In runs decently on my PC BUT CRASHES IN THE CUT SCENES. Madness.

For all the comparisons to GTA, here’s what Rockstar did right: Tapping a direction key turns the wheels direction slightly. Holding the key down longer turns more sharply. Keeping the key down turns the wheel as sharp as it goes.

Period. Fucking rocket science I know.

Here’s what Saints Row 2 did: Tapping.. long press, hold down.. whatever: all = a 45 degree turn of the wheels period. There is absolutely no smoothing out your aim. There is absolutely no controlling your vehicle at any sort of speed. This is worse then 15 year old arcade driving games. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

And yet, if you play on a game pad? You suddenly are treated to gentle turns, slight taps easily adjust your course. So apparently, they DO understand that on a console, a wheel that only turns 45 degrees on or off is a bad idea, but they just didn’t GIVE A SHIT even after 2 patches to share that brilliance with the PC user.

If a PC game is only playable on a console game pad, then it’s not a PC game. It’s a console game. There needs to be a new label to boxes indicating this. “Cross Platform” or “Made for PC only.”

I would rather go without (or even resort to 100% piracy) then deal with this frustration of being a PC only gamer and finding out (expensively) that developers simply can not rise to meet the most fundamental tenants of the platform they are releasing their title for.

/rant

Its the best character visuals creator I have seen in a game.

It is pretty terrible port. None of the textures were retouched for the low setting so there’s all sorts of design issues that arise. Normally you should be able to see where one wall ends and another begins, but that becomes very difficult when the game uses the same almost white noise styled texture because it assumes you have lighting/texture effects on. If there graphical techniques aren’t going to properly support low-end systems, they should just exclude those options.

Do the Ronin mission where you rob a casino and put it on custom with everything turned to low or none. Then go in with dynamic lighting set to simple, and if you have that bug, you won’t see a difference between low and simple inside. If you set it to all, then suddenly it comes back.

They’ve made probably the most beautifully detailed living city in a game yet in GTA4, and yet they’ve left it almost completely devoid of things to do. Towards the end of it I found myself rushing through the missions just so I could get the game done and dusted so I could start something else. The feeling I got when I finished the game was more one of a sense of relief like “Thank god I’ve finally finished that!” rather than any sense of achievement or elation. As for tying up the story at the end, well the story stopped meaning anything to me after about a third of the way through anyway, as the game just pushed you from one set of gangsters to the next. Half the time I had no idea who the people were or how I’d come to meet their acquaintance in the first place. The best thing about it was the driving which it has to be said is bloody good. Racing around the city in first person view is a real rush, and it looks superb. The combat whilst much improved, I felt lacked any kind of kick. It was workable but not particularly exciting, and the cover mechanic was quite clunky. I still think GTA4 is a good game, but it’s just a rather dull experience.

Michael Dorn? SOLD!