But excitement turned to disappointment when I finally tried the game after a long installation.
The graphics were smudgy. Straight lines were jagged, and sides didn't meet perfectly at the corners. The characters seemed to have a shiny halo around them even though they weren't the holiest of men -- a sign of poor graphics rendering.
The motion of the characters were not as smooth as I had anticipated it to be. A task as simple as driving a car became a chore because the frame rate was so slow! The game responded too sluggishly at my keyboard presses, or sometimes not at all. Playing GTA IV was a terrible headache.
When I checked the graphic settings, they were turned to low. I tried setting 'em higher, but it caused the game to hang. Pretty strange for a laptop with 2814 MB RAM and 250 MB NVIDIA GeForce 9100M G video card (I don't understand any of this so don't bother asking; I just ripped that straight off dxdiag.) -- dedicated, of course, so the total video memory goes up to 1389 MB.
WHY THE FUCK IS THIS DAMNED GAME DETECTING ONLY 250 MB OF VIDEO MEMORY???
And if that weren't enough, I read several forums and found several other gamers who were experiencing the same problem.
Apparently, the PC version was one of the most disappointing games of 2008.
WTF???
Should have read that in the first place, huh? I seriously contemplated throwing the game away and forgetting about it forever.
GTA IV at low graphic settings and window mode* personal screenshot
Thankfully, I read from forums that GTA can be run in windowed mode. That way, it would be less stressful for my computer, and I wouldn't have to suffer from 800 x 600 resolution on a 1280 x 768 screen. Yuck.
How to run GTA IV in windowed mode:
- Open Notepad.
- Type in-windowed
- Save as commandline.txt under your GTA IV installation folder (by default: "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV")
- Cross your fingers and pray.
- Run GTA IV.
The command line file is my GTA IV savior. I've been playing the game now for a few days. Even though it's not as great as I had hoped it would be (due to its performance kinks), I still enjoy it for its story and its gameplay. And it's still superior to the Vice City game that I had enjoyed years before.
There are several other command lines that can be added. You can find a full list in the Readme or in here. I've also tried using the -availablevidmem and the -percentvidmem command lines to add to the video performance. The game apparently recognized the increased video memory allocation when I re-checked the graphic settings. However, the graphics and the laggy frame rate didn't seem to improve with the new command lines, so I just settled for -windowed.
Follow these tips and you can be assured of a decent GTA IV PC gameplay (as long as your PC doesn't totally suck). However, regardless of how many GTA IV for PC performance tips we think of, the experience just won't be perfect. GTA IV simply isn't made for the PC.
Rule of thumb: If you can afford it, just buy the game for PlayStation III.
CHEATING THE GAME
My GTA gameplay never seems to be complete without the almighty cheats. Unlike in Vice City, wherein cheats are entered directly through the keyboard, GTA IV cheats have to be dialed via Niko's cellphone. A list of cheats can be found in GameFAQs.
A few things to keep in mind, though:
- You cannot input cheats until you finish the first mission and Roman gives you a new cellphone.
- To enter the cheats, open the cellphone for dialing. By default, this can be done by pressing the [UP] key twice.
- It takes a lot of time to enter cheats via the cellphone. Make sure you are in a safe place when you enter the cheats, and make sure you do it quick!
- If you are interrupted while making the cheat call (say, when somebody shoots you, or when the police corner you), the cheat won't take effect.
- Some cheats will disable some achievements. So if you're looking to collect achievements for your bragging rights, don't cheat. Ever.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment