Just an FYI and a bit of a gripe post about yet another half-arsed console port by what I can only describe as a lazy port team because I find it unbelievable that professional game makers could be so... unprofessional.

Most of you have probably heard of the game, if you haven't info's here .

Anyway, to list a few things I found very annoying with the PC port:

1. Installation takes a better part of an hour. Honestly, I've never seen such a slow installer. The game is around 14GB heavy, so lets say comparable to such mammoths as GTAIV, but GTA IV installed like lightning compared to this.

2. NO video config options except a resolution and brightness settings. Thats right. No texture res sliders, no anti-aliasing, shadows, v-sync, bloom and other options which we have come to know and love in games which actually are meant to run on a PC. Here's a hint for your future PC ports Aspyr - if you're going to make a product available on a configurable platform, make it a configurable product.

3. Half-assed control configuration. You can change the controls outside of the game via the launcher, but the ingame hints and, more importantly, quick-time sequences and combo information still display the default key bindings. They even go so far to inform you of this when you set custom keys - I guess it was easier to throw in a simple info box than to actually program the game to read the damn configuration file and display the correct stuff.

4. Performance optimization - abysmal. GTA IV runs Euphoria (the advanced behavior engine which makes the characters react realistically to their environment and what's happening to them) and I never had such a choppy framerate. Funny thing is that I actually meet and exceed recommended system requirements. But its slow even in the blocky 800x600 resolution, I get somewhere arounf 10-15fps, depending on what's on the screen.

5. Finally I get to experience the lauded Digital Molecular Matter system! You know, the one which simulates materials so that when you smash a barrell or a pane of glass, it never breaks the same way? And you know what? Its bullshit. I've seen better glass breakage in Half-Life 2! And yeah, those metal containers - they *always* break the same way. Haven't seen any bending. It's just a souped-up Havoc (standard physics engine used by many games such as Crysis, Fallout 3, Half Life 2 etc.) engine and most of the time you don't really get to see any difference since...

6. Controls suck. Yeah, you can look around with your mouse, but you can't actually aim with your mouse. You are forced to depend on the very consoleish auto-lock system which sort of sucks if you want to grab that stormtrooper hiding behind a crate... you have to grab the crate first, then the stormtrooper. Want to throw a slab of metal at the left stormtrooper, but save the right one for some force lightning? Nope, can't do since most of the time they seem to die from fear of seeing a giant slab of metal flying near them and rest of the time you locked onto something completely different than what you wanted to hit.

Not to mention that for abilities such as force push you can't actually aim in a general direction other than horizontal. Try blowing apart blast doors on the upper side. You can't. The result? Every single blast door will blow open in exactly the same way and bend in very much the same way. Yeah, you need cutting edge technology for that.

And finally... is it fun? Probably, blowing shit up withe the Force was and is the selling point of the game. Too bad they made such a crappy job on the port... it feels like an afterthought, something they really didn't wanna do but did anyway to get people to give them more money. After the slap in the face for PC gamers from Lucasarts when they insisted the game will never be on PC, this is just another slap in the face for customers who expect a solid product for their money. So if you're considering spending your cash on this... consider again, maybe rent it first, make sure your comp is a monstrous beast which can actually run it in decently, forget system specs, they're bullcrap.