The GTA4 PC Experience

And so begins the rant:

I have been waiting for this game to come out on PC for about the last 2 years in which I have been content in playing San Andreas on the PC, and enjoying it. I even put up the with the fact that I had to wait some extra months for the game to be ported to the PC from console, it's a regular thing, it happened to GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas...no biggie.

Steam is the means which I decided to obtain the game, and thus the problems begin. Instead of releasing the game at midnight on December 2nd (official release date) like EVERY other online game download service, the fucking brainiacs at Valve decide to make us loyal customers (I've run steam based games for the past 4 years) wait an extra 20 hours for the release. This really sets me off; and ALOT of other people off on the Steam-GTA4 forums. What are these idiots thinking? Half the people on the forum were sending in support tickets to Valve asking for a refund so they could download from Direct2Drive at midnight (which had a countdown timer to midnight, further infuriating me in the nature of pure mockery). This really messed up my download plans, which were initially to start the download at midnight, go to school the next day, and hopefully be able to play when I got home from school, there was no chance at this now.

I get home from school and find that Valve has actually acquired some shred of intelligence and the game is ready for download, about 5 hours before the December 2nd 8:00pm foresaid planned release. This got my hopes up, but only for about 25 minutes when I realized that the download speed was frozen at “Download Starting”, which I thought had been preparing all the game files (it's a whopping 16gb download) for hard drive allocation, registry changes or whatever else the fuck it had to do get itself ready for my hard drive. This problem was easily solved however, by restarting steam and restarting the download which was turning in respectable 600-750kb/s speeds, this translates to about a 6 hour wait.

In obvious anticipation of this gem of a game that I have played on Xbox (but not even close to the extent I would be able to play solo), I waited it out, browsed the forums, and found another great tidbit of information… the game is HORRIBLY optimized. Think 20-55fps on GTX280 SLi setups with Core i7's and 8gb of ram at MEDIUM-HIGH at 1680x1050. Wow, this is really great news for my Core 2 Duo 2.26ghz (no oc'ing on this mobo) and 9600GT with 512mb of DDR2 and 4gb of ram on Vista. Well, I thought to myself, at least I just ordered that 4850 which should be able to run it with fairly decent graphics, but is still 4 days from being delivered. The more I read, the more apprehensive I became at my system's ability to run the game (though I still held on to the hope of running at low with a decreased resolution).

The download completes, hurrah! After all this bullshit I've gone through, the waiting, and yes, the anxiety, it was finally time to play. “Launch game”! But not really, actually, transfer me to some bulllshit “Rockstar Social Club” application which makes me sign in to my Windows Live Account. Of course, the password for my Windows Live is all fucked up and I have to reset it (and wait 5 minutes of pure torture for the reset email), but it finally comes through. I install the Windows Live updates while I wait for the email and think I'm golden to play the game. My Windows Live account is recognized by Rockstar Social Club and everything seems to be going good. I launch the game (this is second time) and I'm transferred to the Rockstar Online Activation server connect app. I knew this was coming. Did I mention it comes bundled with SecuROM? You know, those handy little rootkits that are essentially legal malware engineered by those criminals at Sony? I legally bought the game and have every right to play it and I really have no interest in playing online for a while so why do I have to go through all this online bullshit? Because I'm a pirate apparently. But, amazingly enough, it connects to the server and activates me successfully. Nice!

Launch the game again (third time), I get to the license agreement screens before the fucking thing crashes with a fatal error (MMA10 or something). Wow, the fuse has been set, I've gone ballistic…..WTF!??!?!! Literally, WTF WTF WTF?!?!?!?! I want to hurl the laptop at the wall, I want to call Valve, Microsoft, and Rockstar and tell them exactly what I think of them, their children, and their pathetic business practices. This has to be joke. I restart the applications, the computer, I defrag, I run Registry Mechanic, I try everything in my arsenal of 6 years of enthusiast computer involvement. Ultimately however, the damn thing refuses to run, my attempts are futile.

As I staunchly believe in life, human communication is golden and the best way to solve problems, and it applied here too. Others have had my exact problem (In fact, the thread I visited with the title “MMA10 Fatal Error” is 72 pages long and was created TODAY) and have called Rockstar about the error. It seems the servers are "overloaded" or some bullshit. From the posted conversation, it was obvious the Rockstar techie was clueless and was feeding something out to keep the masses hopeful. What a great situation by the digital “axis of evil” (Valve, Rockstar, Microsoft…and EA) as I now think of them. I want my money back AND I want my game. I have not run into a longer running hassle in my life, and one at which I am at the mercy of complete idiots.

What a bunch of imbeciles. Godamnit.

----Sorry about profanity, but I felt it was necessary.

 

Damn h4x0rZ!!!

I bought because

1. I respect the GTA series enough to buy the game, this is VERY rare for me with games
2. I wanted the multiplayer after I've finished the story

But jesus, those hackers are fast. It's like the same thing with Spore, load it all up with DRM software only to find it hacked the next day. All aboard the failboat!