Widescreen Gaming Forum

Thanks for the details Paddy. Sounds a little better than I thought. No Rockstar Social Club, eh?... Hmm, so maybe that "no-go with Vista64" bit from Hellforge was incorrect, too. :?

Thanks for the details Paddy. Sounds a little better than I thought. No Rockstar Social Club, eh?... Hmm, so maybe that "no-go with Vista64" bit from Hellforge was incorrect, too. :?

Well ... just to try to clarify that about R* Social Club a bit ... you don't have to sign in but it does need to be there running on your system ... else you cant start the game.
When I say running ... I mean there is an icon in the system tray to click to login should you wish to do MP.
It is also added to the system start-up ... :(
I removed it from the start-up with msconfig but when you restart the comp after playing the game it comes back ... :(

A pain and completely unnecessary.

Dunno about Vista 64bit.

I friend has tried it out on Vista 64bit and no it doesn't install.
Pathetic really.

... 34% ...
After a sesh of L4D, it's now downloading at 1MB/s which is a bit more reasonable. Maybe I'll play it tonight after all.

Hmm... and to think I was worried I'd be disappointed because I bought the console version instead of waiting, like I normally do...

Anyone who's thinking of buying the game and then cracking it afterward, should be aware of the following:

"Interestingly, the studio noted that those who crack and play the game will have their game experiences changed, ranging from “comical to game-progress-halting changes."

Not sure if it will actually work, they might find a way around it, but it could present a problem.

I love that ... it would be even better if it messed up their comps if they used a pirated game.

On the whole I dunno what all the negativity is about ...

The graphics are way better than the console version and it runs well on the recommended settings option.
The highest settings were not meant for current PC's.
They have also taken precautions to stop pirating ... for that you should blame anyone that has ever pirated a game as they the scum ... messing up the pastime that I love to enjoy.

...
It is also added to the system start-up ... :(
I removed it from the start-up with msconfig but when you restart the comp after playing the game it comes back ... :(

A pain and completely unnecessary.

Correction ... :oops: ... If you right click the icon in the system tray for the Social Club it has an option to not start with Windows.

Wow... This sucks.

Stick in your brand new €43 GTA and the very first thing you see:



Nice. On some forums I go to lots of people from my country are having the same issue.

Then installing the thing takes close to an hour and sucks up 50% more space than the whole of my Crytek software folder, which includes Crysis and Crysis: Warhead.

And all the R* internet community-weirdo and Windows Live network bloatware things MUST be installed for my new single player game. They can be skipped during installation, which renders your new installation useless until you install the bloatware manually.

All installed, you click on your GTA shortcut and wait ages for securom checks and activation. After which you're presented with another startup utility with 75% some weird dynamic online content and 5% "play" button. At first I thought I misclicked and started something totally different. I think third time starting the same loader I found the play button and clicked it.

The couple of minutes of R* logos and screenfuls of warning babble for the American of us are, naturally, unskippable.

Then you get ingame, where you head into the options windows to set up your game. You define your controls and close the options window. Then you're greeted with this.

It took them 9 months to release a PC version which they explained with wanting absolute polish and quality. Yeah, real polished...

Oh, and did I mention the fucking startup window nags about me not being "logged on" every time I fire the game up. No, there's no "don't nag again" checkbox.

Speaking of firing the game up again - when I did, I got this. IE 404 in my GTA. Hilarious.

Despite bearing all this shit I still had energy to actually start a new game. Watch the startup demo, rather. See, from a technical point of view, it looks pretty much like GTA 3 with a San Andreas level of detail. And runs about as smoothly as Crysis: Warhead, or worse, actually. In short, it sucks. At this point I've had enough and will shelf the thing until, uh, later. When I was quitting, though, I saw there was no "save" option. WTF is that all about. I'm told by unreliable sources your progress isn't saved unless you're registered and logged online. I'm really having doubts it can really be that broken of a design.

I'm so pissed I spent a full tank of gas' worth on this. The customer experience so far has been absolutely appalling. It's worse than Far Cry 2, seriously. Had I just tested it on a warez copy I wouldn't have bought it.

You save your progress by sleeping ... you may have to be logged into windows live ... mine did this automatically in off line mode.

Don't expect to run the game at the highest settings ... run it at the "Auto Configure" for your system ... on the graphics options page.

I wrote the above from an objective PC gamer perspective. Not an "I am an idiot and won't read the manual" perspective.

Case in point, saving. Why do I need to save my game by "sleeping"? Even Far Cry 2 has quicksave and a game doesn't really get more consoley than that one. (Now tell me it does have a quicksave button somewhere and prove I didn't RTFM. :))

You sounded like you were coming from the "I am an idiot and won't read the manual" perspective ... :P

... just joking with you ...

I was just trying to help as you didn't seem to have a clue about the saving.

When I was quitting, though, I saw there was no "save" option. WTF is that all about. I'm told by unreliable sources your progress isn't saved unless you're registered and logged online. I'm really having doubts it can really be that broken of a design.

I didn't mean to get your back up ... sorry if I did.

Saving by sleeping seems pretty reasonable to me for this type of game.
GTA 3 you had to go to your apartment and Vice City had something similar ... but I can't remember what it was.

Then you get ingame, where you head into the options windows to set up your game. You define your controls and close the options window. Then you're greeted with this.

So we can add Flash 9 to the list of required bloatware? Unbelievable.

On the whole I dunno what all the negativity is about ...

We all have different perspectives and expectations. I'm very glad the game plays well for you and was relatively trouble-free to install (also very jealous of your SLI TH2Go setup ;) ). For me, GTA IV is loaded with more "hoops" and leashes than I ever want to deal with. Inextricably tied to 3 different online services? No thanks.

I can put my GTAIII or San Andreas disc in my computer, install the game, then play it immediately. There is no reason GTA IV cannot work this way, but it most certainly does not. The reward of playing the game just doesn't come close to being worth the hassle of dealing with it's conditions and requirements.

On the whole I dunno what all the negativity is about ...

We all have different perspectives and expectations. I'm very glad the game plays well for you and was relatively trouble-free to install ...

I also said ...

That said your mental health is pushed to limits whilst installing and getting into the game for the first time.

... lol

That bit is ridiculous but I blame the pirates.
I was mostly talking about the negativity towards the graphics and their settings ...

The graphics are way better than the console version and it runs well on the recommended settings option.
The highest settings were not meant for current PC's.

Perhaps I should have made that clearer by separating the two.

Saving by sleeping seems pretty reasonable to me for this type of game.
GTA 3 you had to go to your apartment and Vice City had something similar ... but I can't remember what it was.

Same deal since GTA3 indeed, you go back home to save the game. Seems "consoley" at first, but it's totally fitting for this type of game. (Much more than for say, Test Drive Unlimited :lol: ) And the richer you get, the more numerous and classy "save shacks" you get :
Vice City... from a hotel room to a ganglord's mansion
San Andreas... from your crappy neighbo'hood to a rap producer's studio !

Anyway... looks like I'll be sticking to my not buying GTA4 until it's cheap - i.e cheap enough to excuse the truckload of annoyance you need to get through to finally... play. I hate piracy too and am totally willing to pay for exciting stuff. But what's the point in (supposedly) making pirates' lives a living hell, if you screw honest players too in the process ? And honestly, does it really save sales to develop and implement so much junk turning a "most wanted" game into an instant classic PITA ?? :? :cry:

[quote]Saving by sleeping seems pretty reasonable to me for this type of game.
GTA 3 you had to go to your apartment and Vice City had something similar ... but I can't remember what it was.

Same deal since GTA3 indeed, you go back home to save the game. Seems "consoley" at first, but it's totally fitting for this type of game. (Much more than for say, Test Drive Unlimited :lol: ) And the richer you get, the more numerous and classy "save shacks" you get :
Vice City... from a hotel room to a ganglord's mansion
San Andreas... from your crappy neighbo'hood to a rap producer's studio !

Anyway... looks like I'll be sticking to my not buying GTA4 until it's cheap - i.e cheap enough to excuse the truckload of annoyance you need to get through to finally... play. I hate piracy too and am totally willing to pay for exciting stuff. But what's the point in (supposedly) making pirates' lives a living hell, if you screw honest players too in the process ? And honestly, does it really save sales to develop and implement so much junk turning a "most wanted" game into an instant classic PITA ?? :? :cry:I personally can't wait until they "screw over the pirates" by deleting all the gamesaves of those who are not connected to Windows Live! and will inevitably screw it up and end up deleting the game saves of all users.

But in all seriousness, this is insanity...

That said your mental health is pushed to limits whilst installing and getting into the game for the first time.

... lol

That bit is ridiculous but I blame the pirates.

How can you blame piracy on shitty online stuff?
Of course you could technically blame the online activation on piracy, but its the exact same online activation that mass effect, spore, red alert 3 had just without the limit. IT DOES NOT WORK.

DRM only gets my panties in a bunch because its fucking pointless, Like if it actually did anything to protect against piracy (The only way that this can happen is if you have a brand new form of DRM, ala Bioshock was the first to use SecuROM7 and it took a week to crack, now the crackers know how to crack it and its basically the same for every game that uses it now LIKE WHAT IS THE POINT? Spore was cracked A WEEK before release "OH WE HAVE TO HAVE 3 INSTALL LIMIT TO STOP THE PIRATES" - Spore goes on to be one of the most pirated games ever)

The pirates don't even have to deal with the bullshit. In every GFW:L game that required you to be logged in to save that had all been ripped out in cracked versions.
To me at this point Piracy is more appealing because its easier in the long run, not because I save money. I was actually going to go out and buy GTA4 a few days after launch (I.E. now) just to have access to the 32player online, but this shit is most defiantly not worth the trip to the store.


The graphics options run just fine on the max setting... For some people. Other people with decently comparable computers get worse FPS on low-med

I misunderstood you, Paddy.

The graphics do indeed look nice, though I'd probably have to run everything on low quality to get playable framerates in triplehead.

The no 64-bit Vista compatibility is very odd. Isn't that snubbing the machines that could offer the best performance? :?

@ Jupix
That ordeal you went through sucks. If ever there was justification to get your money back, I'd say that is it.

Come home, it's downloaded, load it up , install all the random shit, start the game finally anndddd.....

FATAL ERROR.
Can't do fuck all.
Serious amounts of fuck this.

@ DaFox ... I know ...

IT DOES NOT WORK.

and I know

The pirates (those that download the games as opposed to those that do the hacking) don't even have to deal with the bullshit.

... but I blame the pirates (both those that download and those that do the hacking) because paranoid game devs increasingly seem to put as much bloat ware as they can in to their games in an effort to make it more difficult to pirate games.

Sorry to hear your woes eZ`

np ... General ... I should have made it cleared.

FATAL ERROR.

Sorry to hear that, eZ`. Maybe fire up L4D and take out some aggression on the undead? I would join you, but my copy hasn't shipped out, yet. :(

BTW- I love the 'Santa Bravo' avatar. :)

What a craptastic game launch--though not out of place looking back at 2007's releases.

Question: how the hell do you activate and play the game on a non-internet enabled computer if all these programs require you to have internet access?

...

...

...

The lack of Vista 64 support is a complete deal-breaker for me, given that at Christmas I'm going to start migrating the systems that aren't running 64-bit OSes to them (either Vista or linux dependent on 'mission profile'. ;))

Well, it would be a complete deal-breaker if the deal hadn't already been broken, smashed into it's component parts, scattered to the four corners of the earth and then pissed on. By several large elephants. For all the hoops that people are going through. It's flamin' ridiculous.

I was talking with DaFox last night... only game I never saw a fully working crack for was Operation Flashpoint by Codemasters. This was at the time when Codemasters made their own copy protection mechanism, rather than relying on a third-party thing like SecuROM. And Codemasters knew how to code a funny copy protection system.

Pirates are bad, no doubt about that... but for cryin' out loud... when legit customers are put through this sort of trouble, it doesn't help the developer/publisher case against piracy.

Hm... I wonder?

Those who are tech savvy and honest will simply not buy your stuff any more (dev has failed).

Those who are tech savvy and more 'shades of grey' will pirate it (dev has failed).

Those who aren't tech savvy and honest will try to return it to the shop, be told they can't as they're a filthy nasty pirate, and will then likely never buy your stuff again (developer fails).

Those who aren't tech savvy and of a bad disposition will go postal on the developers collective arses (developer fails).

...

To be honest, if I was Jupix, I'd be writing to Rockstar demanding my money back. If that didn't work, I'd drop them in the shit with any official agency I could that would give me a chance of getting my money back, and them fined. Bear in mind that it is against Trading Standards to provide a product which is fundamentally flawed. And with those issues... it looks fundamentally flawed.