Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Patch

Pros

• Free update
• Support for higher resolutions
• Many bugs and glitches fixed

Cons

• Eliminates controversial content
• Some bugs remain

The Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas patch 1.01 fixes bugs, improves performance and removes the controversial Hot Coffee mod.

This Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas patch is numbered 1.01 and is a free update to the game. You do need to own the game and have it installed for this package to be useful to you. Note that this game was released in 2004, which makes it quite old as of this writing. There have been subsequent patches, and all of the content and fixes in this patch are included in those as well. Nevertheless, the 1.01 patch for San Andreas will forever hold a special place in gaming history due to how polarizing it was at the time.

Before diving into the patch, let us discuss Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas the game a bit. The Grand Theft Auto series is a video game franchise that needs little introduction. Not only is the series immensely popular, but it has garnered a lot of negative attention at times due to allegedly targeting young gamers with mature content. This is an open-world action-adventure game that tells the story of Carl “CJ” Johnson. CJ is a one-time gangster who “got out” but returns to his old stomping grounds due to the death of his mother. He must now navigate old friendships, old rivalries, new enemies and even the police as he strives to restore the Families to the glory they once enjoyed.

Despite being a video game series that is no stranger to controversy, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was particularly controversial. It features a minigame in which the main character could have sexual intercourse with his current girlfriend. Whether the minigame was cut content or simply a developmental exercise is unclear. What is clear is that it was not included in the actual release. However, the code and resources were left behind, and modders released a Hot Coffee mod that turned it on in-game. This caused the ESRB to change the game to an AO rating. This patch was a response to that change and parental outcry, but it also upset fans who liked the provocative content.

It is worth mentioning that this patch did not affect the option to otherwise mod the game. Eventually, the game was changed so that it did not have these files at all, which was a requirement for the ESRB to switch it back to an M rating. On PC, there are still ways to introduce the Hot Coffee content to your game if you wish, and this is true even if you install from a source that lacks the necessary resources. Gamers who are playing it on a PlayStation or Xbox, however, are simply out of luck.

The purpose of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas patch 1.01 was not limited to Hot Coffee. At launch, the game lacks support for resolutions that were becoming more prevalent at the time. This patch adds support for both 720p and 1080i. Note that as of this writing, most gamers are playing games at 1080p and higher resolutions. This patch does not support those. As far as we know, support for those resolutions requires a community-drive patch that is not officially recognized or supported by Rockstar.

Another purpose of this patch was to improve performance. On PC at release, performance was hit or miss. Some players were enjoying flawless performance while others were experiencing performance that was substandard for their setups. This patch corrected many of those issues across a wide range of configurations. It is worth noting that this topic is of less importance today. In fact, many of those issues even if they are still present will not manifest simply because your rig will brute force the performance.

The final purpose was to fix a number of bugs, glitches and the like. There was a particularly serious issue in which the game was crashing to desktop. Some players were experiencing the CTDs at such a high rate to make the game unplayable while others would have to reboot their computers to avoid a crash presumably due to a memory leak. The game engine was updated to eliminate most of these, and the audio engine was updated to avoid audio issues for players listening through headphones.

Not all bugs were squashed with 1.01, however. In fact, there was still a small subset of configurations experiencing the CTDs after 1.01, and these issues would not be more comprehensively ironed out until subsequent patches. This was likely due to Rockstar accelerating the patch process due to the controversy. This meant a lot of small bugs remained as well. These were small in that they were not game-breaking, but they did diminish the game experience. This includes some audio files not playing correctly or even at all. Certain cars were prone to crashes or had geometry issues. There were even some issues with quests, and certain guns and clothing items were still simply inaccessible.

Pros

• Free update
• Support for higher resolutions
• Many bugs and glitches fixed

Cons

• Eliminates controversial content
• Some bugs remain