A highly pollished version of GT3
I don't need to tell you how good GT3 was for a driving simulation, as you either played it or you can read the GT3 reviews.
GT4 goes onto build upon this platform fairly well. The most obvious improvement is the graphics that provide breath taking views. Somthing the developer was clearly proud of, as the give you the stupid side option of letting you take photos of your car in famous world locations. A fairly pointless excercise as you are bound to collect all cars at some point and yet you are not able to customise them (apart from the wheels) - so what is the point? A quirky not is that you can save these photos to either your memory card or even a memory stick and get them onto your PC - again a pointless exercise.
The music tracks are great in my oppinion, but not everyones taste. The car sounds are fairly good but not perfect - could be a lot better. For instance the boring Fiat Coupe 20v actually sounds super sweet in reality.
I dont need to tell you how well the cars drive and how realisticly they drive, nore how cool it is to be able to tweak the cars settings to the finest degree; be it ride height, camber adjustment, gear ratios etc. You just cant change tyre pressures as far as I can see, nore is fuel ever a problem.
Having said this the GT series still complains of unreal car dynamics in that to make the super cars feel superb, they go and make the lessr cars really poor; whereas in real life these cars handle very well upto a reasonable speed, just not as nimble as your Zonda at the higher speeds I suspect.
Again the game is fairly easy to cheat on. In that I mean you can buy better cars than intended for the race - there are a few ways of doing this but I will not write Soilers here. However this time they do discourage this tactic in a way, as you can gain points - giving more points for a harder race, ie you drive a poor car in comparision to your cometitors.
Again cheating is kept to a minimum - thankfully - as crashing into walls on some (not all) of the races will cost you a 5 second penalty. However the idea is poor when the same penalty is given for merely nudging your opponent , even when they drive into you, making your bonnet hit thier door.
There are a few additional tracks, I love some of these new narrow streets - they're quite demanding. On the flip side there are a lot of boring tracks too; the suzuka shorts tracks are a yawn-fest. zzzzzz. The german track, Nerburg', is superb - about 13 miles long and really uneven - atleast you dont come across motorbikes and coaches as you do in real life. ** Onto the BAD STUFF. **
Loading times now are just a joke, with a loading screen for nearly evey action you make. Given that there are several sub-menus to go through, its just too painful to watch, even with auto-save turned off.
That leads me onto the point that the layout is more confusing; ie where to go find a race and know where you're upto. Also you will see a race description with its given rules, but often you dont know if your car qualifies for the race until you try to enter it and its shows up in red writing that for some general (vague) reason that your car does not qualify. Now imagine changing cars 10 times when its compounded with slow loading screens.
I dont want to complain about the lack of some car manufacturersm but I will complain that some of the prize cars are a joke, especially when you beat stiff competition.
A game well worth playing if you like driving simulators. Worth playing if you played GT3, but was not worth the asking price given that trade in value of GT3 was so low.
Personally Im fed up with these games, they're too serious. But the GT team have got this market down to a T.