Month: December 2008

Play Midnight Club Los Angeles and Grand Theft Auto IV online all weekend to challenge Rockstar at their own games and then go to Rockstar Games Social Club for chances to compete for limited-edition Rockstar gear and prizes. Here’s a full run-down of all the events.

Take on some of the folks who helped bring you Midnight Club Los Angeles and Grand Theft Auto IV. Each day, Rockstars will be logging on to throw down the online multiplayer gauntlet per the following schedule:

Friday Dec 12th, 6-9 PM EST: GTA IV 360/PS3
Saturday Dec 13th, 12-4 PM EST: GTA IV PC
Sunday Dec 14th, 4-7 PM EST: Midnight Club Los Angeles 360/PS3

Check out the Social Club for a full list of Rockstar Gamertags and PSN IDs for each day so you’ll know who to look for.

Microsoft finally approved Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV PC patch. You can get the 32.6MB update by starting your game, logging into LIVE and selecting to update when prompted.

Reported changes:

• A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
• Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays.
• Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice.
• Fix for ATI 1900 shadows.
• Overall savings to memory.
• Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors.
• Multiplayer character settings are preserved.
• Support for DirectInput controllers.

NVIDIA has released GeForce 180.84 Beta driver revision 3. These drivers should increase GTA IV PC performance on NVIDIA cards but they are beta, so they haven’t been fully tested.

ATI has released Catalyst 8.12. It might slightly improve GTA IV PC performance and fix texture problems on some ATI cards. Please post results in the comments.

TIME Magazine gave GTA IV the number one position on their 2008, Game of the Year, top 10 list.

1. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, 360, PC)
2. Braid (360)
3. LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
4. Rock Band 2 (360, PS3)
5. Gears of War 2 (360)
6. Dead Space (360, PS3, PC)
7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, 360, PS3, DS, PSP)
8. Hunted Forever (free Flash)
9. Fieldrunners (iPhone)
10. Spore (PC)

NVIDIA recommends that you update your system with the GeForce v180.84 driver for the best experience on Grand Theft Auto IV.

ATI plans to release Catalyst 8.12 on December 10th.

Rockstar Toronto posted on GTAForums.com about the patch:

Patch Is On The Way
We are working on making a patch available in the next few days. Since Grand Theft Auto IV is a Games For Windows – Live game the patch must be certified by Microsoft before release. The patch is already at Microsoft and we expect a speedy approval. The patch contains a variety of fixes including:

A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.

Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays

Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice

Fix for ATI 1900 shadows

Overall savings to memory

Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors

Multiplayer character settings are preserved

Support for DirectInput controllers. Note: The current hack way of supporting these controllers may not work with the improved functionality. So we recommend you remove the hack before upgrading to the patch.