GTA IV (PC) : Buyer Beware

I strolled into my local Best Buy last evening with the thought in my head, "I want to spend some money today." Having glanced over the computer hardware department, the console games department, etc, I stumbled into the PC games section. The glorious and glimmering faccades of the latest titles seemed almost overwhelming to have to choose from, the shelf seemingly giving me an evil cackle. Then, enter my dilemma: Flight Sim X, or GTA IV? I, after much deliberation and internal turmoil, brought both packages to my roommate, who promptly initiated a game of "pick which hand it's in". Selecting his right hand, a box labeled "Grand Theft Auto IV" came out. I glanced over the system requirements to see if my rig could hold it's own playing this title. I read the following off the box:

Minimum Spec:
1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo
1.5 GB RAM
nVidia 7900 or better
16 GB HDD space

I got it home, and in a flurry of anticipation for the new features GTA IV has to offer over the console variety, unraveled the packaging and quickly installed. After installation, I decided to look for some patches to see if there was anything needed to run this behemoth of a game. Sure enough, Rockstar had been good little boys and girls (unlike Bethesda, it would appear) and released a patch to assess performance issues.

And there it was, the Social Club splash screen, with the big button screaming "Play" to me. I crammed the LMB into the mouse and off it went. Now, the first thing any respectable gamer does is not to play the game right off the bat, but tweak the settings for good performance. Going into the options menu I spied some neat features, but didn't find nearly the amount of graphics options as, say, Fallout 3. Figuring that, since my computer fell somewhere between minimum and recommended spec, I'd set everything on moderate quality. "Ooo! A benchmarking button!", I said, elated to finally see such a feature. I opened the benchmarking tool and waited patiently to see my first glimpse of how this game would run. Before I continue, here are my system specs:

Dell Vostro 1500 Gaming Notebook
Core 2 Duo 1.4Ghz
2GB RAM
nVidia 8600M GT (Core clock: 475/900/400)
DirectX v9.0c
250GB 5400RPM Seagate HDD
Windows XP Media Center Edition

A respectable, albeit not top-of-the-line mobile gaming rig, no? Apparently, according to Rockstar, I was wrong. I felt pity overwhelm me as my poor little Vostro displayed the "action" on the screen at a rate reserved for real-time Etch-A-Sketch slideshows. Mind you, this rig has run EVERY other DX9.0c app that it's come across with ease. Fallout 3, GRID, Call of Duty 4, etc all run without issue on this rig. Much to my bewilderment, after having sat through a 5 minute presentation that should have lasted one minute, I quickly decided to adjust some settings. Draw distance, "rendering" (whatever that means, apparently things like AA, Anisotropic Filtering, and other elements cannot be adjusted individually), and textures took a hit. I rebooted the game and tried again.

Nay, not even lowering those settings would spare my poor rig. It struggled to maintain a double-digit framerate as what now appeared to be an actual movie, rather than a slideshow blazed across the screen at 10.33 frames per second. "Ok, we're making progress" I thought.

Again I lowered the settings down, this time to bare minimum spec, but maintaining my 1280x800 native resolution. Surely, this would help. No bacon... 11 FPS...

I lowered the resolution down to 800x600, "No way it's going to lag now!", I thought. Wrong... 12FPS...

I then resorted to opening up my trusty RivaTuner and overclocked my GPU from 475/900/400 to 625/1425/525 to see what would happen. To my shock and amazement, the game actually ran at a moderately-annoying 15-18 FPS! I had succeeded in life, bringing my rig to it's knees only to run a game that I was told could be ran at moderate spec on barebones minimum spec only while overclocked to the maximum that my GPU would tolerate... Lose...

How is it that a company can advertise a game to be capable of running on a low-end gaming rig and put it on the shelf knowing that it can only be run by the most 1337 of monolithic supercomputers found only in a lab somewhere deep in nVidia's HQ? I've even read reports of this "game" bottlenecking quad core processors. This is inexcusable...

Rockstar has had an entire year to play with the code, test it, perfect it; and they did not deliver. This has to be the most inefficient DX9 graphics engine I've seen to date. I shudder to think what this pathetic excuse for a slideshow would do to their minimum-spec GPU listed on the box, an nVidia 7900. Thoughts of this game running on DX10 may cause: nausea, heartburn, dizziness, thoughts of suicide, and/or death.

This was going to be a game review but I can't even get the damned game to run...

Next item, please... Before I hurt something...



UPDATE:

I have done some research on the performance issues surrounding this game. It would appear that they are caused by a lack of CPU power. Ok, so, Rockstar is essentially justifying their shortcomings by saying that my processor is 400 Mhz short of peak performance? Please... There's more to it than that. While I'm willing to accept the fact that my computer just isn't good enough to run this game, I'd rather Rockstar just tell me that up front, rather than candy coat it by listing min spec CPU speed as 1.8 Ghz. Also, what happened to the option found in Crysis to turn down Physics rendering? Why didn't Rockstar take advantage of the PhysX engine from nVidia, which utilizes GPU resources (with significantly more processors) instead of CPU resources to calculate physics? These are questions that need to be answered.

Gimpology: GIMP for Dummies

I was doing my usual mindless punching of the Stumbleupon button yesterday when I came across a website that caught my eye.

Gimpology is a website dedicated to showing new GIMP users some of the techniques involved in effective graphic design using the freeware photo and graphic maniuplation tool GIMP . It contains a plethora of tutorials showing even the most novice user how to make some spectacular works of art, using only this piece of software. Every step, data entry, and process is explained. Being someone with no prior knowledge of the graphic design process, this was extremely helpful in showing me how to manipulate certain tools to make some amazing things.

As I said, I have no previous experience with any graphic design program at all, and I made these:

Fallout 3

So I'm going to take a stab at this game review thing. Here goes! Before I begin, however, I must warn you that there are a *few* minor spoilers in the review.

Fallout 3 is an FPS-RPG staged in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Washington D.C. 200 years previous to the beginning of the story line, the Cold War took a very violent twist. After events similar to "The End of the World", survivors who had the cash to do so found themselves in underground vaults to survive the nuclear winter. And so your story begins.

After witnessing your own birth (and creating your character) you are thrust into the realm of the three-year-old child. Your biggest worries here include: escaping your playpen, wandering around the room, and setting up your talents in the "You're Special" book. This is all cleverly disguised as a kids' book, but has a moderate amount of effect on your character later on. Only after some banter with your father are you then teleported to your ten-year-old self's birthday party. It is here where you are introduced to the conversationalist elements of the game. Eerily similar to Oblivion, the dialogue is nice at first, but you realize after the thrid or fourth runthrough of the game that the NPC's responses are worded in such a way that you can respond in any number of ways, and receive the same answer everytime. But now I'm just nit-picking... You, after going through a few of these "life stages" are now set to enter the Fallout world in it's entirety. You awaken to find that your dad has somehow escaped the institution of Vault 101 and ventured out into the Capital Wasteland. Now you are being sought for charges of conspiracy by pretty much everyone in the Vault for merely being your dad's son. It is here that you are forced out into the open world after an escape from the machine that is the vault.



And alas, through the brilliant white light appears a landscape straight out of "The Sum of All Fears". A battered and bruised Capital Building lays ahead of you, miles into the distance. The now transparent Washington Monument is still standing, a testament to American perseverance, it would seem. It is now that the player gets an idea of just how big this game really is.

Only after staring into the abyss for five minutes in awe of the sheer size of the game do you venture down into it. Generally, players will find themselves wandering straight into the walls of Megaton, a refugee settlement created from scrap in a crater left by an undetonated nuclear bomb (which still resides in the town). Mingling with these folks is where you get your first tasks assigned, and the story takes off from there and divides into so many facets as not could be covered in such a review as this.

The game itself plays well on the PC. The controls are tight, and there are very few camera issues. The game looks fantastic, and my poor little mobile 8600 GT was struggling to keep up when I cranked everything up to "ultra" settings, so I had to tone things down to high, where playability was restored. The game's downfall, however, are the bugs that were released in the original copy of the game, and still exist in light of a small patch. Random crashes, slowdowns, and graphical glitches absolutely plague this game, at times bringing it to it's knees. A patch has yet to be released to address these issues, and I really wish that Bethesda would have waited until they had fixed these issues to release the final game, it would have made this a perfect experience.



There are some unique gameplay elements to be found in Fallout 3. Weapon and item degradation becomes a major problem overtime, and can cost you a lot in damage dealt and received. It's a welcome addition to the gameplay as it is well-done, unlike most titles that have something similar to this, forcing the player to repair after every skirmish with a small poodle. Items are repaired by having the skills necessary to repair the item to a certain point (you can repair everything, but up to a point depending on your repair skill) and combining two of the same things to make one fixed item.

One other gameplay element that is unique is the VATS targeting system. Essentially, the player is able to stop time and select the location and sequence of shots fired at an enemy. It is nice, but even when everything else is running at 40 FPS, entering the VATS system dramatically decreases framerate. It is this single factor that is enough for me to call it an annoyance, rather than a feature.

As with almost any Bethesda game, there is a skills system. I found it interesting how these skills were so very well implemented in the game. The player finds him or herself focusing in on one or two key skills that he/she thinks they will need to extract the most success out of the game. A high science skill will allow you to unlock eletronically-locked doors and safes, but so will a lockpicking skill, in different locations. A high explosives skill will grant you access to one of the coolest things I've seen in a video game to date; the Megaton explosion (see the above pic), where you detonate the above-mentioned nuke residing in Megaton's center. It's exciting to see a game that allows the user to choose where they will see their benefits from choosing to emphasize a certain skill, and it is here where I feel the game really excels.

Combat is effective enough, but it's not anything spectacular. However, another one of the most satisfying elements of this game is the amount of ways that you can finish an enemy off. The VATS gives you an idea of how much health an enemy will have after the player has selected their target points. So, if the finishing shot is to the head, the enemy's head will explode into many meaty (yet disturbingly identifiable) pieces. Getting enjoyment out of such an obscene and horrendous death seems almost psychotic to the player at times, but it becomes second nature after a while.

Overall, this game is probably the best game of 2008, sans the technical problems. If Bethesda would hurry up and solve the performance issues with this software then I would have no doubt in my mind. The game is a work of art. I would highly recommend a purchase.

Gameplay: 8/10 Due to performance issues

Sound: 9/10 Great sound, good understated soundtrack that adds to gameplay, not overpowering it.

Graphics: 10/10 Looks fantastic! Textures, shading, draw distance, all of it is wonderful, and this is one efficient graphics engine!

Controls: 10/10 Spot-on controls combined with the mouse and keyboard experience we all know and love make this game control better than most others.

Presentation: 10/10 This game is truly epic in scale, and it knows it. Vast expanses of open wasteland, terrifying and dark tunnels, and an amazing story line make this game amazing.

Performance: 4/10 This game runs very well, when it's not crashing... PATCH NEEDED SOON!

Overall: 8.5/10 An amazing game plagued by bugs, both intentionally and unintentionally...

XBOX 720 Yields Little Promise for Blu-Ray Capability

A C-Net article published yesterday revealed that Microsoft will likely not be exploring options to provide Blu-Ray playback in the upcoming Xbox 720 system suspected to be released within the next two years. This is all riding on the heels of much criticism towards the current-generation system, the Xbox 360, having only HD-DVD support with an additional external drive and no Blu-Ray capability in sight. C-Net says that "There's no way Microsoft will install a Blu-ray drive into the Xbox 720 and to be quite honest, I don't think there's any reason for it to do so. The reason is simple: Microsoft doesn't want to pay a competitor..." Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. is one of the key players in the Blu-Ray movement, providing much of the financial backing behind the program. If Microsoft were to go ahead with plans for implementing Blu-Ray technology in their upcoming system, they'd might as well be handing a blank check straight to their rivals. How this will all play out in 2011 will be interesting, but one thing can be assured; It will be intriguing to see how the over decade-old DVD stacks up against the ever-growing Blu-Ray disc. After the monumental failure of HD-DVD, who knows...

Source: C-Net

Koobface Virus Hits Facebook

Looks like they're at it again. Have a Facebook in-box message titled something like "You look funny in this video"? Don't open it, it may be one of the last links your poor notebook will click.

According to C-Net.com, the virus initially manifests itself within a link, luring the reader to believe that someone has posted some "compromising material" onto the internet about them. The reader clicks the link and is taken to what seems to a be a legitimate viral video site. The user is then asked before starting the video to update their flash player plugin. The file that the user downloads, however (aptly named "flash_player.exe"), is a piece of nasty spyware/malware. Once it installs, Koobface listens in on all HTTP traffic and all outgoing and incoming TCP traffic on port 9090, and redirects all searches to other less-favorable search engines.

The virus is also reported to have bot-like coding, so the virus may install other goodies later on.

Great stuff. What will they think of next?

Source: C-Net