Thursday 8 January 2009

Grand Theft Auto 4 (PC) - Freedom To Brake

The release of Grand Theft Auto 4 - certainly one of the biggest events this year in the gaming industry. Fans were waiting the debut of Grand Theft Auto on new generation consoles with a great impatience. Liberty City has changed greatly for eight years, not only visually but has become a real, living city. The player was just one of countless residents, and not the one around which everything revolves. Raised at a qualitatively new level in terms of creation of the world, developers have not forgotten about the characters. Russian criminals, the Italian mafia, black gangsters, and other representatives of various criminal circles are just grate!. Learn about all the difficulties, as well as the adventures of a new main character (this time, from eastern Europe) - Niko Bellik you can from our review. We will stop here at the features of PC version, which was released only recently.


rand Theft Auto 4 PC
Firstly, about a pleasant addition. If you have not been able to find the radiostation you like from the proposed impressive list of radio stations, your can use Independence FM, playing a custom music from your MP3 collection. Secondly, there is a very nice innovation - video editor. At any time of the game by pressing F2, you can record video. Then footage material allowed to be cut, make transitions between the different segments, to impose filters on an image, add music, subtitles, and then put the creations about your adventures in a big city in the network for public viewing. The editor is simple to master, but the biggest advantage of it that while recording a clip not seen any lack of performance. And third, the network code now supports up to 32 players, but you must be registered in the Windows Live.

rand Theft Auto 4 PC Screenshot
The official control of the PC version is the keyboard and mouse, that allows you to completely abandon the crazy auto aiming system that «seized» enemies at random and in the process of shooting involving large numbers of people, it was sometimes quite difficult to navigate. Using a mobile phone to dial number by simply clicking the appropriate button. The same applies to the police computer. But with the entertainment situation is not so easy. For example, when playing in the bowling need to drastically pull back the mouse - interesting, but not very convenient. A dart of a precise positioning of cursor loses all of the complexity.

rand Theft Auto 4 PC screenshot 2
Perhaps the best hope PC owners have been associated with improved graphics and performance. After all, even on the new consoles, GTA 4 showing not the best and not enough greased picture, and didn’t have consistently high frame rate. Unfortunately, their hopes turned to dust. The only advantage to the consoles and PC in this aspect is the ability to turn on / off (button «P») «soap effect». Then with high definition it is easier to shoot dawn enemies located far from the hero, but faded textures, models and other lowpolygon «beauty» become more visible. In addition, the PC-version is missing antialiasing, and everywhere the eye can see unpleasant «stairs».

But the system requirements for the game are simply extraordinary. On my system (Intel Core2Duo E6750, 2 GB of RAM, GeForce 8800GTX) was able to comfortably play with a resolution of 1440x900 and only with the settings, close to the minimum. Quality Texture – average, range of drawing and a range of detail - 20/100, the density of traffic - 10, the shadows - off. The picture with this options (IMHO) did not differ for the better from the console versions. And there were consistently problems with the performance.

Diagnosis:
In last year on the PC came out several high-quality games from consoles. Firstly, was Altair, capturing a number of new types of missions. Then came Commander Sheppard and almost free PC from loading textures. And finally, Dante shed tears of high definition. Unfortunatly, Rockstar did not overshoot others. Of course, PC version of GTA 4 offers not the worst set of innovations. The good old radio, playing your music, easy-to-use editor clips. But all this fade away against of worthless optimization and incredibly high system requirements.

Cool:
• Ability to listen to your own music and create video clips
• Using a normal aim in the shootings and chase

Poor:
• Awful optimization code
• The unduly high system requirements


Opinion
Grand Theft Auto 4 has become one of the most highly rated games this year. Reviewers gave to the game the bright epithets «masterpiece», «the best in the genre» and others. However, I believe that such ratings not quite fit - to them a feeling that the project has no serious problems, but it has. Megapolis at Rockstar has gone to glory. It is almost true. Every character in its own interest and has a unique character. City has a lot of things - bowling, striptease bars and other entertainment establishments. Of the local Internet, you can even download ringtones for your mobile phone.

But with one of the main component (a variety of quests) are not so bright. In GTA 4 more than ninety (!) Plot missions - an impressive figure. But the original quests reach about a half dozen. Otherwise, - repeated once again in pursuit of another goal, leaving and the destruction of all life, escapes from police. Even the original ideas (the use of police computer to locate targets) occur repeatedly and manage bored. And the main story of the past of the main character is lost in the endless stream of phrases like: «I will do it, because you pay».

Rather than create a small but bright canvas developers created a huge picture, which in general has boring background with a few bright spots. From this point of view the new GTA a little better than «sandboxes» performed by Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia). «Wow!»-effect at the beginning of unseen before atmosphere, and then the frustration of constant repetition of the same things throughout the game.



See also on Car Games To Play:
grand theft auto 4 - the whole city will be ours

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