Perhaps the most flagrantly racist of all the games was GTA: San Andreas (2004) ...

Anthony DiMaggio: Gaming the Ghetto May 31 / June 1, 2008 |
Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle
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GTA IV has been celebrated, as with its award winning predecessors, as one of the best games of all time.Game Informer magazine deemed it a work of “perfection,” surpassing “epic gaming experiences” in its “stunning realism” and “unbelievable” action. Electronic Gaming Monthly deemed it a “magnificent” specimen of “destructive mayhem,” and a “truly exciting” gaming experience.
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... Niko works for the Bratva (Russian mafia), conducting various assassinations and other jobs, keeping with the standard motif of the series. GTA IV’s depiction of the Eastern European “other” is merely one of many stereotypes employed throughout GTA’s history.

Previous games were centered on members of the Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia) and various black and Latino street gangs located in American cities. Perhaps the most flagrantly racist of all the games was GTA: San Andreas (2004), which was advertised on television alongside the tune “Welcome to the Jungle” (by Guns N’ Roses).

The advertisement portrayed inner city blacks and Latinos walking around with missile launchers and multiple Uzi’s, riding in bouncing low-riders, and partaking in drive-bys, carjackings, police chases, prostitution, and gambling. The not-so-subtle racist imagery and stereotypes of GTA: San Andreas were hard to miss, even for the game’s most ardent defenders. Inner city minorities were dehumanized and mongrelized in the construction of the city as the concrete jungle.
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Political-Communication scholars Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki have uncovered evidence of a “racial subtext of Chicago’s local news.” In the period of coverage they examined during the 1990s, “white victims outnumbered Blacks in news reports – even though Blacks in Chicago and most core cities are more likely to be victimized.” Stories featuring black victims of violence were consistently shorter than those that focused on white victims, with a “total story time” ratio imbalance of 3:1 in favor of whites. Studies have also implicated violent media images in negatively affecting audience beliefs and perceptions.

Such studies go far beyond the simplistic, clumsy and unsubstantiated claims of those conservatives in the media who blame entertainment and video game consumption for “causing” children and teens to engage in violence against their family, friends, and peers. Rather, a substantial body of literature has developed in implicating media in far more subtly “cultivating” conservative, racist, and militaristic thinking within the minds of heavy television consumers. Heavy viewers of television programming have been found to be more likely to “express fear of crime,” particularly amongst those viewers who are white, and/or middle or upper income elites.
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... Subsequently, those who more heavily consume television programs – including reality based crime shows and news reports – are significantly more likely to provide “higher estimates of crime prevalence” in society. It is perhaps the subtle effects of media violence on individual perceptions of crime and race that makes the Grand Theft Auto series so problematic. ...