I'm definitely not a casual gamer, in fact I'm the exact opposite, a rather hardcore gamer.
.........no comment:shadedshu
I think at this point you are beating a dead horse. You've had 3 very respected memebers, who have huge amounts of knowledge, tell you the game runs fine and you are wrong.....................You want to talk about me not knowing what I'm talking about, when you admitted you haven't even played the fully patched game.
I don't know how it runs now, I never sad I do, but who cares? We were talking about the release state, and it was nothing but a big megapop into the CPU when it came out, and the entire Internet agreed except you. This whole thread is about the release of the next version and (as how I also did in my first post) we are talking about our experiences about the last release, and we were drawing conclusions... You and only you who is talking out of context now about the patched game, whatever improvement that might have (if any) was irrelevant until you brought it up.
(and more to that, you are using it as one of your base argument to pick on me...enough said.)
I've even pointed out the exact hardware I ran the game on when it was smooth, and you still go on. You talk back and forth, contracting yourself. You say you remember 4 years ago perfectly, but then when asked what hardware you ran the game on you can't remember.
The hardware I had was way above the minimum requirements, and I also tested on many other machines (more than 5 for sure).
The fact is, if you ignore the notion that you absolutely have to max out the settings for any game to be enjoyable, a notion that most casual gamers have but not hardcore gamers, then the game was very well optimized. If you look at the wide range of hardware that the game will run on, the game is very well optimized. Optimization isn't about getting max setting to run on the current highest hardware, it is about getting the game to run on low end hardware, and Rockstar did that, and it does run smoothly.
Again, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. You are contradicting the opinion of the entire world. For example, you might say that Idtech or Unreal engine games are optimized in a way that they scale quite well and they run smooth with the right settings, but GTA4 ran horribly when it was released, and this is a fact.
It simply ran like crap on anything but high-end hardware, and it's your flawed perception to blame if that crap was smooth for you. I just quickly Googled some release-reviews for you, allow me to not bring up the endless raging threads on the Rockstar and other gaming forums, because this would become a book.
Gamespot: "Performance issues prevent this lazy PC port of a superb console game from being the best Grand Theft Auto yet."
IGN: "Yet with the PC version, you're going to need a particularly powerful machine to see it in all its splendor at a decent framerate, as even on our system (Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 768 MB GeForce 8800 GTX with Vista 32) we were having performance problems even after toning down a few of the settings, and some of the effects"
Videogamer: "Instead of re-treading old ground, we'll rundown how the PC version of GTA 4 has been handled, including the performance on modest gaming rigs, and the extras that Rockstar has included. Performance first then, and this is probably our biggest concern with the port. To put it bluntly, you're going to need a very beefy machine to get the game running well. Even the game's suggested settings caused our quad core, 8800 GTX equipped machine to struggle, and this was after we'd lowered the resolution to well below our monitor's native resolution."
Goo: "Ironically, just a couple of days after handing in my review of GTA IV, I managed to get it working on my machine. I accomplished this feat by running in a small window – 600x400 to be precise. My frame rates are hovering somewhere in the twenties, though when a lot of stuff is going on in the game I’ve had it fall even lower than that. Keep in mind that this is with a system matching the minimum system requirements. Why I had it run for one brief, shining moment in full screen and with high frame rates (up around 50FPS or so) but have been unable to repeat that performance, I don’t know. Why the second patch, which came out recently, seems to have reduced my frame rates slightly (though that’s largely by feeling as I haven’t measured it) I also don’t know. Why I’ve got a friend with a quad core machine and paired SLI videocards, and he’s doing only marginally better than I am, I also don’t know. I’m sticking with my initial review opinion that GTA IV is among the worst console ports ever, and that its graphics engine, while doing plenty of snazzy things when it’s running right, is a bloated, inefficient resource hog, but for those who are interested I can now give a review on the actual gameplay. I’m also going to add that if you do have the urge to buy GTA IV that you do so from somewhere that will allow you to return it. Fair warning."
Worthplaying:"It's simply laughable that in this modern age, we find a top-shelf game that does not look as high-quality as some of its peers (Fallout 3 or FarCry 2 are vastly superior) requires more hardware behind it to get it to acceptable levels; with a dual-core CPU and 1GB of video memory in my machine, I still can't get more than half of the capabilities from GTA IV."
Atomicgamer: "And for the hardcore gamers who find all this child's play, then they still probably won't be too happy with the feel of the controls or the shoddy performance. It's kind of a lose-lose for Rockstar at this point, and it's too bad, because GTAIV is a wonderful game that doesn't deserve the problems this PC port has."
From the beginning your argument has been borderline offensive, you constantly want to say that I don't know what I'm talking about. How about you make an argument without insulting the other persons intelligence? Why not make a factual argument instead?
I beg your pardon? Are you trolling me? Let me
explain it to you with your very first opening nonsensful post in this thread:
"If all you idiots cared about was the ability to run it on max settings on your mid-range hardware, then the only thing Rockstar would have had to do to optimize the game would be to limit max settings. Make what they called medium the max, and you all would have been happy. The game would have run perfectly fine on mid-range hardware on "max" settings. And you all would have talked about how well "optimized" the game was. And it still would have looked way better than 720p Low settings we got on the consoles."
You are right tbh, because I was indeed an idiot when I went down to your level and started arguing about simple well know facts. Please don't waste your time to reply, I love TPU because it's the best PC enthusiast site on the net, and I don't want you to ruin this great experience for me, so - sadly - I had to put you on
/ignore. I hope there are no hard feelings in you because I don't harbor any, and allow me to wish you good luck and all the best from now on. Bye.