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Story

You play as Carl Johnson (CJ) who returns to San Andreas after learning of the murder of his mom.
Returning from five years in Liberty City, CJ finds that his old gang the Grove Street Families has virtually fallen apart.
CJ starts his story by trying to put the Grove Street Families back on the map, but after being framed by corrupt police, CJ will embark on a journey that takes him all over San Andreas.
San Andreas is a fictional state made up of three major metropolitan areas:

Just like the previous two GTA’s, the story is told through a variety of missions each starting with a relatively short cut scene.
The story is very good and is well supported with some excellent voice acting.

Gameplay

It’s the same open ended, choose your mission, do what you want, go where you want (with a few exceptions) gameplay that you’ve come to love with previous GTA’s.
There are an obscene amount of missions, optional goals and mini games such as:

Rampage missions for the most part have disappeared.
There is a new sim-like gameplay element, as now you have to watch your health and build your character’s different attributes.

Eat to give CJ energy.
Work out to build muscles faster.
Ride the exercise bike for increased stamina.
Lay off the fatty foods to prevent from getting fat.
Improve your driving skill, bike skill, and specific weapon skills through increased use. For example: early on driving is harder to control. Once you’ve spent many hours driving or have found a driving school, then cars will be easier to control and can take more damage before exploding.
You can now swim! Swim underwater to build your lung capacity.

Gunfights are easier with better aiming. Use the R1 button to auto-lock, and cycle through targets with the use of the L2 and R2 buttons. Unfortunately, a couple of weapons don’t like to lock all the time. But the frustration level is very low.
Missions cover a wide range of gameplay types:

Surprisingly there were very few boating missions.
Failing to complete larger missions does not always mean you have to replay the whole mission. Some automatically start you on the section you failed on, while others let you skip the driving sections by using the new “trip-skip” feature.
Main missions are mostly completed for respect. The more respect you have the more gang members you can get to go on drive-bys.
At some point you will realize that CJ is like the James Bond of the hood.
Overall, the gameplay improves in almost every aspect while still staying true too the core that has made Grand Theft Auto so successful.