Grand Theft Auto 4 For PC

Amongst all the hype and disappointment around the release of Grand Theft Auto 4 for PC, i have a personal, unbiased review of the game.

The specifications of the system this was tested on are as follows:
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Gigabyte P35-DS4 Motherboard
G.Skill 2 x 2GB 1066DDR2 RAM
Gigabyte NVidia 8800GTX 768MB
2 x Western Digital 320GB in RAID0

After finding many posts about problems with GTA4 and new drivers from NVidia released specifically for the game i decided to download them and install the new drivers. After which i loaded GTA4 Disc on the PC and proceeded to install the game, after nearly 30 minutes of installing from Disc 1 & 2, it was complete. Then this brought me to the stage of registering a Rockstar Social Club account and a Windows Live TAG. Overall the whole install process had taken well over and hour to complete, which was not indeal. The game also uses SercuROM protection aswell, which is a very intrusive protection system which a lot of people blame for slowing down the game itself, which is not proven however. The game requires a once off activation over the internet to play, which after does not need to be done again unless reinstalled or put on another pc, Rockstar have allowed unlimited activations for it and have been commended for doing so, you are allowed to install the game on as many pc's as you want, as long as the original disc is used to play.

When starting the game the first time the Windows Live wants to update to the latest version, i had quite a bit of trouble with this and had many restarts of the game telling me that it still needed to update. After a few restarts it seemed fine. The game fired up and i went straight to the graphics settings. Resolution was set to 1680 x 1050, textures to medium and render quality to high. Draw distance set to 100, detail distance 100 and everything else to about halfway. The graphics screen shows you the amount of Video RAM required for your current settings, with the settings above the game uses almost all of the 768MB of Video RAM, using 729MB of it. The game does not allow you to configure graphics settings which require more VRAM than your system has, unless you use the -norestriction command line. This allows you to set whatever graphics settings you want, but high textures require more than 1GB of VRAM, so using these settings on PC's which do not have that will end up with missing textures which can really ruin the experience.

With textures set at medium the game ran smooth and was more than playable. The game did not seem to stutter even during intense gunfire. Although many gamers are reporting horrible frame rates with even better hardware than what i have. The only complaint i have about the graphics here and the shadows which look grainy/dithered, it look horrible and is not easy on the eye.

The gameplay itself is incredible, the city feels alive and it seems like everything is going on around you as it would in the real world. The camera seems to be a little tricky to use in car while turning corners, you need to move the mouse around with the car to see around corners. The controls are fairly straight forward and seem simple. Xbox 360 controllers are supported, one of the great features is that both keyboard and mouse and a 360 controller can be used at the same time, so when entering a car you can change to the controller to drive, then back to the keyboard for gunfights, although i have no complaints about the car handling with the keyboard, i find it easier infact. Gameplay compared to the other games in the series seems a bit more realistic, Niko the main character in the game, can hide behind all sorts of objects to get out of gunfire, using opencar doors, brick walls and pretty much anything in the environment. Rockstar have tried to make a more realistic GTA compared to the previous ones, you aren't able to fly planes anymore. Some weapons such as the chainsaw and flamethrower have been thrown out. Cars seem more realistic and the gunfights are more methodical and technical. Shoot someone in their hand while they are holding a gun, and the hand flys back and the gun is dropped, shoot someone in the leg and they drop and headshots are headshots, instant kill.

The game really makes you feel for the main character unlike the previous games, Niko has the choice in quite a few missions to kill or spare lives, making the outcome different. He has his own moral values to uphold and you really get immersed in his story.

Comparing the pc version to the console versions the game apparently has higher resolution textures. Two features that stand out are the Replay Editor, which allows you to record 30 seconds of gameplay with a click on a key. You can place cameras anywhere and make a decent film out of it. Many youtube videos have already been uploaded in this manner, and i'm sure there will be many more to come. The other one is that multiplayer has been upgraded from 16 players to 32 players. The Rockstar Social Club also has leader boards for online play aswell.

The game requires a very powerful machine and even then you will not get to view all the eye candy. Rockstar claim the game is designed for future pc's and current pc's are recommended to play the game on medium. Which has angered many gamers, i would recommend the game to anyone with a mid-high end machine. Be warned that the game has not been working for many people, who complain about bad graphics problems, but my personal experience has been great. There is a patch due to be released shortly and people are waiting on what sort of fixes this will bring.

My personal rating of the game would be 9/10, the gameplay and graphics are second to none for the genre. But with that comes the beefy system requirements which don't even seem definative as of yet. I would recommend people to do some research before purchasing the game, but i would recommend the game to anyone who has a mid-high machine.