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Grand Theft Auto IV

Games for Windows LIVE

PC version is also a Games for Windows LIVE title and the LIVE multiplayer works great. GTA IV always had a good mix of multiplayer modes that use the single player areas as great backdrops for some fun stuff. Gameplay modes range from basic deathmatch to racing on the streets of Liberty City. LIVE also translates to achievements, and they are identical but separate from the XBox 360 version - you can milk gamerscore from both.

The slight drawback is that Games for Windows LIVE is yet another program you have to install. In fact, GTA IV on the PC installs a massive array of helper programs that all have to be just right for the game to work. Games for Windows LIVE, Rockstar Social Club client, SecuROM protection DLLs (thankfully without any installation limits), Adobe Flash, .NET Framework and Internet Explorer all have to be installed and fully up-to-date, turning the installation into a somewhat complex affair. Some have had trouble to even start the game - usually due to outdated or broken .NET installations or somewhat non-standard Windows installations. To add further complications, Games for Windows LIVE client has to be manually updated as the version included with the game fails to auto-update itself.

To Rockstar's defense, I must say that if you ensure that everything on that list is installed and up to date, the game does work, but that's a long list of things that can end up breaking things. My personal experience with a copy purchased off Steam was completely trouble-free. There were more things to click during installation as the game kept installing additional bits and pieces, but in the end I just entered the CD-Key and everything just worked. I did end up updating Games for Windows LIVE later, but at least the single player game worked just fine without the manual update.

Quad Core Advertisement

Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC is probably the first properly multithreading game that is actually limited by your CPU on most gaming PCs at the time of launch. It absolutely gobbles up CPU power and a fast quad core CPU is strongly recommended. GTA IV can run on the fastest available dual cores, but only barely, constantly hitting the CPU limit and leaving your video card idling. GTA IV isn't the first game to take advantage of all cores, but it's the first one that can max out two cores on a modern dual core system and ask for more.

Reasons for this are many, but the most obvious one is the use of Euphoria, a procedural animation system. It goes way beyond the usual of pre-canned character animation and makes the game characters move and react in a realistic way. Another obvious CPU hog is the sheer number of polygons used to represent Liberty City. While modern video cards accelerate the rendering of 3D scenes tremendously, streaming and setting up all that data for the video card can eat up plenty of CPU cycles when you have something as complex as Liberty City of GTA IV.

So, the conventional wisdom stating that "you don't need quad core for gaming" is officially history. Intel and AMD are probably pleased.

1GB Video Card Advertisement

GTA IV also goes beyond the norm on the video card side, benefitting considerably from a card with more than 512MB onboard memory. Assuming you are not CPU limited, a good modern 512MB midrange card can run the game at smooth 30fps+ but you will be limited to just Medium textures. It should be noted that GTA IV's "Medium" is noticeably better than the textures used in the console versions of GTA IV, and they look quite acceptable even at high resolutions.

Still, we all want to run our game at High and in this case High means a 1GB video card. You can barely turn High textures on with 512MB card at 1024x768 resolution, but that kinda defeats the whole point - you can't really tell high and medium textures apart at that resolution. 768MB and 896MB oddball RAM configurations of some NVIDIA cards end up useful here, offering the ability to use higher settings. Still, even a 1GB card can't maximize the Draw Distance with High textures - GTA IV eats up video RAM like a pig. 256MB cards? You can theoretically play with Low textures, but I really can't recommend it.

Low settings - comparable to the console versions

Medium - Playable on the YouGamers minimum system

High settings - Playable on the YouGamers recommended system

High textures are most noticeable on billboards

In a way Rockstar labeled their video settings all wrong. The texture options really should be labeled as "Medium", "High" and "Extreme", with the "Extreme" requiring that 1GB card. Sure, the best textures are super detailed and really cool - especially in promotional shots produced in 2560x1920 resolution - but in real gameplay terms the benefits are not that huge and you can enjoy the game just fine even with a 512MB card.

Still, it makes a convincing case for new 1GB video cards. NVIDIA and ATI-AMD are probably pleased.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Multiplayer, PerformancePage 4: Visuals, SettingsPage 5: Summary, Scores

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