Gran Turismo 4

"The best game ever. Racing that is."

Grant Turismo 4 10/10

This game was a beauty to behold. With some of the best graphics out for any game on any system, this game blows its competition out of the water. The sound isn't too bad, although they should have had the option to upload user selected songs into it, somewhat like Grand Theft San Andreas enables the user to do on the Xbox and PC version.

Graphics
This game has the very best graphics of any game, EVER. Period, glad I got that out of my system. You can complain and argue all you want, no game can even compare to the beauty of this game. I mean just look at the opening movie, I just drooled with glee as I sat in front of my, television set, and did I mention I don't even own a HD TV? Anyway, the cars look freaking spectacular, no pixilated edges like three had, just pure, smoothed graphics, even the crowd looks beautiful. Just imagine your driving on a dirt road for instance; you can actually see the dust kicked up as you race by, although this can be very annoying as when your racing behind someone you can't see anything beyond the two feet of the dust cloud. Also when racing on tarmac, you can see the light reflection effect caused when the air and the road get really hot, this game just mind boggles you with intense details to the graphics.

Sound
Probably one of the most interesting aspects to the game, or any game, is the sound. And let me tell you this game got the sound close to near perfection. The music in the game is nice, but I personally believe you should be able to import your own music into the game. Now that that is off my chest, the racing sounds are fantastic. Say you find yourself spinning out after taking a turn at 250mph, the tires squealing on the track trying to remain traction, just puts you there, watching this car go berserk as you try to maintain the car on the road, then you find yourself flying through some grass at the end of the road and your ears are met with auditable harmony, the crunchy and uprooting of grass sounds so real I had to look out my window the first time to see if someone was doing lawn work.

Game play
The meat of the game is all there, over 100 tracks, 1000 cars to unlock, a very appealing menu that is easy to navigate, and of course a carwash/oil change shop where you can also buy rims and plop a fat wing on your car. There are five different race modes/tournaments you can enter, Beginner Amateur, Professional, Extreme, and Endurance. To unlock the latter two you need to meet certain conditions in the game to gain access to these insanely hard races. There are also rally races, and the near impossible car challenges, and one make only races, also nearly impossible to win. However, after you master the controls, making the car move, and all its technicalities, becomes second nature and you will never have a problem winning a race by racing yourself. The game creators have also added a B-Spec mode which you are a pit manager controlling what a computer raced car does, essential for the latter races. The licenses aren't too overly difficult to obtain, however the latter ones require a lot of skill to win. If you do manage to get all gold, bronzes or silvers you a win a nice car, this goes for all five or six licenses, for a total of 15 to 18 free cars, not bad considering you only start with ten thousand dollars. There is also an arcade mode but its nothing to special, career mode is where the fun lies.

Replay Value
This is one of the only problems with the game, is that you can only really get enjoyment from the very first time you play, unless you are a freak who actually enjoys racing for 24 hours six instead three times. But with the extremely long length of the game, you really don't have to worry about playing it twice, in fact the first time you win a race it probably isn't gold, so I guess the replay is getting all gold in the races and any other challenge included in the game. Although there is an arcade mode, its only really fun if you have a buddy who also enjoys the game and is about your skill level at, which in turn ends up sucking you in for hours while you two bash on each for countless hours, so I guess there is a lot of replay value contained in the multiplayer aspect of the game.

Overall
I give this game a ten out of ten, because it is the best, in fact the only racing game worth playing if you are into realistic racing. If you don't already own the game I suggest you buy, even if you don't like racing, because this game changed me from a race hater to a full fledged race fanatic. And if you do own this masterpiece but haven't played it yet, you are certifiably crazy and need some mental help because you are missing out on one of the best games ever made. Enough said.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/06