I’ve been waiting for the PC port of Grand Theft Auto IV for a very, very long time now, but after reading everyone’s complaints about it, it’s looking more and more likely that I’ll be skipping it, at least until it gets a decent patch. Where to start with the litany of complaints?

How about the extremely lengthy and tedious installation process that requires you to sign up for and be logged into both Microsoft’s Windows Live network and Rockstar’s own Social Club network? If you’d bought this via Steam, you’d naturally need to be logged into that as well, though Steam won’t sell GTA4 to customers outside North America. If you’re a Vista 64 user, you’ll be upset to learn that you’ll have a hard time getting it to run due to a Windows Live incompatibility, despite the fact that according to Microsoft, compatibility with Vista 64 is a requirement for the Games for Windows label.

Next, if you actually manage to get the thing running but were hoping to play it using a gamepad, you’ll soon discover that the only gamepads that will work with it are the Xbox ones. PC-only gamepads, such as the ones manufactured by Saitek that I’ve been looking at buying, simply won’t work with the game.

Finally, the one that’s really big for me, is the realization that no current computer on Earth can run this game at max settings. Even IGN had performance issues running the game on a beefy system (Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 768 MB GeForce 8800 GTX with Vista 32) after turning the settings down. I think my poor 512 MB 8800GT will choke on it. Yes, the game looks good, but not that good. As many others have observed, it’s likely that Rockstar didn’t put much effort into porting the game over and optimizing it for PCs. And if you have an ATI card instead, be warned that there has been massive complaints about graphical glitches that Rockstar has said it is aware of and are looking at finding solutions for.

Fortunately for us, the PC port of GTA4’s main competitor, Saint’s Row 2, is due out in January next year. While it’s not as technically impressive as GTA4, plenty of reviewers have named it as the better game. Unless Rockstar cleans up its act and fast, that’s what I’ll be spending my time and money on.