So I was planning to get GTA IV on PC, but I hear that there are some major issues with it. I also thought about Fallout 3 but I hear the same thing. So does anyone here own them for the PC? Anybody want to offer alternatives?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I own Fallout 3 for the PC and yes, it is very buggy. Though not to the point of making it unplayable, at least for me. Mostly poor frame rate, unresponsive or slow to respond controls during a fight, buggy physics engine, that sort of thing. Most of which will probably be sorted in an upcoming patch, but I don't think that will be released until January/February time.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Remember the days when patches used to fix minor bugs and not used to basically complete the game that should have been fully finished in development.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Remember when there was no such thing as patches?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yeah, but Atari's 2600 console was a masteriece of quality control.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
I remember when the remedy consisted of praying and chanting for 2 minutes before an Amiga playing session, for the "Guru meditation" gods not to appear.
In the 1997-2004 time period, patches where mostly sources of "oh, nice"-ness, but it was mostly polish.
I'm stuck at the last level of Crysis, and the spider exoship can't be defeated because 1 minute 30 seconds into the fight, the texture buffer fills up all the RAM memory and the page file (instead of sequentially purging itself), stuttering the game to a freeze, ingame and on desktop alike. I can even see it happening on the activity manager, 3844/4022 Mb pagefile, 2030/2048 RAM used. Flatline.
Oh, and the opportunity where I can actually launch the weapon at the spidership doesn't occur until 2-3 minutes into the fight (preset scripting), so I'll never reach there before game (and Windows) freezes, not even in 800x600 resolution and all video settings set to "low". Not until patch 1.3 comes, which has been cancelled by Crytek.
My brother is playing Fallout 3 now, though, and he has nothing but praise for it. No showstopper there, and GTA I hear is playable too.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Clearly what you need is MOAR RAM. Posted by Josh (Member # 1884) on :
Patches have become a very big crutch for PC game development because you can get away with shipping some pretty big issues and fix them since almost everyone has some form of internet connectivity, unlike console install base which is still somewhere in the 40% range from last report I saw.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Okay so I'll buy the bullet and buy GTA IV. Just hope I have enough RAM. Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
You're better off waiting for Saints Row 2 in January. I was a bit dissapointed in GTA IV, to the point that I sold my copy after finishing the story. There's really not much in the way of side missions or much else do do for that matter.
SR2 is far superior, and since my third xbox is broken I might just make a return to PC gaming.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Alrighty then, I'll get Fallout 3. It loks cool and it has a sci-fi setting.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Fabrux:
quote:Clearly what you need is MOAR RAM.
Not at all, I've played through Bioshock, Stalker, Neverwinter Nights 2 and 95% of Crysis, all with 1680x1050 res and ultra-high video settings, with solid 50-60 frames/sec, and Crysis has been fine up until now, but suddenly I swing around a corner in the final level of Crysis and this spider dude sucks all the system resources out of the comp in 90 seconds. And this is a level that is renowned for bugs, just not the memory leak ones. Sometimes the spidership spawns into the floor of the aircraft carrier, with only the top of him sticking out.
I see that ATI released the Catalyst 8.12 driver pack yesterday, I'll try that one out.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
How about playing the final level on low settings?
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
That's what I wrote in my first post, I am playing on low setting, lowest resolution and all graphic options on low. Just installed the 24-hour old "Catalyst 8.12", doesn't change a damn thing, 2 minutes into the fight with the spider, just as it turns around, a new wave of lesser squidships attack and the stutter freezes the game, killing it and returning to desktop.
My brother finished this game a month ago and his computer rig is lower-specced than mine.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
Oh my mistake. What computer are you playing on?
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
I assembled it in September, it's a Antec Sonata case with a 3GHz core2duo processor and a Radeon 4870 video card, the rest of the components I just picked based on price/performance compromises. I settled on a good Asus motherboard early though, not good to skimp on that. It works well, and Vista has been entirely bugfree and easy to work with so far. I'm also very satisfied with the LG L227WT monitor, very good contrast and I've so far been unable to beat the response time into showing ghost frames during heavy games, it's rock solid.
Also, I'm thinking of getting a 4Gb USB flash drive from the coming sales, and just use it for Vista's "ReadyBoost" virtual memory buff, see how that turns out.
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