Battleangel | Personal

The PC gaming industry is dead. I feel pretty confident declaring this upon having played Grand Theft Auto IV. And here is why.

As the latest instalment in the GTA series, this game illustrates with ample clarity how PC games have progressed since the release of the first 2D GTA a number of years ago. When GTA3 got converted from consoles to the PC, people complained that it was slow and badly optimized. The expansions for the GTA3 engine were somewhat better in that regard but now it seems we are back to square one.

Basically, GTA4 is the worst performing game I’ve seen in ages. It makes Crysis look smooth. And it’s not like it scales very well either. I have yet to get a consistent 20fps+ on any setting I have tried. 1024×768 with settings pretty much at a minimum gives 15-20 fps outdoors. And just pray it wont start to rain or frame rates will plummet further. And this is on a Q6600 and ATI 2900 Pro. With the ATIs 8.12 beta drivers locked at "Optimal Performance". I tried the appropriate settings for commandline.txt but that just made it worse. Also, the graphics settings are extremely obscure, giving very little control over individual details. For example the game has a lot of complex and colorful lights. I bet if I could get rid of that, and some debris, the game could be made to run quote nicely. But the game only offers a series of retard-o-meters where you can set some totally incomprehensible figures. Vehicle density 0-100? The sad thing in all of this is that the game isn’t even pretty. At least not until you get to the almost unachievable high texture setting.

Gameplay-wise, one of the most annoying features was the "friendship meter". If you want to remain in good standing with your contacts you have to go do these pointless mini-games like bowling, darts and drinking or whatever. What is this, Facebook? Sims? Spore? Way to take the fun out of the game. I don’t know people play GTA in general but I do it to kill, smash and crash. Not play house. Overall, the missions and the feel of the game is a great deal duller than the previous instalments. Getting away from the police may be easier but getting noticed by them is also a lot easier. The handling of cars, while probably meant to be realistic, seems really awkward. Realism is a hard thing to attain, and it seems weird that Rockstar would choose to make all cars skid-o-matic while the rest of game is highly unrealistic. They should have just kept the more arcadish feel of the GTA franchise. I understand now while a lot of people were recommending Saints Row 2 over GTA 4 even though the latter is the better game by most definitions. Except it’s not any fun. Which of course is a problem since it’s a computer game, not a classical symphony.

And on another note, why the fuck can’t you skip or remove the intro text and logos. When I start a game I want to go directly to the main menu. If I wanted this I’d watch silent movies for fun. Or PowerPoint slideshows.

The biggest general gripe though is the DRM and add-on bundling. Even with a crack, so far, you’re stuck with the Social Club application. A program that seems to be written in Java (it isn’t but that is what I say about all applications that suck). And is about as smooth as having Photoshop CS4 open while playing. And not only is it bloated and slow, but it also makes a simple double-click operation into a click-fest before you can even get the game running. The Windows Live tie-in is just adding insult to injury at this point. If only they had spent as much time play testing as they did coming up with ways to harass the user.

And need I remind everyone that the game comes on two DVDs. That is roughly 14GB of data. And for what? The way this is going, PC gaming is truly doomed. And not just by DRM, but by Windows Live and other impossible tie-ins and by actual gameplay and design choices.