Grand Theft Auto IV

Whole load of problems installing. Tried it on my brothers PC first had problems getting past securom saying "incorrect disc insterted" he had daemon tools installed though, unintsalled that and tried again. Now my brother has a 2.8ghz amd athlon x2, 3gb of ram, vista 32bit service pack 2, all the latest drivers plus a 1gb nvidia 9500gt. I thought this would be enough but obviously not game runs choppy as hell.

Got home and tried it in my computer, installer kept on freezing. So i copied and pasted everything off the discs to a folder on my HDD and installed from there.

Runs fine on my computer with decent graphics settings doesnt look much better than console versions though, thats with: 3ghz athlon x2, 4gb ram, vista 32bit sp2 and a 1gb 9800gt.

All in all very poorly ported from consoles to pc. No directx10 support, games for windows live and securom just complicates everything. You NEED an internet connection just to play in offline mode even if you never plan to play multiplayer.

It has been a catalogue of problems trying (unsuccesfully) to get the game to run. Right now it's just an expensive book-end as I either need to upgrade my PC or go back to the 360 version I already have.
I know the game is great but the "Windows Live" and "Rockstar Online" rubbish is an unneccessary intrusion. I had the whole gammut of issues and needed to put SP3 on (XP) and .Net 3.5 as well as updating graphics drivers and now I have the DD3D50 error that says I need Directx9 (which I am already running and have downloaded and installed the latest version.

I knew I was takingabit of a punt as my graphics card (ATI) is 18 months old now and only just met the minimum spec but I was expecting to have to play at lowerer resolution rather than not at all.
Google the issues - you will probably find hundreds (if not more) of people in the same situation. This is a really bad port from the console - too much time spent on the security and not enough on making it work on a variety of platforms.

Having to disable DLA is a pain but necessary (I know this isn't the only game that you have to do this for but it's stupid).

The game is great - the PC version only works on high end PCs and even then only on a percentage of them. Rockstar really messed this up....

Glad it finally came out on pc
this is quite a long review but necessary.

make sure you have a good system and update your drivers, i'm on vista 64 with a quad core processor overclocked at 3.6ghz with 4 gb ddr2 at 1000mhz and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2.
the main reason people been having problems with this game is their could be something wrong with their set up or their hardware is not good enough to run it smooth at high settings, i believe it will need a 2gb graphics card which is a futre card yet to be released to run at max settings at a high res which is a bit disapointing for me as i have the best graphics card of right now and only bought it a month ago and was hoping to be able to keep it for a couple of years, the 4870x2 does have 2gb but it is split between the 2 cores meaning it has an ultra fast 1gb.

the time has finally come for quad core cpu owners at long last, i nearly swapped for an ultra fast dual core and glad i did not now.

my bro's pc is a quad core 2.4ghz with 4gb ram and a 8800 GTX and it plays just as good as mine after adjusting the settings a tad lower, but was able to keep the res at 1080p.

i have high hopes for the next patch or 2 so it will have any of the bugs ironed out.

the hardware software is out the way for my review now onto the game.

since getting the catalyst 8.12 drivers and the 1st patch for this game, i have been able to run it really smooth and have it look much better than the console version, and that is with much lower settings than the automatic settings it sets for you, i'm running at 1920x1200 res.

the game is absolutely stunning, addictive, and a lot of fun with a great story, which is funny and at times sad with excellent side missions, side activitys and a reply movie editor which i'm hopeless on at the moment, i can see a long life for this game with mods and fingers crossed expansion packs.
the multiplayer absolutely rocks, heaps of fun to be had with that part, i cannot remember how many different modes of multiplayer there is but there is well over 10 and have no problem jumping into a game.

this is definately not a game for kids althou they would probably love it, it has an 18 certificate for a good reason, i just hate it when people blame bad things on entertainment and usually win.