Gran Turismo 4 is a game that is very arrogant, they know they are the best racing series around and they are going to use it to their advantage. It really is a good video games, but around 50% you might start to get bored, mostly because once you get into it the system is mostly the same. How do they make up for the rehash of the same system you ask?? Well, is 700 cars good enough for you?? No? Well how about 100 tracks? Still not enough to make up for the rehash?? Well how about some of the best graphics ever on ps2? How about even better sim controls of the cars and much more stuff to do, not the mention the new B-Spec mode that lets you control the computer who controls your car, which makes endurance races much easier? Well, if none of that stuff turns you on to this game, stop reading this review right now and either go back to playing GT3 or wait for Forza. With that said, lets get down to business on the review. The gameplay in GT4 is very solid, which can be expected of a game of this quality. Most of the gameplay is mostly the same from GT3 with a few minor/majore tweaks and changes. The car controls have been made more sim like in this game as where most every car will have a different feeling or you will get a different feeling from driving each one of the 700+ cars. Although they try to make them all feel different most the time most of them are going to end up feeling the same. The controls are basically the same as every other racing game and basically the same exact controls as GT3. The main plus to the gameplay of this game is that it makes it fun to drive at the same time keeping a good sense of that this is a sim racing game, and you need to use the brake button. The graphics of those game are really quite weird, at one time they can be the best graphics of all time, but at other times they can just be mearly decent. Together they equal some pretty great graphics, probley some of the best the ps2 will ever see. The in game graphics are very good at some times, and other times are not very good (as I said eariler). A lot of the background stuff in this game is flat out amazing, but also sometimes looks flat and boring. The main thing I liked the best about the background stuff is that all the stuff in the background had some effect on the track. Like in one fo the tracks it's at sun down time, and the sun is on the track beatuifuly and makes everything just look amazing. They also tried to make crowds (mostly in rally races) where they are on the side taking pictures and even in some races on the track and run out of the way. I didn't really like this at all, I mean it could of been really good, but the ai on the crowds wasn't very good, and most the time they are just doing the same stuff over and over. The car models are very nicely made on this game. They made the cars and tracks much smaller in this game and cleaned them up a lot. Which is one of the big differences in this game I noticed to the last one. This change made a lot more room on the tracks and it is much harder to mess up and go off track now. Anyways back to the cars they are very nicely made, but nothing amazing. The sound in GT4 is very good, the cars mostly all have their own different sound. Added upgrades make the cars sound different and they just have plain good sounds. Although sometimes it can seems like it's just some stupid random noises over and over again. The soundtrack is quite large, but the songs seem to play over and over again, but who knows maybe I just play too much. They have a wider variety of songs in this game, but now is more aimed towards youth rather than the past GT's. The games sound if overall good, but seems to lack passion and sometimes makes the game boring. Gran Turismo 4 has 2 modes of gameplay, there is arcade mode and Gran Turismo mode. Arcade mode is just basically, you pick a car, pick the track, pick the computer difficulty and race. Also in arcade mode you can have a two player race, time trails, and lan games. Not much to arcade mode other than just get right into the action without much thinking at all. The mode that you will be spending most all your time in GT4 in is Gran Turismo Mode. You will find those mode basically the same as GT3, with a few fixes and differences. A few things you will notice is that they spread apart the events so you have to go find them all over the much larger map. Each country has it's own place on the map and some countrys have their own events. You will have to goto the car dealers to find the one make races in this game. They added a lot more one make races to this game, and don't do the same one make races more than once. In fact in this game no event is done more than once, which is a much better thing. It's basically the same goal as GT3, where you enter events, win cars, win money, buy cars, fix cars, win events, and ultimatly get 100% complete. They have also added driving missions which are alright, but most the time it just seems like a huge catch up races. Another fun thing is photo mode that allows you to take pictures of your car from replays(if you are in photo mode) or you can put your car in a place in a city and try to get a nice picture there. Once you find eveything you will get a hang of it easy, and soon it will be just like playing GT3 again. Although this game has mass hours worth of gameplay it can easily get repetitive and boring, espically since it's for the most part a rehash to GT3. It still has some great times and many cars to have fun with. The 700 cars in the game is a huge bonus to this game, not all the cars you will earn will have a purpose, but it's always fun to collect and drive around the cars for fun. They have a wide variety of cars from Muscle cars, classic cars, newer cars, older cars, trucks, minis, basically anything you can think of. The best part of this is that all the cars have years in this game. Also they have used car dealerships where you can find cars from the 90's and 80's. In the end this is a very good game, but pretty rehashed. It can get boring quite quick, but at the same time can be lots of fun.
Gran Turismo 4 could be considered one of the best Playstation 2 games ever made. As the fourth game in the series, Gran Turismo 4 improves greatly on the previously successful Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, which seemed unthin... Read Full Review
The Gran Turismo games are known for how realistically they depict car racing, and Grand Turismo 4 definitely lives up to the name. What this game lacks in flash that many arcade-style games have, it makes up for in eve... Read Full Review
