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After almost 20 years since its release, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas continues to be one of the best entries in the series.
Still, the years haven’t been kind to its gameplay.
While the story has aged like fine wine, the game is riddled with bugs and old-timey design choices that simply wouldn’t fly nowadays.
And by now there’s a fix for nearly everything – so there’s plenty of Quality of Life improvements that can make San Andreas much more palatable to modern gamers.
The CLEO Library isn’t a mod but a resource most complex script-based mods need to work.
I consider installing CLEO a definite QoL improvement because your mods won’t work without it.
If you install it before anything else, you don’t need to worry about which ones need CLEO and which don’t – letting you quickly and easily try out mods in your quest to build the perfect GTA: San Andreas.
We’ve all had that moment of bad luck that leads us to lose all of our progress in any given game, including San Andreas.
The All Missions Save Game Pack will give you a door to the moment right before every single mission in the game. This way, you can regain what you’ve lost after a catastrophic data loss or enjoy your favorite mission all over again.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the basic San Andreas map – but there’s room for improvement.
The Detailed Radar Mod replaces the dull, abstract mini-map with an overhead satellite image of San Andreas. Think of it as turning on the Satellite overlay option in your Google Maps app.
This map was created by Ian Albert, a programmer and amateur designer with a deep love for video game cartography.
It’s very appealing and will make it easier to navigate the map by making landmarks much easier to relate to their three-dimensional version.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been especially good at orienting myself in video games.
I use Google Maps in real life, so why shouldn’t I do the same in video games?
While San Andreas doesn’t provide that much help in navigating the complex and often repetitive streets of San Fierro, Los Santos, and Las Venturas, there are always mods to help out.
The GPS mod works just like finding directions in Google Maps. It’ll calculate the shortest route to your destination and show it on the map.
Just follow the red line, and you’ll be there in no time.
I’ve included a Cheat Menu in every QoL improvement list I’ve ever put together.
When trying out mods – especially in older games – you might get into hopeless situations that would lead you to restart the game or lose a save file altogether.
Cheat Menus allow you to bend the game’s rules to avoid dead ends like these. They can also help you skip the most tedious and least enjoyable parts of a game to get the most of your limited time.
Many people started their Grand Theft Auto journey with the fifth main installment in this open-world crime simulator franchise.
Those of you who’re just now going back to try out the classics so you can finally understand the memes and history of the series will love the GTA V HUD for San Andreas.
The truth is, San Andreas’ HUD is rudimentary at best. It lacks many features from newer installments, such as the much-loved customizable wheel weapon selector.
Other features include:
Rearranged health, armor, and breath bars.
3D radar when riding a vehicle.
Cops shown on radar.
Customizable in-game menus.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, so check this mod out!
The first GTA game I ever played was Vice City on someone else’s PC.
So playing one of these games on a keyboard is second nature to me.
Still, I know many of you have only ever played on consoles, and I understand the appeal of a comfortable PlayStation or Xbox controller.
If you try to play San Andreas with these gamepads, you’ll notice it doesn’t quite work the way you’d expect it to. To fix that, you need only install the GInput mod linked above.
One of the worst parts about some older games is that they don’t support widescreen resolutions.
Most of us have been playing on widescreen monitors for decades now, and it feels like too big a downgrade to have to play in 4:3, or worse, get a stretched-out image where every character looks like they could use some intermittent fasting.
The Widescreen Fix is what you need to get San Andreas working correctly in your preferred resolution.
This mod also adds a nifty QuickSave function. Just press F5, and your game is saved.
I love having in-depth control over the games I play.
I’m the guy who spends a good half hour playing around with a game’s settings before I even hit “Start Game” and another half hour fixing it after I play through the tutorial and realize I messed everything up.
MixSets is a dream mod for people like me.
Along with a bunch of fixes, it gives you control over hundreds of options the original game didn’t. These range from technical tweaks like setting an FPS limit to gameplay changes like activating automatic reload upon switching weapons.
If I can get you to download just a single mod from this list, I’d go with the Silent Patch.
As an older game, San Andreas is riddled with little bugs and missing features the developers either didn’t bother to fix, or left in to protect the game’s “authenticity.”
The Silent Patch fixes countless bugs and makes the game much more compatible with modern gaming rigs.
Timers freezing if you play without an FPS limiter, or specific visual effects not working on newer graphic cards, and these are only some of the bugs fixed by this nifty mod.
I could write an entire essay about the fixes introduced by Silent Patch – but the best way to understand it is to try it out yourself. If this doesn’t improve quality of life, nothing will.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
