This wildly ambitious total conversion mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas lets you explore the setting of 2003's Manhunt

A man fires an AK47-style weapon in the total conversion mod GTA: Carcer City — (Image credit: Rockstar Games, DeadpoolMKD)

It may have taken 13 years, but you can finally explore a brand new slice of Grand Theft Auto. No, Grand Theft Auto 6 hasn't launched early. I'm referring to GTA: Carcer City, a new total conversion mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

GTA: Carcer City replaces San Andreas' massive map with a single metropolis, one that is inspired by (and shares the same name as) the city seen in 2003's Manhunt. Rockstar's grisly slaughter-fest is set in the same universe as Grand Theft Auto, which is one of those facts that I distantly recall learning at some point, but had for all intents and purposes forgotten in the years since.

In the context of Rockstar's alt-USA, Carcer City is located in its northeastern Rust Belt, taking visual cues from urban centres like Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh—the metropolitan flavour of the month courtesy of a certain wildly popular medical drama. Its various districts include a skyscraper-strewn downtown area, a shipping port, an airport, and a more historic old town. According to its ModDB page, Carcer City also includes "all of the locations from the levels featured in Manhunt", which is a neat touch.

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Grand Theft Auto: Carcer City - Demo Download - YouTube

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As for what kind of GTA experience Carcer City aims to deliver, the mod is set in 2001 and introduces a "brand new storyline" that aims for a "dark, immersive tone". That suggests that it'll be a little different from the caustic satire Rockstar has become known for, perhaps bridging the gap between GTA and Manhunt.

The video above shows some of Carcer City in action. It seems to play much as you'd expect a PS2 GTA to, a mixture of arcade-style open-world driving and getting into somewhat ropey gunfights. That's entirely on Rockstar though, and not a dig at the mod, which is clearly an impressive piece of work.

The version of Carcer City currently available to download is a demo, offering the full city to explore as well as "a taste of the storyline". There's no mention of when the mod might be finished, but given how long ambitious mod projects like this tend to take, I certainly wouldn't expect to see it before Grand Theft Auto 6 releases on November 19.

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Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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