Wow... This sucks.
Stick in your brand new €43 GTA and the very first thing you see:
Nice. On some forums I go to lots of people from my country are having the same issue.
Then installing the thing takes close to an hour and sucks up 50% more space than the whole of my Crytek software folder, which includes Crysis and Crysis: Warhead.
And all the R* internet community-weirdo and Windows Live network bloatware things MUST be installed for my new
single player game. They can be skipped during installation, which renders your new installation useless until you install the bloatware manually.
All installed, you click on your GTA shortcut and wait ages for securom checks and activation. After which you're presented with another startup utility with 75% some weird dynamic online content and 5% "play" button. At first I thought I misclicked and started something totally different. I think third time starting the same loader I found the play button and clicked it.
The couple of minutes of R* logos and screenfuls of warning babble for the American of us are, naturally, unskippable.
Then you get ingame, where you head into the options windows to set up your game. You define your controls and close the options window. Then you're greeted with
this.
It took them 9 months to release a PC version which they explained with wanting absolute polish and quality. Yeah, real polished...
Oh, and did I mention the fucking startup window nags about me not being "logged on"
every time I fire the game up. No, there's no "don't nag again" checkbox.
Speaking of firing the game up again - when I did, I got
this. IE 404 in my GTA. Hilarious.
Despite bearing all this shit I still had energy to actually start a new game. Watch the startup demo, rather. See, from a technical point of view, it looks pretty much like GTA 3 with a San Andreas level of detail. And runs about as smoothly as Crysis: Warhead, or worse, actually. In short, it sucks. At this point I've had enough and will shelf the thing until, uh, later. When I was quitting, though, I saw there was no "save" option. WTF is that all about. I'm told by unreliable sources your progress isn't saved unless you're registered and logged online. I'm really having doubts it can really be that broken of a design.
I'm so pissed I spent a full tank of gas' worth on this. The customer experience so far has been absolutely appalling. It's worse than Far Cry 2, seriously. Had I just tested it on a warez copy I wouldn't have bought it.