Grand Theft Auto IV

[Mike]

Grand Theft Auto IV has been released on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It has received a very strong 100 out of 100 from MetaCritic which is very very high! The BBC have reported that it is expected to be the fastest selling game of all time which is impressive. We just need a mac version now please.

[stimpsonslostson]

I dunno, I've never really been into the alternate life type of game... (I'm broadly generalising to include WoW, GTA, Sims etc).
I'd rather play a sports game or something with a linear progression- I don;t have the attention span for open ended games where you do what you want.

it does look impressive tho'. i remember being shocked when I saw the improvement from the original GTA to Vice City.
p

[mr_e]

Those metacritic scores are kinda scary. Sounds like they've added more emotional involvement to the game in some respects, and then honed the car physics and added a system whereby you (and the AI) can actually take cover properly. GTA is usually largely mission-based, but it's not quite something you can pick up and play for just five minutes, so you might be able to get something out of it, Phil, but maybe not the full value-for-money.

[Mike]

I won't be able to play it. Wow, that is the first game I wont be able to play on the mac. The laptop is just not powerful enough. I don't want to buy in a ps3 just for that game though as I would never have sufficient tv time to play it.

[mr_e]

Can't you emulate Windows on a Mac, or is it just too slow for newly-released games?

[Mike]

You can run it natively now we are on intel chips (don't know why that makes a difference but apparently it does) however it exposes the computer to massive virus risks and that will reduce the whole performance dramatically. It is a sacrifice that I am not prepared to take. . . .

I hope that the growing market for macs will mean they want to tweak the game for the system - if not I suppose I just won't play it!

[mr_e]

Have a separate Windows partition (or the Mac equivalent of one) and run it disconnected from the internet? You never know, someone might decide to tweak it themselves (despite it being against the end-user agreement), depending on the amount of work involved...

[Mike]

The not connected to internet would be good but it runs in Parallel to the main os x system so it appears like a programme window so you con get access through the mac os. The rumour is that the windows flaws are always there to be taken advantage of even when it is not running which is why I am not interested in running it. Besides, how frustrating is vista anyway? Major therefore don't really want the hassle of dealing with it.

[Mike]

GTA IV sold 3.6 million copies on day one and 6 million in the first week. Take Two have raked in $500 million in the first week of sales alone and have really blown away all expectation.

[Mike]

Cnet are reporting that the a patch is now available for their online multiplayer service. The gamespy servers were getting overloaded by the volume of visits. . . . funny since they sold 6 million copies in a week. They are going to be challenging WoW soon.

[Mike]

GTA IV is coming to a PC near you (as long as it is not a Mac!). This is quite funny to pop up on my news feeds because I was talking to mr_e about it last night!

[mr_e]

I'm fairly excited about it, although I'll need to see system requirements before I go all crazy. The gameplay just seems so much more sophisticated than the previous games in the franchise (San Andreas, Vice City, Liberty City), plus the PC version will likely have some format-specific additions.

[Mike]

You are probably right about the format specific stuff! It's to encourage the owners of xboxes and ps3's to buy the game a second time!