GTA San Andreas

What is GTA San Andreas?

GTA San Andreas is an open-world action game by Rockstar Games, released in 2004. You play Carl "CJ" Johnson, who returns to his home town of Los Santos after the death of his mother and has to find his footing again between street gangs, corrupt police officers and old family conflicts.

The state of San Andreas contains three large cities — Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas — plus deserts, forests, mountains and rural areas in between. You move freely through this world, complete missions, take over territory for your gang and use cars, motorbikes, boats, planes and helicopters to get around.

The base game does not include a multiplayer mode. Multiplayer servers therefore run on the community modifications SA-MP (San Andreas Multiplayer) and its current successor open.mp (Open Multiplayer). Both ship their own dedicated server, on which hundreds of players can move through the same world at the same time.

What actually happens on such a server is defined by the so-called gamemode — a script written in the Pawn scripting language that is uploaded to the server as an .amx file. This is why servers range from roleplay worlds with jobs, houses and vehicle ownership to racing servers, deathmatch and completely custom game modes. Filterscripts, plugins and custom 3D models extend this even further.

GTA San Andreas is available for PC through Steam and the Rockstar Games Launcher. Playing multiplayer additionally requires the SA-MP or open.mp client.