Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsFun But It's a Pain
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 5, 2009
Let me start by saying this game is buggy and definitely the worst outing from what I would have called a solid development house. The biggest problem, even after patching, and this game is a year old, is that there are several graphic bugs. The biggest is the graphics fade. For instance occasionally I'll be driving down the road and the road will turn into what looks like grey mud with fog on top and then flip back eventually and repeat. Smaller issues continue to pop up as well, like all of the sudden the on/off freeway ramps will appear to be blocked by a long grey slab which, thankfully, I can still drive through. I've had the same problems on two computers using different graphic cards, both nVidia, a 260 GTX and an 8800 GT. The many graphic issues with this game have been well documented so I'll let the rest go.
Installation and running this game is a ridiculous continual slap in the face. Not only do you need to deal with Windows Live, a first for me and not at all enjoyable or useful in my opinion (it feels like they took Steam, ripped it's guts out and tried to put it in a pretty box that they're gonna make you open). Second, Rockstar Social Club is a necessary installation and not only will it attempt to make itself launch when your computer starts but it must be running when you launch the game and will reinstall the auto launcher each time you run the game. This makes for a fun mini-game after I'm done playing of cleaning up after it so it won't auto launch itself the next day.
As for the game itself, so far I am finding it enjoyable even with the problems. It's not groundbreaking, there are several uneven spots, such as the Snow Storm mission that suddenly really amps up the difficulty and pretty much keeps it there, but this is small and you'll adjust, just expect to replay this mission a few times. If you're like me you'll enjoy the random chaos you can create in any GTA game and pretty much that's why I bought it, then you won't be too disappointed. I would have preferred to get it as a digital download but for some reason Rockstar is keeping the prices on these at any retailer at the original asking price, $50. I wouldn't pay that for this game then, because of the many bugs, and definitely wouldn't now so Amazon is your best shot at this point.
I have to say before I played this game, even after San Andres which I didn't like, I had a much higher opinion of Rockstar. With the way they handled and continue to handle, the lack of patches to fix these old problems says a lot, I wouldn't trust them any further than any other house that would make it's customers jump through this many hoops for what is still, a year later, an unfinished game.
