in 2001, Grand Theft Auto III appeared for the PlayStation 2. Its premise was, as you would expect, centred on carjackings and drug-runnings and killings. But its 3D graphics were a departure. In GTA III, we saw the thugs up close. The pedestrians running to get out of the way of the speeding stolen cars really looked like people. When we clubbed passersby to death and stole their money, we heard the wet thud. We understood why the other passersby were screaming. GTA III took the abstract criminality of the early games and made it visceral and real.

Shock and outrage followed, as did a torturous season of TV panel debates. Topic: Are Video Games Turning Our Kids Into Killers? The game was banned outright in Australia, where the verdict of that country's Office of Film and Literature Classification was that, yes, video games are turning our kids into killers.

On this side of the Pacific, cooler heads prevailed. Maybe it was the widespread evidence of the nightly news. After all, if watching a grinning, moronic psychopath (one who lied and bullied his nation into a war that killed thousands and maimed thousands more) on TV every single day doesn't turn our kids into killers, what harm could a little video game possibly do? Still, when Vice City, the followup to GTA III, arrived in stores, the panel shows were warmed up and ready to resume their natterings.

This time around the mood is quieter. Yes, San Andreas is every bit as violent and bloody and brutal as the others, and yes, it will make you laugh at things that are only cruel and not at all funny. But outrage no longer floats in the air. To wit: Tuesday morning, just as San Andreas was beginning its prodigious retail run, the stock price of its publisher was sinking. The reason? Not controversy over violence, but concerns that the company was getting to be a one-trick pony.

So, the game. We (as C.J.) begin our reign of terror in humiliating fashion, riding BMX bikes with our posse of also-wannabes through the rough 'hoods of Los Santos. We stop for pizza. We talk tough. We stop for chicken. We spraypaint our gang insignia on bridges and walls. We talk tough some more. When we are out painting, we notice some rival gangsters nearby, and, at the game's prompting, unload our spraycans into their faces. Suddenly the stakes are higher, and bullets begin to fly.

The action plays out in a series of missions. Sometimes we only need to ferry a homeboy across town. Other times we have explicit instructions to shoot people in the face. All these jobs earn us "respect," which in time will earn us power across the entire state.

In between all the missions, we can roam freely. We can eat chicken and get fat. We can steal taxis and pick up fares for fun. We can wander from street to street and city to city, just relaxing and smelling the smog and beating up the odd pedestrian for lunch money. This is the third Grand Theft Auto game to grant us that privilege, and the third one stuffed full of amusing radio programming, and the third one to come with a soundtrack of nostalgic hit songs. It is the third Grand Theft Auto to feel freewheeling and huge, the third one with an overwhelming sense of place.

All these are good things. The game is riotously fun and tough to put down, disapproving stares from the responsible people in your life notwithstanding. Still, the whole thing somehow rings a little hollow. Yes, its graphic design is outstanding, and its nods to L.A. and San Francisco and Las Vegas are beautiful and wry at the same time. Yes, it is bigger than its predecessors. Yes, it offers you more ways to live the thug life than ever before (you can swim, you can drive across rural California, you can eat fast food...). Yes, it shows the polish of its large budget and skilled development team.

Yes, San Andreas is a very good game. It is probably one of the best games you will ever play. But it is a sequel, and it feels like one. Pity the name Grand Theft Auto III is already taken.