Gta iv

True all that. I havent had any ambition to buy, or even play, GTAIV yet as I've still got at least a dozen games still in the "shrinkwrap" too. I did own & play the crap out of GTAIII though and it was a fun game at the time. If I was getting frustrated with a mission I could always steal a cop car, run over some pedestrians & hookers, and lead the cops on a chase till they escalated my "wantedness" all the way up and the FBI would roll in with those sweet super fast & durable cruisers. If that werent enough I'd beat enough FBI dudes where the military came in with tanks....I never was able to lift one of those but it was possible.

I think I'm starting on Batman: Arkham Asylum tonight. Just gotta wait for it to download....

I've played and beat this game on both the PC and PS3. I moved to the PC version once I got a powerful enough machine to truly appreciate the visual splendor it offers.

The PC version was initially troubled by a large number of glitches, but things have cleared up nicely via patching. It does require a beefy graphics card with a large frame buffer and quad-core CPU before even thinking about running close to the highest settings at a decent frame-rate.

I very much appreciated the game itself. It never "overstayed its welcome" while I journeyed to achieve 100% completion.

HA...Steam stats tells so much

Yeah, if I am bored and the woman has control of the TV I'll fire up Lumines. It's addicting as hell though. I hit my highest score the other night on standard difficulty with some 1.2 million points & almost 3 passes through...the only reason I stopped is because I had other things I had to do so I just ended the game early.

After Batman I think I'm going on Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 followed by Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction on the PS3. I still havent finished off Lego Star Wars but I'll probably push that off until after God of War 3.

We still have to try some more L4D(2) nights...I dropped off of online gaming when work got busy again and I just had less ambition to play during the week.

edit: I forgot I still have Mirrors Edge & Torchlight to work through on the PC too. Ughh.

I didn't get past maybe 6 or 7 missions. Even with the snazzier graphics, pseudo-WWW, etc... it was too much like previous GTA's.

^ Same here, somewhat. I got pretty deep into the game but found myself playing Saints Row 2 more. It seemed to offer more variety in gameplay versus GTA4. I like GTA4 just it's not really that much different than GTA: San Andreas, which wasn't that much different than GTA: Vice City, which etc. etc..

I've played all the primary GTA games and believe that part IV helped keep the series strong. I think part IV has the best cast of characters and storyline, as well as some of the most well thought-out missions.

The newest patch for this game is great. The optimizations make things appreciably smoother, you no longer have to run the annoying Rockstar Social Club application to play the game, and the initial loading is much faster.

Are there any plans to release the expansions for PC at retail? I'd like to pick up the whole package with the patched game + both exps for around $30 or so. In the past Rockstar has released cheap value versions of GTAs if you just wait long enough.

Well, I broke down and picked up GTA IV from Target today. Wanted to give my upgraded PC a little workout I suppose. That was around 2 PM, got off work early due to the heat, and decided to install it. And that was around five hours ago, off and on. And I'm still not playing it. I'm having some hangup with Securom, I suspect, but only after applying the Rockstar patch. Right after the Rockstar Social Club screen is dispatched, the disc will spinup and light the drive but the game fails to start.

I've seen this same issue with DVD burners and Securom in the past, thought they had it worked out. I just uninstalled for the third time, and used the official Securom removal tool to wipe all their stuff from the registry. If this doesnt work I guess it's back to Target for a $20. Sad that I can't play a legit copy due to copy protection.

Any thoughts (besides swallow my pride and join Steam )?

What pride needs to be swallowed? I'm surprised the bad rep steam got waaay back when it first came out has followed it this far. Steam is always my first choice of platform for buying any new games.

OK, as of around 9 PM it's up and running. And pretty cool too. the Securom removal tool worked, then I had to fight with multiple aborted GFWL updates which weren't integrated into the game right and caused crashes. What a messed up initial release.

Oh well now I can save, and the latest "7" patch is giving me 40+ FPS at 1080 widescreen with 80% draw distance and medium high settings. Looks absolutely awesome. Never thought a suede jacket could be reproduced so well in a video game.

I like to get the physical first versions of Rockstar's games because I'm a sucker for their customized game manuals and maps. They're neato.

Hey is gta4 X-fire compatible? I've heard it is and I've heard it isn't.

It is but you have to play at least 1080P for it to make a difference. Thats with a 3.5GHZ i7 so scaling might be even worse on a slower CPU.

Why would anybody ever run a dual-GPU setup, and then run at a lower resolution than 1080p? That's like implying that most people buy 4-core CPUs, but then just get home and turn off 2 of the cores.

I've got 2 5870 in my Laptop with a res of 1440*900
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I just spent more time outside of games then in them and hate it when the fron gets all small like it does on my 23" and 24" LCD..

I bought crossfire thinking down the road having crossfire might make or break playing a game on decent settings on my native res. Would I be wrong to assume that?

You can enable SSAA to get (2x) 2880x1800 or (4x) 5760x3600 downscaled to 1440x900.

http://gtaivsa.com/

Dudes. They've taken San Andreas and dropped the world in to the GTA IV engine. It's a bit buggy, and missions don't work, but it's great to go visit that world again. The art assets hold up surprisingly well when displayed on a more modern engine.

Go give it a try. It's a blast, I imagine especially if you have fond memories of GTA3 part 3.

I have to tell you GTA4 will always be like Crysis, it will take an exponentially high end machine to run it adequately since its not optimized at all for the PC. Case in point, I have a 4.8Ghz i7 that now has dual 670's overclocked in SLI.......my framerates in the room where I started were about 400, dropped to about 65-75 on the street, I turned a corner....boom, upper 40's. I just recently started the missions for Lost and the Damned and then I'll go on to The Ballad of Gay Tony, and mind you I'm not running ICE or any of the pretty 3rd party mods, I haven't replaced the car models or done anything else that might speed things up. This is everything set on high except for traffic at like 30%, running at 1080p. This game is heavily CPU dependent, so I wouldn't expect this game to run too much better until I upgrade to a faster CPU.....and I have no idea when that will happen, nothing out there seems like a worthy upgrade at the moment (worthy as in, huge speed bump because you'll be replacing your chip, motherboard and Ram too)........

GTA 3 I thought was technically impressive......we all did, lets not kid ourselves. But the game itself I found lacking.

GTA Vice City was the pinnacle of the series, it had the perfect setting, it injected a ton of dark humor into the game, and I have to be honest hearing all those famous 80's voices was enjoyable. I also think it was the most well thought-out game in the series mission wise, and the location was ideal....it wasn't a grimy imitation NYC, it had big beaches, palm trees, and an imitation Crockett and Tubbs. Win. (I bought the expansion game for the PS2, Vice City Stories....but never actually opened it or played it.....its still in my closet with a hacked-all-to-hell PS2)......

GTA San Andreas for me went "too far down the rabbit hole" with the stats-leveling and the having to eat or work out, adding to that..they made the game too big....with long stretches of boring highways in between. The other thing that sucked was that this game was simply "too much for the hardware" of the time, the fact that California has lots of steep hills and deep valleys kind of made driving around a real PITA......just didn't like the locations, in the end, didn't find much difference between the locations. Gave up about half way, i think I opened up that Las Vegas clone city but never actually got to drive there. I bought the PC version for like a buck a few years ago, put a few minutes into it but the graphics are so outdated at this point its hard to stay engaged. Plus, its not designed for the wireless xbox controller on my PC, the game really needs a PS2 clone controller IMHO.......

GTA 4 - For me this game was a return to greatness for the series. I liked the guy I was portraying (Nico), I though tthe stories were good, and thanks to the graphical power of the modern systems the environment looked good, too.....New York felt like New York. I admit I'm sick of Liberty City at this point but at least they did it justice. Its a fun environment to tool around it.

There is also a Vice City and GTA3 version in the works using GTA4's Rage engine.