Gran Turismo 4 , I'm not much of a racing fan...but this game left me "VRooomm'n" all over the place..
There is a world that looks as real as real life - the world of Gran Turismo on the PlayStation 2. The latest in Polyphony Digital's jaw-dropping blockbuster series is incredibly better looking than the previous GT3 - the cars look better, sharper and offer much more detail than before. The tracks which are based on real locations have all been revamped to incorporate all the elements that didn't make it into the game before. The game looks so much more real, its almost unbelievable. There are over 50 beautiful tracks and over 700 finely detailed cars to choose from
Couple this with an HDTV and a good sound system and play the game in the widescreen 16:9 mode to admire the scenic beauty of the world inside the screen. More often than racing I just find myself playing the replays on loop - the human-like camera angles and movements across the tracks by the canyons and the forests is too beautiful to spend time paying attention to anything else. The game is not simply the most beautiful Gran Turismo ever, it is THE best looking game on the PlayStation 2. The developers know this, and so they added the newest feature in GT4 - the Photo Mode. This mode lets you pick a car, pick a location, place it anywhere you want at whatever time of the day, and let's you take a picture of it. There are so many different ways of taking the picture - complete with angles, shutter speeds and what not. The shutter speed features comes in handy when you're taking a photo during a replay - a slightly lower speed will give you the lovely blur effect straight out of sports magazines. The pictures are stored at 1.2 megapixel resolution and can be transferred onto a USB flash drive for use anywhere else!
But how does it play? This game was designed to give you an experience as realistic an actually driving the particular car on that particular track at that particular time of the day. If you've played and enjoyed arcade racers like the Need for Speed series, the Midnight Club series or the Burnout series, you'll instantly notice that the cars in this game don't control very well. But that's not true - the cars handle the way REAL cars would handle. They feel heavy, they feel slow to start off with, and they also slide off and spin around if you don't do your braking right. This isn't the gas-and-slide game that all arcade racers generally are - the key to GT4 is braking. Braking at the right time, with the right efficiency, and coming out if the corner with as much speed as possible. Master the brakes, and you'll master GT4.
The game was actually meant to be played with a steering wheel like the Logitech Driving Force Pro and not the Dual Shock 2 controller of the PlayStation 2. The wheel offers more realistic control over the corners, and it also makes you feel each and every pebble and stone on the rally tracks as your Lancer Evolution VII goes over them. But you don't absolutely need to get the wheel to enjoy this game.
Don't worry about trial and error - the A-Spec mode offers hundreds of strict license tests which you have to pass in order to get to the championships, and you can't get through them easily. I think it may be easier and less time consuming to get a driver's license in Dubai than to finish the tests in GT4. Of course there's nothing easier than getting a license in this city - all you need is to know where the steering wheel, pedals and gear stick are, and a hundred bucks.
There are probably only three problems with this game - the AI of the other racers, the absence of any online mode and no damage to the cars. Online, though not very popular in India, is what drives the games as far as racing is concerned. There's nothing like the thrill of seeing the Subaru Impreza WRX of some guy sitting in front of his TV in Turkey, in the rear view mirror of your Nissan Skyline GTR. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the developers had to scrap the online mode from the game so you'll have to be content with a bunch of sticky AI drivers who only know how to do one thing: go from the start point to the end point as fast as they can. Though that's the point of the racing, if you just slam on the brakes in the middle of the road, the guy behind you comes and rams your rear and stays there till you move out of the way. He won't even honk. And its all okay to just bump and grind the cars around you, as there's no damage whatsoever. Nothing happens to the body of the car or its performance even if you head straight into a wall at 220 mph. Yeah, those cornering tricks still work - driving into an opponent over a curve at the correct angle to give you that instant turn you need for which you'll otherwise have to slow down.
For any car enthusiast, Gran Turismo is well worth the cash that you spend on it. With several hours and days and weeks of game play that it will provide you, the price is negligible. Step out of the real world into a world more real looking. Go for the drive of your life.