Grand Theft Auto IV

Even though Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) made more money than the GDP of many countries, it still generated a lot of resentment amongst gamers. Sure it took realism to the next level and was a technical marvel of sorts on consoles, but in many ways it felt like a step back for the series – especially after San Andreas raised the bar significantly.
GTA IV revolved around the trials and tribulations of Serbian immigrant Niko Bellic who after being promised a life of luxury, wealth and women by his cousin, Roman arrived in Liberty City to experience the "American Dream". Upon arriving in Liberty City Niko finds out that Roman wasn’t as prosperous as his mails and letters made him out to be; in fact he was pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel, barely making ends meet. Instead of kicking Roman’s ass all over the place for lying to him, Niko stuck around to help his cousin out in his time of need. But in doing so he unwittingly became the man he left behind.

Now nearly 8 months later PC gamers have their chance to experience the PC port of this crime saga, sprinkled with crisper graphics, higher resolutions, a brand new video editor and 32 player support (MP). Bbut unfortunately, this isn’t the port you’ve been waiting for and does not reflect the kind of quality we’ve come to expect from Rockstar games.
I’ve heard some pretty horrifying stories about people’s experiences with the game, so I was pretty apprehensive of the whole deal at first. But being a massive GTA whor… I mean fan I went ahead and installed it without reading the minimum system requirements. After freeing up nearly 15 GB of hard disk space I was expecting a bunch of issues to crop up, but luckily the installation went pretty smoothly since I had both a Games for Windows Live (GFWL) ID as well as a Rockstar Social Club ID.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm got the best of me and I skimmed over the part where it said that the game required Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP1 required in Windows Vista) to run, without which, it most unceremoniously crashed to the desktop. Thanks to a nifty little FAQ I scored from Rockstar’s support page (and my MTNL 2 MB connection), I downloaded the 316 MB Windows update in about half an hour and was raring to go.