Gran Turismo 4 is a solid racing game, and quantity has a quality all its own, but don't expect anything groundbreaking.
Of course, the depth of Gran Turismo games goes far beyond their infamously huge amount of content. This is not an arcade game, and pretty close to a full-on racing simulator (arcaded up just a little bit to be palatable to mainstream gamers), so if you're looking for a pick-up-and-play experience and haven't played previous GT games or race sims, you will probably end up over your head. The physics model is realistic, unforgiving, and difficult to master, and kids and non-drivers in particular may spend hours coming to grips with the basic controls of the vehicle before they can even think of becoming competitive in a race. Fail to handle a car with the proper respect and skill and you may end up plowing into the gravel traps or spinning out. This is not Grand Prix Legends, but it's not Mario Kart either, and even players of earlier Gran Turismo games will need to acclimate to the new and improved physics model.
Fortunately GT4 adds some features previously unseen in Gran Turismo to soften the game's notoriously steep learning curve without compromising the realism. First of all, roadgoing cars come already fitted with competition-level "sports" tires that provide far better grip than ordinary street tires (realism seekers and masochists may choose from three different varieties of street-quality "simulation" tires). The racing tires are still very expensive, but at least you don't have to drive on rubber donuts.
Second, the used car lots are back, and instead of having to pick your choice of the worst of the worst cars like in GT3, you can pick up a fairly decent second-hand machine for the 10,000 credits you start off with. The Mitsubishi Galant VR-4 is an especially good pick for beginners, with 200 horsepower and forgiving four-wheel-drive handling. These cars, being used machinery, don't drive as well as new cars without costly restoration, but the 150-200 horsepower machines are better than what you had in the previous game to start with. The first few races should be easily winnable if you chose your first car wisely, eliminating some of the tedious grinding of GT3's early stages (and if you get your A license, there are some easy ways to make a huge amount of money fairly quickly).
Finally, the traction control and stability control "driving aids" actually aid you this time around, rather than making the car feel like it's on Novocain. Cars with stability control on will slow down under hard turning and generally lag behind the same car driven by a skilled driver who is not using it, but it makes even temperamental cars like '60s muscle cars or overpowered front-drivers turn smoothly and predictably without massive oversteer or wheelspin. However, in the later stages of the game, you will likely want to turn these aids off, especially if you have a wheel and pedals instead of a controller.
Once you have the basics of driving down enough to keep your car on the blacktop, the simulation mode should unfold a bit more briskly than the grinding-heavy and often frustrating career mode of Gran Turismo 3. The early races have fairly decent purses, and the license tests gradually ramp up in difficulty from a very easy start (although the Super License is probably the most difficult license to obtain in the entire GT series). Wings can be purchased to give the car downforce to improve handling (a sort of partial revival of the first two games' racing modification, without the brutal 85,000-credit price tag), and nitrous oxide and superchargers are relatively inexpensive performance upgrades that work surprisingly well.
Of course, the game doesn't maintain this gentle pace for very long, and soon you will find yourself asked to do very difficult things like negotiate narrow, winding Italian streets at high speeds or make three clean passes on the back straight of Le Mans in a French minivan. Here the game really starts to shine as the sense of achievement at overcoming these challenges becomes more and more tangible.
Gearheads will find a lot to like in Gran Turismo 4's intricate customization system, even if it misses some fairly obvious options like tire pressure. Even slight changes to a car's suspension or transmission can radically change its handling, and randomly monkeying with settings with reckless abandon will usually produce an almost undrivable car. But by affixing racing parts and properly adjusting your car, you can have a vehicle that fits your driving style perfectly. Unfortunately the customization does not extend to the car's exterior except for wings (all of which are more about function than beauty) and wheels, although some will likely this as a good thing.
Gran Turismo 4 includes a whole array of real-life tracks in addition to the traditional fantasy tracks like Deep Forest and Grand Valley. Except for some particularly illustrious examples like the infamous Nurburgring and the Monte Carlo Grand Prix tracks, many of them are fairly uninteresting, because most modern racetracks are designed more for safety and exciting spectators with lots of passing than actually being fun to drive on. Tsukuba and Twin Ring Motegi in particular are rather monotonous compared to the fantasy tracks, which don't have to worry about pleasing spectators or preventing fatal crashes. The Nurburgring (easily the most difficult track in the game, and in the world), Le Mans, Monte Cario, Infineon, and Laguna Seca are all excellent, but the other "world circuits" will mostly leave you anxious to try a more entertaining fictitious course like Tokyo Route 246 (which, while based on actual roads in Tokyo, is not a layout that has ever been raced on) or the exhilarating new El Capitan track, which is a long series of winding roads in the Rocky Mountains that features steep elevation changes and treacherous S-bends.
Despite the improvements in realism, graphics, learning curve, and the like, Gran Turismo 4 lacks some features common in modern racing sims and probably carries too much over from previous installments. Most notably, the cars are still completely indestructible. Drive straight into a wall at 100 miles per hour, and the car stops violently, but you can just pop it in reverse, re-orient yourself, and drive away unscathed. Some people may appreciate this (especially the automakers who may not like the idea of virtual replicas of their creations being smashed to pieces, and who control the licenses Polyphony Digital needed to make this game), but it seems like a glaring omission, one that has persisted throughout the entire series.
Also little different from the earlier installments is the AI, which, like in all GT games, mindlessly follows its racing line without much imagination or unpredictability. The AI drivers actually try to make a clean pass on occasion now but they are still inexcusably robotic in their behavior, taking the same racing lines the exact same way lap after lap. Gran Turismo 3's rubber-band effect is gone, so if your car is significantly faster than the competition, you can quickly leave everyone behind. The new "A-spec points" system rewards you for driving a slower car relative to the AI (although the "A-spec points" have no real value aside from bragging rights), and the competition in later races becomes stiffer because they're all driving the fastest possible cars that can be entered in the series, but the AI never change in any respect besides what cars they are driving.
The physics model, while the best of the series so far, does have some flaws, like the extreme difficulty of starting and maintaining serious powerslides, or the lack of effect wheelspin and bumps have on the direction a car is moving, although it still stands head and shoulders above arcade driving games. At the same time, one wonders why GT4 couldn't have done even better and rivaled GTR or rFactor in terms of realism.
The new B-spec mode, which supposedly puts you in the role of a race director/crew chief giving orders to and managing the strategy of an AI driver, feels kind of unfinished. The driver starts out completely incompetent and must be "trained" by having him drive on various different courses in various different cars, and competing in races to learn overtaking skills, but once "B-spec Bob" has 5,000 or more skill points, it's pretty much possible to just give him a marginally better car than the competition, set his pace to "4", walk away, and come back at the end of the race to collect the prize. This is pretty much the only practical way of completing the ridiculous 24-hour endurance races unless you have 24 hours of spare time and an untreated mental illness, and a great way of milking lucrative championships for cash, but it's a pretty uninvolving way to play the game. Even if you do nothing, the B-Spec driver can usually come up with a reasonably decent pit strategy and, if he has enough skill points, hold off the other AI drivers.
Online play was originally promised for GT4, but taken out to shorten the already extremely long development time, and its loss will certainly put off some players who are aching for some competition against actual humans. There are enough championships and racing series in the career mode to certify you as someone with no life if you complete them all within twelve months, but the drone-like AI and the impractical LAN play (which requires several PS2s hooked up by LAN cables, which means you need your friends to bring their own PlayStation 2s and their own television sets, and somehow figure out how to find space for them and not triple your electric bill with all the power being used) are just not a substitute for competition with real people online.
The soundtrack for menu music is nondescript smooth jazz/elevator music that is too bland to possibly annoy anyone (after a while one ceases to even notice its existence), but the licensed alternative rock, pop-punk, and hip-hop used in races is something that you either like or don't like, and I don't like it. Even three excellent tracks from Judas Priest, Van Halen, and Joe Satriani cannot satisfy those of us with less-than-current musical tastes, and the unhip may wish to turn the racing and replay music off entirely.
Despite these faults, Gran Turismo 4 is a solid racing game, and quantity has a quality all its own, but don't expect anything groundbreaking. The history of Gran Turismo is one of evolution, not revolution, and the basic bones of the game still share much--perhaps too much--with the 1997 original. Time will tell if Polyphony Digital can revive the spirit of innovation that made the original Gran Turismo a masterpiece, but at least the GT formula is one that bears repeating. If you have any interest in cars or motorsport, by all means buy this game (don't rent it, you won't even have time to scratch the surface), but prepare to have months of your life disappear as you work your way through one of the most massive games ever released on any platform.
What's Hot: More stuff than you can shake a gearshift lever at, intricate customization, convincingly realistic driving model, less punishing learning curve, graphics are almost magical considering the limits of the PS2, replay value irrelevant because you will probably never fully complete a game this huge even once
What's Not: No car damage, no online play, artificial "intelligence", soundtrack may annoy some people, doesn't add all that much that is truly new
Also try: Forza Motorsport, Enthusia: Professional Racing, rFactor, GTR 2, TOCA Race Driver