Gran Turismo 4 is like a breath of fresh air in the gaming world.
User Rating: 9.2 | Gran Turismo 4 PS2
"Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead." ~Mac McCleary What it's about: Your an amateur racer who just hit the scene. Your goal? To win the Gran Turismo Grand Tournament. This won't be easy however. You will have to earn your licenses and win many other races. Buy a nice collection of cars to place in your garage, add expensive performance parts to them, and slowly but surely you will be on your way to becoming a legend on the race track. Gameplay 9/10 - The Gran Turismo series has always been satisfying to racing fans due to it's realistic graphics, large car collection, and great realism in the way cars handle. GT4 is no different. This time around offering over 650 different vehicles and 50 tracks to race on with some of the most amazing visuals and realistic car mechanics. Gameplay wise there is more to do in GT4 than there has ever been to do in any of the previous titles. Aside from the typical Arcade mode there is of course the expansive GT mode where you will spend most of your time. Like in past series the GT Mode itself takes place on a screen with different little icons which you can browse through with the in-game cursor. Similar to the desktop located on your computer. GT4's GT mode has so many icons and areas to browse through that you literally have to scroll over on the page to get to all of them. Never before has the GT mode been so huge. I'll try to cover it all but I can't make any promises that I won't miss something. There are loads of manufactures to purchase vehicles from, each separated by region. For example Dodge would be located under the American section while Toyota would be under Japan. Some regions have more places to buy from than others, such as Belgium having hardly anything to buy compared to Germany. Manufactures are well organized and separate new vehicles from classic vehicles. Like in previous games some vehicles are not for sale and can only be won in races. Even though there are hundreds of vehicles to be found through the different regions, a large portion (probably around 75%) of the 650+ vehicles can only be purchased in the three different used car lots. There are three in order to space out the different eras the cars come from. One is for newer used cars, the other is for early 90's cars, and the other is a Historic used car section for classics only. Although this may sound like bad news to some people who like their cars bran new, there isn't nothing a quick oil change and Refresher Plan can't fix, which brings us to the other features of the game; performance parts. With this being dubbed as "The real driving simulator" it's only appropriate that upgrading your cars with the right parts and then tweaking it to perfection for the race track would be a huge element of gameplay. When you buy a car you can buy parts for them at their manufacturers auto parts store. You can buy everything from break controllers to Nitro (yes, Gran Turismo 4 has real Nitro!). The parts themselves are often more expensive than most vehicles, so unless your loaded with some serious credits you may have to race a lot before being able to upgrade your car, but once you have the cash you'll often agree it was well worth it. Unlike many racing games where you buy parts and they simply do their thing (increase acceleration, speed, handling, etc) Gran Turismo 4 encourages you to tweak each part until it suits you. Often times if you want the biggest bang for your buck you will HAVE to experiment with the different suspension, break, and gear ratio settings until your baby turns into a beast on the tracks. The upside to this is that (if you know your cars) you can make sure you get your moneys worth on every part you purchase and if things don't go right with the parts default settings you know your not stuck with it and can adjust it any time you please. On the downside each part reacts differently depending on the car, and if your not a genius when it comes to cars you could end up wasting money on a part you don't need or one that makes things worse than before, and although extremely realistic, it can tend to get tedious having to experiment with settings constantly. Worst of all though is the fact that modded cars don't go for more money when you try to sell them, even though they should, and due to the auto save feature if you don't like a car your pretty much stuck with it. When it comes to altering the appearance of your vehicles there isn't a whole lot of flexibility. Like in GT3 you can add new rims, and although there is a nice selection of rims to choose from it's not going to feed your hunger to have spinners. You can now put spoilers on your vehicles as well, but there aren't a whole lot to choose from. Spoilers actually serve a purpose in GT4 though which is to control the down force of your vehicle, and this is something worth controlling since down force effects both acceleration and deceleration, so spoilers are both a cosmetic touch and a performance part. You can't paint your car and add funky air brush designs, or change the headlights and side view mirrors or all the other stuff you expect from games like Need For Speed: Underground. This may bother you, but chances are if your buying GT4 or interested in it it's because you played at least one of the previous games, and you probably know that the Gran Turismo series is all about performance, not street mods. Everything you do in the game will either cost credits, or gain credits, so your probably wondering just how much your start with. Well GT mode starts you off with 10,000 CR just like the past games, but in GT4 trying to make progress from the start with just 10k CR is pretty damn complicated. All the starting races only pay off a couple hundred CR, so trying to buy a car and performance parts for it that will make it able to even come close to beating the harder races will require a load of patience. Luckily if you played GT3 and still have it saved on your memory card you can transfer 100k and both the A and B licenses to your GT4 file. GT4 only allows you to do this once so that GT3 junkies don't have the ability to transfer all their 100,000,000+ CR over to their GT4 file and render the game pointless to play. 100,000 CR is more than enough to get your racing career up and running at a great pace. Another key feature (and possibly the one with the most publicity) is the Photo Tour feature. Located only in GT mode you have the ability to take pictures of the vehicle your currently in. What was considered to be just another gimmick to add to the games success actually turned out to be; and you can quote me on this; the best photo capturing gameplay elements found on a videogame EVER. Gran Turismo 4's graphics are stunning just the way they are, but in Photo Tour mode you get to really see how much work went into the graphics. You can choose everything from the setting to place your car in to the location of the cameras. Not only that but the feature even has options of photo editing found in most photo editing programs professionals use. When your done taking photos and save them to your memory card you can create a slide show full with music of your choice. The only thing that could make it better would be if you could hook a printer up to your PS2 and print these beauties out, and guess what? You can! As long as you have an Epson printer you can share your photos with friends without having to worry about using up memory card space. To top it off you can even use a USB to download the pictures from your PS2 onto your computer, then load them up to a PSP memory stick and place them on your PSP. Can you say "sweet" or what? Never the less Gran Tursimo has always been about the races, so lets get to that shall we. At first glance Gran Turismo 4 won't feel or look much different from GT3. The racing itself feels the same, but that’s only because GT3 was pretty close to perfection as well. Once you get into the racing of the game you will see that a lot of things have changed, and most of these things are for the better depending on how you look at them. The "simulation" had gotten a whole lot closer to real life. You now have to pit in not only for tire damage, but also for refueling. Running out of gas at the start of a lap is not pretty, believe me. Since you can now purchase nitro for your vehicles it adds a whole new experience to the racing. Simply holding down a button while flooring the accelerator could mean the different between victory and getting a large sum of dust shoved in your face. Like in previous GT games winning races will snag you some Credit, and winning a series of races will get you a free car to add to your collection, or sell if you don't want it. You also recieve A-Spec points for every race you win. These points sort of remind you how many races you've won and how high you are on the racing food chain. Many races in the game require you to have a specific vehicle in order to race, so if you were planning on zooming through the game with a single car you will be disappointed. Before each race you have different options. You can practice the track just in case your not sure if you can handle it, or you can adjust your performance settings to tweak them for this specific race. Sadly though you can no longer qualify for a position, which means each and every race will have you starting in 6th (last) place, and if your opponents are just as fast or faster than you are this adds to the complication and frustration that really doesn't need to exist. Usually however if your a good driver you can pass just about any opponent. Just like the past games in the series, don't expect any spectacular crashes. Cars nicely bump off surfaces and other cars without getting so much as a small dent on them. Due to this you can win most of the races (especially ones on closed street tracks) by riding the walls like a maniac and rear ending your opponents into the dirt and absorb their momentum so you can easily make the turn while their still trying to skid back onto the track. This all comes down to how I am disappointed with the games A.I. Many people ask the question "how can you describe good A.I. in a racing game, and how can you see it?" Good question, but it's quite simple. If for example I ram the dude driving the red Skyline in lap one and smash him into a wall I'd expect him to be a little upset and possibly want to come after me during the rest of the race. In other words, GT4 doesn't penalize you for racing dirty, and neither does the A.I. While your breaking just about every rule they teach you in your license tests to get ahead of the competition, the A.I. opponents play by the rules like a bunch of robots letting you get away with every sleazy move you make. They never cut through the grass because they want the Gold just as bad as you do. They never get too cocky and make the mistake of under steering. Seeing things like this would indicate a more competitive and interesting A.I., but in GT4 you see none of this. Opponents drive in the classic GT style line almost as if each one is connected with a string. If you enjoy the A.I. or your just too lazy to do all of the races yourself though you'll be happy to hear about B-Spec mode. B-Spec is the opposite of A-Spec, in where you are no longer the driver of the car, but the director of the driver in the car. You get to control certain aspects of your A.I. driver while watching the race with a Replay-like view. It's a very simple concept really. You control 5 different levels of speed the driver must go. You can tell him when to overtake another driver, and when to pit in. Other than that you basically just sit back and watch the race, or if your confident your driver has what it takes to win on his own you can go get something to eat or go to sleep (best choice for Endurance races) and let your driver do his thing. You can even view the race from a race monitor which looks similar to a lot of the professional sports races in real life. From here you can speed the race up by 3 times it's normal speed, making an usually long race 3 times shorter. Winning races in B-Spec mode will improve your drivers skills by winning B-Spec points, so GT4 even has a little RPG elements in it. The upside to B-Spec is of course that it saves time, but the downside is that once you start you may not be able to stop, and before you know it you'll realize you bought a game just to have it play itself. When it comes to variety in races there is actually a nice bit of different genres of races to participate in. There is snow and dirt races, a wet track to race on, and even special condition races where crashing results in a penalty. There are events for different regions such as the US and Europe, and even special events that can only be found in certain manufacturers if you have the right cars. I'm not going to bother counting, but I'd bet there is at least 200 or more different races to participate in, including the infamous Endurance races, which this time around include a race that lasts 24 hours, and yes that’s in REAL TIME. Beating the game requires you to beat the GT Grand Tournament Professional event which even with a 4,500,000 CR car is a huge pain in the ass to accomplish, but if that’s what you consider the end of the game then the game is roughly 25-30 hours long. Playing through the game unlocks new cars, tracks, and events, and since playing for around 30 hours only has me at 28.5% complete it's safe to say this game will last you a long time if your idea of a beat game is when it's 100% done. Graphics 9.8/10 - The Gran Turismo series has always looked gorgeous. From the car models to the absolutely amazing environments, Gran Turimso 4 offers some of the best graphics seen on the PS2 possibly ever. Although the cars don't take damage (this due to most car companies not wanting their vehicles damaged on games) which could have shown off even more graphical potential the game looks flawless. Driving into a pit stop this time around actually lets you see the pit workers coming out and switching your tires, and although the character models don't look nearly half as good as the car models it's still a nice touch that makes pitting in less stressful. Controls 10/10 - Gran Turismo 4 has amazing controls whether your using the wheel or the controller. All cars handle differently so it's essential to have good controls to really feel how each car differs from the next. Pressure sensitive to every button, and flexible to every person, the controls are perfect. Want to drive with the D-Pad instead of the Analog stick? You can. Want to accelerate and decelerate with the Analog sticks instead of the X and Square buttons? You can do this too. GT4 compliments all different forms of controls all within the same control scheme so that you can switch your style on the go without having to mess with control settings in the options screen. If you lose control in Gran Turismo 4 blame it on your thumb, blame it on your car, but don't ever blame it on the controls themselves. Sound 9/10 - Gran Turismo 4 sounds almost as good as it looks. Every rev of the engine sounds different from the way you tune your car. You can actually distinct one car from the other primarily on the way they sound. When speeding down a track you can hear the wind smashing against your car. You can hear the notorious emptying out as you push it on a long straight-a-way. Supporting Dolby Pro Logic II all of these qualities can only be enhanced. When it comes to music I'd say it's a pretty sweet track offering funk, hip hop, techno, pop, rock, and even old classical music. I wasn't a big fan of the opening theme however (Panama from Van Halen) as I found it to be a step down from GT3's Lenny Kravitz "Are You Gonna Go My Way" intro, but I guess with a large portion of GT4's vehicles being from the 80's the intro song was meant to give homage to that. In the game though there is tons of great songs from artists like Papa Roach, Jimmy Eat World, The Crystal Method, The X-ecutioners, and even James Brown. To make things better on the players you can create your own play list to play during races and slide shows, so if you don't like a song you can always remove it from the list, or if you really like a song you can make it the only song to play constantly. The choice is up to you, and because of this I can't argue with the soundtrack. Reply Value: 9/10 - Gran Turismo 4 is a great game, and after you beat it I see no reason why you wouldn't want to play it again buying a different car to start off with and getting a whole different collection of cars to do things differently than you did before. If your a big racing fan it'll be fun to play it over again directly after your done, but if your not a die hard racing fan you may wish to put GT4 away for a few years before playing it again, but regardless the game will be fun a second time around if you enjoyed it the first time around. Overall Score 9.3/10 - Gran Turismo 4 is like a breath of fresh air in the gaming world. A world filled with so many lack luster racing sims or unrealistic "street racing" garbage that will never fully satisfy the dire hard racing fans. GT4 is the best thing to happen to the true racing genre in a long time, possibly the best thing to happen since GT3. If your able to ignore the lack of vehicle damage, street mods, and boring A.I. you'll find that GT4 has more to offer than just about every racing game out at this time, assuming your a fan of racing games, in which case it's a must buy. You May Also Enjoy - Street Racing Syndicate, Midnight Club, Need for Speed: Underground, Gran Turismo 3, Burnout 
