-2 Great Games, -about 20hrs of Gameplay for 29$... unfortunately built with an awfull 3D-Engine... = Still good

User Rating: 8.5 | Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City PC
By Absinthe-abuser | Review Date:
When i bought this Game i was already knowing about the poor Performance. But it got even worse than GTA 4 (which wasn't good). I think my average PC (Q6600 @ 3 Ghz + GTX 260 @ 600/1050/1300 Mhz [Core/Memory/Shader] + 4 GB Ram [Kingston HyperX] with Windows 7 - Ultimate) shouldn´t perform that bad...

Ok, its not a High-End System... but choosing Low, or Middle Settings for getting playable Framerates just sucks! I know that the Max. Viewdistance of the Consoles is about 10x lower than the Max-Setting on the PC (Theres a Xbox360-Config in GTA 4) and the Shadows and Alpha-Blends are even worse on the Consoles (Especially PS3). But that low FPS (about 19) especially at sundown and sunrise shouldn´t happen even on Midrange PCs (seems like Problem with changing Nighttime-Daytime-shadows)

AND! The Game still looks poor... For example: With the Cryengine 2 im getting ~ 40 FPS (with the Build in Benchmark) at Very-High Setting DX10 and it got more Triangles and Shaders + Subsurface Scattering, SSAO etc. on the fly...
Ok, so much for that stupid Cross-Platform GTA Engine...
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The Lost and the Damned:
In my Opinion its the weakest of both Episodes. Why? Cause the Characters are a mostly shallow... You´re Character is an A****le you´re "Brothers" are A****les, and you fight bunches of A****les as well. However, it still got that typical GTA-Feeling and its Fun! Plus: it finally adds some great Music to GTA without editing the MP3-Folder (Max Cavalera presents =) I thought i also encountered optical differences as well. Some kind of a Grain-Filter and a different kind of Post processing (darker, more brown/yellow-tones etc.) makes this Episode also the less attractive.

The Ballad of Gay Tony:
In my Opinion, this is the best GTA (since San Andreas) ever. Strange and crazy Characters, Fistfights in an Underground-Club and helping your Mommy out of her misery :-) makes this one really unique and funny. The only thing that sucks a little are the Controls of the Helicopters. It also seems like this Episode looks a little more vivid and has a different Bloom-Effect
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ So, my score is:

The Lost and the Damned: 8.5
The Ballad of Gay Tony: 9.5
=18 / 2 = 9 - 0.5 for the bad Performance = 8.5 Overall

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