Grand Theft Auto IV Comments by Kieron Gillen

Games are meant for consoles. PCs are meant for spreadsheets, word processing and porn.

This is the proof.

What time is this to put this up?

I'm still not into GTA4, but the prospect of trying it out with 32-player sounds like this will be in my drive at Christmas :)

mmmmmmm Porn.

Now Rockstar, get to work on that "Lost and Damned" DLC please...

NDA passed I presume.

FLOP ONLY A 9 etc.

"a genuinely ground-breaking blockbuster in videogame history"

Nope.

"functional boom," nice typo.

Would this reviewer have given it a 9 on console too?

" a few more annoyances than I'd like for a ten. Primarily, a lack of mid-mission checkpoints is frustrating"

Gah, why have they still not fixed this? This is the 4th game where it' been criticised.

Anyway, looking forward to it. Not the biggest fan of the series, but less San Andreas nonsense and a more serious approach and improvement of core elements like the driving and shooting is exactly what I wanted.

Pretty lame sceenshots those, you gotta admit. I wouldnt mind seeing some maxed out settings on uber PCs though.

GTA IV was the most overhyped game of the year though. I'm still a bit disappointed with it now.

The recent zero punctuation review of Saints Row 2 sums up GTA IV perfectly.
Those invincible trees still piss me off too.

Personally i was the least amused from this game.. I don't know why but i was too dissapointed :/ Boring same old GTA and nothing more.. Like the reviewer says "remembering but in the days" really after all those years the past episodes of the series offers nothing much for a blockbuster of this scale. Id expect way more..

hahayou: "Would this reviewer have given it a 9 on console too? "

Yeah, I think so. It's a high nine either way. Marking is an art not a science and all.

KG

Nope.. worst gta ever.. pile of boring crap.. the only gta where i couldnt be arsed to beat it... 4/10

OMG, this game SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not buy this trash you hermits.

People are stupid.

Oh, the game. It's excellent

"There's never been anything quite like GTA IV in the world. "


Funny.. i found saints row 2 to be superior to gta4 in every way...

@smelly

Only question is what "ways" are you talking about? And please don't tell me "Don't know, was just more fun"...

nice review, but this is one of those rare cases in which I disagree with EG. GTAIV is all ostentation and zero substance; script is phenomenally childish, moral choices are a joke, game's just a shooter with some driving sequences disguised as blockbuster

wait until you're driving to a mission and get the 134th call from Roman asking for titties, then we talk

I am the sort that gets angry when talking DRM, and this is certainly too much.

And Games for Windows Live is a POS, free or not.

A pity about the 9, this is a big no sale for me.

SEXY!

GTA IV is still an amazing game, nice to see the reviewers of this site don't buckle under the pressure of bandwagon gamers.

Why is it amazing?

"ground-breaking blockbuster"

...oh Eurogamer... -_-

The game just falls flat after you complete it, which makes it the worse GTA in the series to me.

Is it still boring? GTA4 is a game that took all the fun out of the series and added loads of tedium. Lack of humour, lack of side-quests, full of chase sequences against invincible enemies. Niko willing to kill hundreds of people purely for money but there's nothing to spend it on. Who cares about multiple scripts for the cutscenes? Design the gameplay properly and I'll only need to watch them once. I also don't want to access the internet in a game, or watch Ricky Gervais, or take my fucking cousin bowling thank you very much. All pointless fluff that conceals the fact that the gameplay has gone backwards.

"game's just a shooter with some driving sequences disguised as blockbuster"

Driving and shooting in a sequel to a game about criminals shooting and driving around, what an absurd notion...

I can't understand comments like this, what were you people expecting? 4 has always been a direct sequel to 3 NOT SA.

Don't listen to 'em Rockstar, your sequel to GTA3 (you know the one with shooting and driving) is an amazing experience (which I'll enjoy again just like all the other ones).


Looking forward to the next one but in the mean time welcome to liberty City PC

"And, in the middle, repugnant fanboyism sitting there unchanged."

so it has online activation, did it at least get rid of the disc-in-drive check or do i have to look for a consumer-service-patch for this?

Is it a different reviewer maybe?

One question about the review:
"Unlike the vast majority of PC games, its auto-calculation is more than a little optimistic, generally underestimating what your PC can manage for the logical reason that a less-attractive game is less annoying than a less-playable one."

Maybe I've only misread the sentence, but as far as I understood the wording, it means the default settings the game proposes would be giving a more stable frame rate than needed at the cost of eye candy? Surely it's the other way around as described in the following sentences.

"There's never been anything quite like GTA IV in the world."

Except, yknow, GTAs 1, 2, 3, VC and SA. I mean, leaving aside the obvious differences between those titles, the above remark is a bit vacuous all the same. You could say it about any game ever made.

Anyway, it's very good but it's not quite as good as you think it is, I think. Hmm. The people here saying silly stuff like 4/10 and so on are just being wankers for the sake of it. It's not a perfect game by any means, though. It's not even a perfect GTA game. It has manifold problems. It's by and large a very good game though.

I sold my Xbox 360 copy a few months ago and decided I'd rebuy it on PC and maybe finish it, but mainly to experience multiplayer properly (console multiplayer online is still just unbelievably naff compared to PC). Looking forward to seeing what it's like.

Well, the 4/10 came from smelly. If he's even played 1/10th of the games he has an opinion on, I'd be very surprised.

Is it still boring? GTA4 is a game that took all the fun out of the series and added loads of tedium. Lack of humour, lack of side-quests, full of chase sequences against invincible enemies. Niko willing to kill hundreds of people purely for money but there's nothing to spend it on. Who cares about multiple scripts for the cutscenes? Design the gameplay properly and I'll only need to watch them once. I also don't want to access the internet in a game, or watch Ricky Gervais, or take my fucking cousin bowling thank you very much. All pointless fluff that conceals the fact that the gameplay has gone backwards.

Amen to that. This is precisely what's wrong with GTA4.
It's fun for a bit but once you've unlocked all of the islands there's not much to do but taxi around your virtual friends to restaurants and pool halls.

I haven't played or even seen this game, but, I can't believe they made the driving realistic. Have they lost their minds? And now I'm hearing "lack of humour"? Uh, ohh.

I'm surprised you think Halo is anything more than average given your knowledge of PC FPS's, Kieron.

Halo = Meh.

But that's another story.

"Let me get this right GTA IV comes out on consoles and gets 10/10.....the exact game comes out on PC with added bells and whistles....and scores 9/10.....where is the consistency?"

Someone else reviewed it?!

HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?
HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?
HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?
HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?
HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?
HEY COUSIN, WANT TO SHOOT SOME POOL?

Use of natch +1

Bit lame the site drops a point for pc though even though it's far better lol.

Unlike the vast majority of PC games, its auto-calculation is more than a little optimistic, generally underestimating what your PC can manage for the logical reason that a less-attractive game is less annoying than a less-playable one. I had to knock down the default graphic options quite a bit on my PC (dual-core 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 640MB GeForce 8800) until I got an acceptable rate, and even then there was the occasional really nasty drop.

Maybe it's just a Monday morning thing, but something in the first sentence seems wrong here.

oh dear.

@ Eighthours

Had a bit of bother with that my self but i'm fairly sure it should be overestimating.

It's so much nerdier to play the same game on a PC you need anyway than on a dedicated games machine in the living room.

Glol.

Disappointment of the year is more like it. I played it, completed it and was seriously annoyed. I liked the story but to claim it's a open world game... Your options are seriously limited, and it's the first game in which you have to manage your parking space for god's sake.

I suppose it was either this or put the real PC classic scores up to 11.

If there was any integrity left in Eurogamer, this is surely seals the deal. It's sad to see a generally quality site, slide down the ladder.
There is no reason to give the PC version anything but 10. Did Kieron though the game was too hyped in the first place? Fine, post an editorial. Don't review the game, only 6 months later on the PC and suddenly drop the score. Reviews and reviewers are just sawing the branch they stand on. It makes you loke as a joke, all the accusations people make against the video game industry are only more valid.

With all due repsect for different reviewers and opinions, this is a cohesive site. If any game gets a certain score on one platform and 6 months laters it comes to another one, there is no way in hell to score it less. Seeing GTA4 for pc only improves the experience, scoring it lower is just a site's self-destruction.

I'm looking forward to this!
Also very happy that there's no limit to installs as part of the DRM - means I'll be buying this unlike Spore or Mass Effect

Oh god it got a 9 not a 10 - get over it! It makes no difference whatsoever. Who. sodding. cares? They both mean it's a bloody great game, is that not enough?! Kieron said why he marked it down, what more do you want?

edit: removed caps and added exclams!

His reason aren't sufficient enough for me to drop it down. I have no problem with the score itself, the game should have gotten a 9 on consoles. The problem is that it isn't helping Eurogamer or the declining status of video-game reviews. Scoring a better version of a game, 6 months after the original release, lower is just bullshit.

These are the cases where EG as a site and organization, should allign the scores and have their pull. No need to make the situation worse by having these inconcictencies. Just post an editorial saying you were sucked in the GTA4 hype machine when it was rlsed on consoles and therfore gave it a 10 when it shouldn't have.

Yes the money thing is odd. You can buy guns and clothes but not cars or property. Or even drugs, maaan.
Still it's my game of the year.

you can't compare scores like that.

this review is aimed at PC owners and is scored as such. This is clearly not a '10' on the PC. It has nothing to do with consoles and their limited libraries, lifespans and demographics.

Splendid review as ever Mister G, nice mix of PC conversion examination and gameplay discussion, bravo.

@Eighthours - Well spotted... I think the reviewer meant to say 'overestimated' not 'underestimated' otherwise his whole criticism falls apart because he's basically complaining that he had to lower the settings further to make the game playable. You certainly wouldn't be lowering them if the game had underestimated the settings!!! LOL