# GTA 4 PC Launch - A Comedy of (Fatal) Errors...



## dogmatique (Dec 4, 2008)

Where to start?  Secure-Rom?  Rockstars authentication servers?  *More bugs than I'm a Celebrity...?
*
They certainly make legal buyers of games jump through hoops these days.  I tried buying through Steam, who for some reason validate your card at some centre in Ireland, and then take full payment in the USA, which made my bank decline the transaction.  *And block my card.*

Which I didn't know about until I tried to pay for a copy the next morning at an excerable Game store.  Que an angry trudge to the nearest branch to get it sorted.

Back to the store, buy a full priced copy, wait till hometime.

Insert disk, start the age long install process.  After about half an hour (and my machine is no slow coach), it was ready to plunge me into *the most onerous activation routine I've ever had to endure...*

Now I'm all for creators wanting to protect their content, but this was beyond a joke.  Not just one piece of bloatware was required, but two - firstly, Rockstar's Social Club, which wasn't just groaning under the weight of demand, but had collapsed like an unsafe building being worked on by dodgy builders.

And that had to be "linked" with a Games for Windows account.  Which took another half hour to achieve, as it *kept insisting I was using an Xbox.*

Fun and games.  After a full two hours of farting around, resetting passwords, error messages etc I was ready to play (well, I'd been ready to play since I got home, but that's just semantics)....

Unfortunately the game didn't agree.  Every time I tried to start, the game crashed out before I got the chance to do anything.

Seems this was the game phoning home to Rockstar's authentication servers and failing due to being overwhelmed.  Log out of Rockstar Social Club after some online searching for a solution, and I can start "offline".

Game starts.  Jerky cut scenes, low frame rates.  Talking hair and teeth with no faces.  More fatal errors, and this is before I've even been given control of the character.

After two full reboots, I manage to play for 10 minutes and complete the first mission before it crashes totally again.  Another reboot.

Give up for the night, and put it down to debut nerves - like Bioshock had.

Tonight, fired up the game again - still can't log into Social Club, managed to play for 20 minutes before it crashed, fatally, again, just after I'd finished the first proper mission, but before I'd managed to save it.

This time the fatal error was an *"out of video memory"* fuck up, which is more than slightly annoying as I have a 2GB ATI 3870 x 2.  More than enough, surely....

Well apparently not - the way the game is designed, it only recognises one of the graphics processors on the card, and is only seeing 1GB graphics memory... Surely this is enough?

Seems not.  So.  Do I wait for the first patch to appear, which could take weeks?  Or keep playing a game that will crash and lose progress every 20 minutes or so.

Very poor.  A port from a 200 quid console game repeatedly crashes a system ten times as expensive repeatedly. 

The quality assurance team should be sacked!

Crysis all over.

*Oh, and I could have had a working copy for free by now, without the bloatware.*

Moan, moan moan.


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## tiki (Dec 4, 2008)

I feel for you. I'm happy to spend money on console titles but the crap you have to put up with with PC gaming is to much. 

I'm afraid when it comes to PC games I go to torrent sites and get a reloaded version or something similar. They usually strip down the install to the essentials and leave out all the DRM shite and Bloatware.

Sad day when you have to see Mr Pirate to get a better version than retail. 

Oh yeah - consoles FTW, although I do love Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead on PC, it's just that consoles are less hassle, you know its gonna run and thats it!


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## tiki (Dec 4, 2008)

Just read that it doesn't recognise SLI configurations. WTF


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## Paulie Tandoori (Dec 4, 2008)

i borrowed my mate's copy of GTA4 for the PS3 and apart from having to insert the disc, can't say i've had a problem since, other than making sure i go to bed sometimes. don't play games on pc maybe?!


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## dogmatique (Dec 4, 2008)

innit

bunch of arse


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## bouncer_the_dog (Dec 5, 2008)

i wouldn't consider gta on a pc.. it just feels like a playstation game. Do you play it with a mouse and keyboard??


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## dogmatique (Dec 5, 2008)

I've not managed to do much playing, but yes.

As I have with the last 3 GTA games.  Entirely playable, but I can see where you're coming from.  Especially as M$ seem intent on pushing XBox controllers down PC player's throats these days.


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## revol68 (Dec 5, 2008)

I've got GTAIV for the 360 and despite all the polish and neat world details the game itself is the same boring go from A to B missions that it was in GTA:Liberty City. I don't know how it was given 10's by so many reviews, it's little more than a more polished, detailed graphical update of a game series that is getting very stale.


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## DG55 (Dec 6, 2008)

Well its the same shit every time they port this game to the PC. They just don't do it properly.

Fuck that, I'm buying it for 360 instead.


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## dogmatique (Dec 6, 2008)

I thought they did a pretty good job on the last two.  This one is just beyond a joke though.

Patch coming out in a "few days", new drivers for nvidia cards out already, ATI drivers on the 10th.

You'd have thought they'd have beta tested it a bit more thoroughly - there's just sooo many people having the same problems...


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## tommers (Dec 6, 2008)

revol68 said:


> I've got GTAIV for the 360 and despite all the polish and neat world details the game itself is the same boring go from A to B missions that it was in GTA:Liberty City. I don't know how it was given 10's by so many reviews, it's little more than a more polished, detailed graphical update of a game series that is getting very stale.



exactly.

it's the same game as the previous 3 (or 4?)  Even the characters are the same.  oooh look, a yardie!


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Dec 6, 2008)

bouncer_the_dog said:


> i wouldn't consider gta on a pc.. it just feels like a playstation game. Do you play it with a mouse and keyboard??



Played an earlier one on a mates rig who had the best of both worlds, mouse and keybord for the walking round bits and a pad for the driving. Mouse and keybored made it way easier.


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## Pie 1 (Dec 7, 2008)

revol68 said:


> I've got GTAIV for the 360 and despite all the polish and neat world details the game itself is the same boring go from A to B missions that it was in GTA:Liberty City. I don't know how it was given 10's by so many reviews, it's little more than a more polished, detailed graphical update of a game series that is getting very stale.



Can't argue with this.
I borrowed a mates PS3 for 3 weeks when he was on holiday. Once I got over the new shiny graphics & broke the back of it unlocking the other city sections, I became pretty much instantly bored with it.


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## Augie March (Dec 7, 2008)

For all the hype and the excitment I got myself in at the thought of the game (see my original GTAIV thread), I got awfully bored of it awfully quick. There was no variation from previous versions and just with the other versions, I found myself ignoring the missions and just driving around getting myself into mischief. Which was fun for a bit, but lost it's appeal and I doubt I'll ever bother with the game again now.


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## Sunray (Dec 8, 2008)

I get this feeling that is too regulated.   The police are onto you in a flash.  I can't see the point of taking out a girl friend to the bowling, I suppose I can kill her.  

I want to find weird weapons where I can go on kill frenzies and do mad shit like mowing down and entire group of hare krishnas, which I don't think will ever get old.  I think that Saints Row 2 is meant to be a much better Sand Box game because it allows you to do just that sort of thing.


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## Awesome Wells (Dec 8, 2008)

return to shop, surely? pc games aren't exempt from consumer laws afaik.


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## dogmatique (Dec 8, 2008)

I'm going to wait and see if the promised patch makes a difference.

If not, back to the shop it goes...


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## Jorum (Dec 9, 2008)

Awesome Wells said:


> return to shop, surely? pc games aren't exempt from consumer laws afaik.


Some shops make a big fuss out of returning PC games (because of copying, although nowdays anyone pirating will go straight to P2P rather than copying an original).
Most stores have also stopped doing PC game trade-in because of securom, limited installs etc.

I'm not sure what legal stand is if shop refuses you a refund. It gets real complicated due to fact that techncially you are buying a licence to run a piece software rather than the actual disc the software happens to be on. On the plus side you are entitled to ask the publisher for free (pay postage only) replacement discs if you break a DVD.
Thats how it used to be anyway. God knows what the digital laws are now.


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## Awesome Wells (Dec 9, 2008)

If the product is defective you are entitled to a refund or a working replacement (if such a thing exists).

Whether the shops kicks up a stink is irrelevant (though game stores like to think that consumer laws don't apply to these sort of products unfortunately). I seriously doubt whether digital laws apply or that games are somehow a special case because of licenses and what have you; the law is the law and if a product isn't working then it's the seller's obligation to right the process.


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## dogmatique (Dec 13, 2008)

Patch came out last night.  No more crashing - so far...

If they can fix it in a week, why couldn't it have been tested better prior to release?

Those issues must have shown up before - but hey can't stop the shipping date once it's been announced...


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## 8ball (Dec 13, 2008)

dogmatique said:


> Patch came out last night.  No more crashing - so far...
> 
> If they can fix it in a week, why couldn't it have been tested better prior to release?
> 
> Those issues must have shown up before - but hey can't stop the shipping date once it's been announced...



It's possible there were some system configs they missed or some new software that people had downloaded that was causing a conflict.

Just playing devil's advocate, like.


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## mauvais (Dec 13, 2008)

The game itself is pretty good. Multiplayer is ace. Single player could have been better but only through having what they chopped out from previous games IMO.

However, QA was obviously very poor, and although it works OK for me, I'll be careful about buying R* games in future. Plenty of people still have issues, and the system requirements are pretty high for what it is.

The other major thing is, whether it works or not, it's very much a shoddy port that only exists to wring more money out of the franchise. No antialiasing is a big giveaway, but there's lots of other little hints at the fact they did this on the cheap & couldn't really be bothered.

SecuROM, the activation stuff - on its own, couldn't care myself, but there's enough of a bad taste about this already that it doesn't help.


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## DG55 (Dec 14, 2008)

Asked this in another topic but this might be more relevant. Bugs aside, how will this game run on an ATI x800xt, with 2gb ram and 3.4ghz p4? Not really bothered about running on low settings, maybe someone has a similar graphics card?

Official spec is 256 MB Nvidia 7900 / 256 MB ATI X1900, which I assume are newer, although hopefully pretty comparable.


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## Jorum (Dec 14, 2008)

It seems pretty clear that Rockstar put very little effort into PC ports. The port team's remit seems to be if it loads it's good to go.
"Bully" is just as bad, and they've had over _two years_ to port that. Buggy as hell and the controls are a joke - pretty much unplayable without a xbox controller.


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## kained&able (Dec 14, 2008)

dogmatique said:


> Those issues must have shown up before - but hey can't stop the shipping date once it's been announced...



three words. Duke nukem forever. Games shipping dates get held up all the time.

I'm more likely to put it down to imcompetence then not wanting to put the date back a week.


dave


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## dogmatique (Dec 14, 2008)

And miss some of that Christmas selling period?  Hmm.  Not so sure.  It had already been delayed.


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## RaverDrew (Jan 4, 2009)

Looks like people are still having problems 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7dUZU7OP9jo&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K_7p-Lh7uEg&feature=related


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## kained&able (Jan 4, 2009)

thats genius!


dave


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## ruffneck23 (Jan 4, 2009)

RaverDrew said:


> Looks like people are still having problems
> 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7dUZU7OP9jo&feature=related
> 
> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K_7p-Lh7uEg&feature=related




superb , but im with himmler , i got no prblems with the pc version......


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## Kid_Eternity (Jan 4, 2009)

You know I must say I'm thoroughly bored of that video now, it seems it gets used for everything...


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## ruffneck23 (Jan 4, 2009)

true , however ive not seen the second part used before


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## DG55 (Jan 5, 2009)

I keep getting a fatal error when I try to launch the game. Tried everything, installed Direct x, new video drivers, installed sp3. What a waste of time.

Some people are saying that you NEED a dual core processor to run it. I know it says its part of the recommended spec on the box, but I doubt thats the reason for this 'fatal error'.


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## ruffneck23 (Jan 5, 2009)

ahh , ive got a quad core (q6600) , 4gb ram and an 8800gt. This is probably why i have no problems.........


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## Helen Back (Jan 5, 2009)

Am I imagining things or do no games get demo releases these days to test whether they work on your PC or not. 

(Apart from <ahem> "evaluation" copies...)


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## ruffneck23 (Jan 5, 2009)

youre right there dont seem to be many demos any more , dont know why. Plus the fact that ' Game ' stores put those bloody stickers on them saying that if you open it and the seal is broken you cant get a refund. Even if your machine meets the recommended specs and doesnt work

GRRRR

this is not helping the PC games industry IMO


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