[BLOG] Grand Theft Auto IV PC: Now patched for less suck
I have been playing Grand Theft Auto games ever since the very first sprite-based GTA was released on the PC many, many years ago. I absolutely love the franchise, and when they made the switch from 2D to 3D with GTA III, I swallowed the faults and played the game to death, loving every glorious second of three dimensional beat-down.
I have played every iteration of the game since then. I usually pick up the PC versions as I prefer the PC platform for all things gaming, so when I heard that GTA IV had some serious performance and stability issues at the time of its PC launch, I was very disappointed. Never mind my disappointment at the delay between the XBOX 360 launch and the PC launch.
Not wanting to ruin my experience, I held off on purchasing the game until I had read about the resolution of some of the most severe bugs. I recently went ahead and picked it up at the store and, much to my girlfriend's chagrin, dove into the latest and greatest installment of high-flying hooker bashing over Valentine's Day weekend.
Ok, so I only made it through the first few missions and a couple of rounds of my favorite pastime (All Out Rampage (r)) on the pretext of testing display settings.
Still, I got a taste for the game in its current, patched state.
First, let me say that the current patch does not fix every problem with the game. There are still some stability issues for people running high-resolution displays with the Clip Capture feature turned on, and I have Crashed To Desktop (CTD'ed) twice thus far.
With the Clip Capture feature disabled I am able to run the game smoothly at 1900x1200 with all graphical settings on high with the exception of Shadows, which look like crap regardless of which setting I use.
Speaking of Shadows, there seems to be a problem in GTA IV with rendering them properly on an ATI Radeon 4800 series card. I am using the latest publicly released Catalyst 9.1 driver and the shadows appear slightly jagged and 'hatched' around the edges. Other games, like Crysis: Warhead, do not have this problem on my system.
So in terms of technical performance, those are the only two issues I have with the game. The frame rate is acceptable with the settings I am running. For full system specifications, please see my profile.
Aside from the glitches, the graphics in GTA IV look far better than they ever have in a GTA game. They still aren't as good as they could be -- for example, character's faces could use some improvement in situations where they can be rendered in high detail, like cut-scenes and close-up indoor encounters, but they are still far more expressive than in older GTA titles.
The car graphics look amazing compared to the historically dull cars of GTA. The rendering and reflections are on par with the previous generation of racing games, which is quite good. The physics engine continues to improve on an already good formula of realism and arcade-like accessibility, and the vehicle damage model is far improved. Cars smash up, blow up and catch fire brilliantly in this edition of GTA.
In general, the world is far more interactive. More objects are destroyable and your character can now pick up and throw smaller objects, or even use them as weapons. Walking into a business and clubbing the store owner with his own coffee mug is mildly amusing, but could be vastly improved upon if you could steal merch and money after doing so.
The auto-save system is MUCH improved upon from previous games. After completing missions, the game now auto saves. Unfortunately, this version of GTA is limited by its console roots in that there is no Quick Save/Load keybinding and there is an obnoxiously limited number of save slots.
The menus are also unnecessarily cumbersome. For whatever reason, the game likes to slow my mouse sensitivity WAY down when I am not actually playing the game, so I have resorted to navigating the menus using the keyboard. Unfortunately, the menu navigation is geared towards consoles, so there is only one way of going in and out of a menu -> Enter and Escape. It would be logical to enter a sub-menu from the Main Menu using the Down Arrow, but this is not possible. More minor gripes.
Back to the actual game. The missions feel very well done. The first few missions don't feel at all like a haphazard grind, and there is none of the 'San Andreas Grind' present in this game. No going to a gym and pressing the same button 50 times , etc. Just really good game play.
Another thing I've noticed is that you get to drive GOOD cars much earlier on in the game. The starting locations feature plenty of sports cars to jack, so you are never confined to beaters and vans. This makes the game much more fun from the get-go.
The missions do not drop off in quality as the game progresses. Quite to the contrary, the missions seem to become more involved in the story line and complex. The drama in this game is high. <spoiler>Niko's girlfriend betrays him, he falls in with the Russian, Italian and Federal mafias, and he ends up the king of his own domain.</spoiler>
Truly, the game is a marvel. With the latest patches from both Rockstar (For the game) and ATI (For the drivers) the game is very playable. I still get random crashes after playing for ~2 hours, but my solution has been to restart the game after about 1 hour. After realizing that I could do away with the crashes if I restarted the game between missions, I have never had a crash.
I play with an ATI Radeon 4870 1GB, overclocked, on a 1920x1200 px LCD with all graphical settings MAXED and NO AA, 16x AF, ATI AA AI (ATI's anti-aliasing artificial intelligence software). This is mated to an overclocked Core i7 920 with 6GB DDR3 in Triple Channel configuration. The game plays butter smooth 99% of the time with an average framerate around 35-40 FPS with latest patches.
So... HAPPY GAMING!
I have played every iteration of the game since then. I usually pick up the PC versions as I prefer the PC platform for all things gaming, so when I heard that GTA IV had some serious performance and stability issues at the time of its PC launch, I was very disappointed. Never mind my disappointment at the delay between the XBOX 360 launch and the PC launch.
Not wanting to ruin my experience, I held off on purchasing the game until I had read about the resolution of some of the most severe bugs. I recently went ahead and picked it up at the store and, much to my girlfriend's chagrin, dove into the latest and greatest installment of high-flying hooker bashing over Valentine's Day weekend.
Ok, so I only made it through the first few missions and a couple of rounds of my favorite pastime (All Out Rampage (r)) on the pretext of testing display settings.
Still, I got a taste for the game in its current, patched state.
First, let me say that the current patch does not fix every problem with the game. There are still some stability issues for people running high-resolution displays with the Clip Capture feature turned on, and I have Crashed To Desktop (CTD'ed) twice thus far.
With the Clip Capture feature disabled I am able to run the game smoothly at 1900x1200 with all graphical settings on high with the exception of Shadows, which look like crap regardless of which setting I use.
Speaking of Shadows, there seems to be a problem in GTA IV with rendering them properly on an ATI Radeon 4800 series card. I am using the latest publicly released Catalyst 9.1 driver and the shadows appear slightly jagged and 'hatched' around the edges. Other games, like Crysis: Warhead, do not have this problem on my system.
So in terms of technical performance, those are the only two issues I have with the game. The frame rate is acceptable with the settings I am running. For full system specifications, please see my profile.
Aside from the glitches, the graphics in GTA IV look far better than they ever have in a GTA game. They still aren't as good as they could be -- for example, character's faces could use some improvement in situations where they can be rendered in high detail, like cut-scenes and close-up indoor encounters, but they are still far more expressive than in older GTA titles.
The car graphics look amazing compared to the historically dull cars of GTA. The rendering and reflections are on par with the previous generation of racing games, which is quite good. The physics engine continues to improve on an already good formula of realism and arcade-like accessibility, and the vehicle damage model is far improved. Cars smash up, blow up and catch fire brilliantly in this edition of GTA.
In general, the world is far more interactive. More objects are destroyable and your character can now pick up and throw smaller objects, or even use them as weapons. Walking into a business and clubbing the store owner with his own coffee mug is mildly amusing, but could be vastly improved upon if you could steal merch and money after doing so.
The auto-save system is MUCH improved upon from previous games. After completing missions, the game now auto saves. Unfortunately, this version of GTA is limited by its console roots in that there is no Quick Save/Load keybinding and there is an obnoxiously limited number of save slots.
The menus are also unnecessarily cumbersome. For whatever reason, the game likes to slow my mouse sensitivity WAY down when I am not actually playing the game, so I have resorted to navigating the menus using the keyboard. Unfortunately, the menu navigation is geared towards consoles, so there is only one way of going in and out of a menu -> Enter and Escape. It would be logical to enter a sub-menu from the Main Menu using the Down Arrow, but this is not possible. More minor gripes.
Back to the actual game. The missions feel very well done. The first few missions don't feel at all like a haphazard grind, and there is none of the 'San Andreas Grind' present in this game. No going to a gym and pressing the same button 50 times , etc. Just really good game play.
Another thing I've noticed is that you get to drive GOOD cars much earlier on in the game. The starting locations feature plenty of sports cars to jack, so you are never confined to beaters and vans. This makes the game much more fun from the get-go.
The missions do not drop off in quality as the game progresses. Quite to the contrary, the missions seem to become more involved in the story line and complex. The drama in this game is high. <spoiler>Niko's girlfriend betrays him, he falls in with the Russian, Italian and Federal mafias, and he ends up the king of his own domain.</spoiler>
Truly, the game is a marvel. With the latest patches from both Rockstar (For the game) and ATI (For the drivers) the game is very playable. I still get random crashes after playing for ~2 hours, but my solution has been to restart the game after about 1 hour. After realizing that I could do away with the crashes if I restarted the game between missions, I have never had a crash.
I play with an ATI Radeon 4870 1GB, overclocked, on a 1920x1200 px LCD with all graphical settings MAXED and NO AA, 16x AF, ATI AA AI (ATI's anti-aliasing artificial intelligence software). This is mated to an overclocked Core i7 920 with 6GB DDR3 in Triple Channel configuration. The game plays butter smooth 99% of the time with an average framerate around 35-40 FPS with latest patches.
So... HAPPY GAMING!
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