Grand Theft Auto Iv Review

[Herbert1405241469 0]

I've purchased all of the PC games the Grand Theft Auto series since the first Sprite-based one was released. Every time they released a new one, it was better than the one before it. Vice City introduced motorcycles, San Andreas was massive, and you could swim.... Now with the latest and hottest GTA game just released for the PC (FINALLY!) I was expecting no less than perfection... The box art shows very clearly that they updated the crappy low-poly models they used to use, and now the characters have a next-gen look to them, which is awesome. The car's damage systems are much more accurate and realistic looking.... Liberty City is dense and rich with a feeling of life... And they screwed it all up.Yes, I did play the game, but I forgot to mention all the crap I had to go through to get to that point. First off, the biggest complaint that everyone has about this game is the inclusion of DRM in the form of SecuROM. Now, I've never really had any trouble with this before, since I do not run any virtual drives or Daemon Tools type programs... I purchase all my games and don't use cracks or anything since they crack down so hard nowadays and I don't feel like getting caught up in that BS.Well, I heard the same crap about DRM for Far Cry 2, and I bought it and had no problems installing it or anything... But they did something... different, or maybe Far Cry 2 didn't have SecuROM or whatever, but the fact of the matter is once I had the game installed, and registered an account for Windows LIVE, and registered an account for ROCKSTAR Social Club (yeah, they make you register to play if you want to save your freaking game)...Once I log into Windows LIVE, I start getting tons of warnings from my antivirus (I have both Symantec, and AVAST, and both were going crazy with TROJANS). YES that's right. TROJANS. MALWARE. I don't know if it's Rockstar's Club program, or Windows LIVE, but someone figured out how to either hack it, or *gasp* the game publishers are trying to install trojan horse files on our computers.OK, trojan files aside, my antivirus blocks them. SO I attempt to log into my Rockstar Club account, and PLAY the game I just purchased for $50, and BOOM, I get some sort of Fatal Error. I looked this error up online and apparently, Rockstar is having problems with their servers... Which means that MULTIPLAYER IS UNAVAILABLE. I can log into my Windows LIVE account to save my game and play single player, but then I get trojan horse alerts from AVAST.So after an hour or so, I finally get the game running (though now my computer takes twice as long to boot up).The game itself... Well here's the thing. They have better visuals, but the graphics suck in terms of anti-aliasing... Stuff that is far away is pixilated, rather than blended in a way to make it look nicer. I can run Far Cry 2 and Crysis with no problem on the higher settings (Far Cry 2 I had maxed with no frame rate loss) but GTA IV just doesn't seem as optimized. I get a lower framerate than I'd like, but meh, moving on to gameplay.Gameplay... Controls are different than what they've used in the past. I can no longer bind the ENTER key, which I don't use WASD, I use the arrow keys, so I always use the ENTER key to enter vehicles... But not anymore, I have to hit F or something, which totally ruins the flow. Speaking of driving, they also seem to have gotten rid of the follow camera... Now, you have to constantly have one hand on the mouse in order to rotate it around the camera or else when you turn, you will be looking at the side of your car, rather than in front of you.... It's a pain in the *bottom* to get used to, but not bad. Cars feel very light and hard to maneuver. I can't make a quick turn without having to use the hand brake, and it just seems a lot touchier than I remember San Andreas being... It's just not quite... right.The game has a tutorial system that after an hour and a half of playing is still giving me tips, just because the game is really that big. Dating is now a lot more involved. I went on a first date with a girl I met in-game, and for bowling, you actually have a bowling mini-game that takes up about 5 minutes... Sheesh. I would skip dating altogether for the time investment, but they unlock guns and bombs and useful things like that if you get to know them better. The female models are a hell of an improvement over their older GTA counterparts! They still put red and blue stars over nipples so you'll see boobs, but no nips. Which is odd, because it leads back to the argument of how weird America is about nudity versus violence and swearing... You hear the word "f*ck" on the radio, from characters, on TV (YES you can watch TV now haha, Rockstar humor has never been better!!!)Yet they get flack if they show low-res nipples in the game. They do push the envelope whenever they can though..... Just going to the bowling alley, you'll notice the two bowling balls next to the pin representing a certain male organ. Anyway, still playing.Right now I say hold off on buying the game, just because there is so much **** attached to it. It's sad, because people will buy the console versions to avoid the SecuROM... which will decrease PC Sales, which is probably what they want to do since Consoles are easier to program for.... meaning the Death of the PC market The whole thing stinks of conspiracy.Definitely do not buy it on Steam. For the same price, buying it in the store, you get the manuals filled with Rockstar humor, along with a giant map and poster in the case that you probably don't get by downloading it through Steam. I mean if you're going to pay $50 for a game, why not get a box and manual to put it in, eh?

[Herbert1405241469 0]

Ok, well I was definitely overrun by spyware and trojans, I completely wiped my hard drive and installed Windows Vista (I had been running XP before).After a clean install, and updated everything, I installed GTA 4 again, only then realizing that I didn't have my savegames, and had to start the game from the beginning. At least now I'm cruising through it much faster now, but it's still annoying to have to go through all the little tutorial missions again.Several things to note. Installing it again, I am not getting trojan warnings from my antivirus, so I'm hoping that was all a major coincidence.... But I'm taking nothing for granted.Second, the game is less buggy in Vista. In XP, sometimes it didn't show me how much ammo I had in my gun, and car damage wasn't great. It seems that a lot of little bugs have been worked out.I have been experiencing a stutter as I play for an hour but I think that's due to using all my ram and starting to use the page file which is much slower. I really need to upgrade that :\Overall a much smoother experience, though the game could be optimized just a bit more...Other notes, the voice acting is great.

[Herbert1405241469 0]

Despite all of the bad first impressions, I am still playing GTA 4. Under all the controversy about DRM and whatnot, they have once again succeeded in creating a GTA Universe that you really can dig yourself deep into. It's amazing how much detail they really did put into this game, right down to a parody of CraigsList you can look around in PC net cafes. Dialog and cut scenes are superb. Niko is definitely my favorite protagonist in the GTA series. I can really relate to him and how he handles situations. If you play violently and run over hobos, his attitude makes him come out looking like an ice cold bastard.... Where if you play by avoiding crime and do your best to be "good," his same attitude can be interpreted as less harsh... It's hard to explain :PSan Andreas used to be my favorite but now GTA 4 is definitely top on my list. I've tried a bit of multiplayer, and it's a rich experience, though I wish there was voice chat built in... I haven't seen it yet. But I guess if I wanted teamwork, I'll go play Left 4 Dead :rolleyes:The only bad thing still that I am experiencing is the computer hangups after playing for awhile... I have my Nvidia control panel set to "Performance" quality, so the anti-aliasing is off and the quality is lower, but I get a better framerate... But once I start driving around the city, my computer seems to run out of ram and switches to the hard drive's page file, as it keeps accessing the hard drive after a certain point. I know quad core processors are supposed to be best for this game, but I have my e6850 Core 2 Duo @3ghz, overclocked it to 3.2ghz. It helped a little, but my real bottleneck is probably the ram because it's cheaper. Still, it shouldn't bog down after being perfect in the start... I'm thinking some sort of memory leak where it isn't unloading old stuff I'm not near and whatnot... I dunno, either way I need a motherboard upgrade!

[y4nzi 0]

That was a really long and thorough review. Too bad about the trojans, perhaps that was a coincidence (hopefully it was). Despite all the problems you mentioned installing and the changes they've made, the actual game sounds like classic GTA with great story, great city to explore and so on.I was actually considering buying the PC version because I prefer playing the GTA games on PC but after reading your review, I don't think my compter could take it. San Andreas BARELY ran on my PC and I haven't upgraded it since... What are the minimum RAM and speed requirements to run the game?I'll probably end up buying the console version instead.

[Herbert1405241469 0]

I have 2 gb of ram, and I downloaded the latest patch and drivers from nVidia, and the game runs a bit smoother now. I also found out why the game would start off great and then slowly degrade in performance. It's not a memory leak, it is the battle recorder they have running for if you want to create replay movies of your gameplay. If you turn that off, you will have much better performance. I was running everything on LOW, but now with those changes, I can run with textures on Medium, render quality on High and other stats set to pretty much medium and i now get good performance.My specs:Intel Core 2 Duo Dual Core, 3ghznvidia GTX 260 overclock edition2 gb cheap ramRuns good at medium settings, though it irks me that I can run Crysis and Fallout 3 which are more graphics intensive on High, and yet GTA is still studdering at higher qualities.... :\