Gran Turismo 4

"The best racing game of the 20th Century..."

Gran Turismo 4 is the greatest racing game of the 20th Century...

Unfortunately, the 20th Century ended several years ago. While it's the best in the Gran Turismo series, it also hasn't really introduced any new gameplay since the original.

Gameplay
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The driving engine is probably the best yet in a Gran Turismo. One of the things that I disliked about GT3 was that it was heavily biased, handling wise, towards the F1 cars in the game. Those handled great, and everything else was progressively worse. When you got to the American cars, they were virtually uncontrollable. Despite the claims of some, muscle cars can actually turn.

In fact, the new Mustang is quite nimble in this game. (Which is ironic, since it's barely drivable in the arcade racer, Need for Speed Underground 2). Most of the old muscle cars can in fact be driven at high speeds around a track without being bumper cars bouncing off things. You still have to brake, obviously. But they actually turn.

It's not perfect, though. You still don't get a sensation of "mass" or inertia in all the cars. In some of the bigger ones, yes, but I think the game is still a bit too biased towards lightweight cars. But even those have to obey the laws of physics.

The sensation of speed is actually quite good. While at first you will be limited to slower cars and this won't be apparent, once you acquire a 200+ mph race car, you will find the scenery going by almost too quick to react to it.

While Sony has worked on that part of the game, unfortunately, pretty much the rest of the game is the same as the Gran Turismos of old. Which was good 10 years ago, but frankly, is out of date now.

First off, finding a competitive race can be tricky. You don't know what sort of cars are in a race unless you choose to preview a race first.

Yes, there are a lot of cars. But most of them have limited usefulness. For instance, one of my favorite cars is the 1986 Toyota MR2. They're a neat little car, not terribly fast, but nice. They are pretty much worthless in GT4, because even if you spend 100,000 credits souping it up, you still end up with a 230 hp or so car.

I've really only found one or two races that this car can compete in. Pretty much just the 80s Japanese race. Now in real life, you could simply swap in a larger engine in the thing (albeit somewhat trickily, as it's a mid engine car), and have it be competitive in a great deal more of races.

While it does have 700+ cars, it's missing quite a few notable ones. Sure, it has some Porsches and even a Ferrari through the back door via Ruff and Czetta. But why can't Sony license the real thing? Other companies do.

And of course, it's heavily biased towards Japanese cars. You get probably 50+ Skylines, but how many Mustangs? 3? (If you count the Shelby GT-350). Yes, the Skyline is a great car, but so is the Mustang. There's an entire game devoted to Mustangs. Magazines. Parts catalogs and manufacturers. Surely a car line like that deserved more than 3 cars.

Some other notables are missing that were in past GTs. The Venturi Atlantiques, for instance. One of my favorites in GT2. It does get bonus points for including Australian cars, but conversely, there's really no races for them to compete in.

Once you find a race your car is actually competitive in, there are a couple of problems there. First off, there's no damage. While this might seem no big deal to many, it completely changes the driving experience. It's a much more tense, much more enjoyable experience when you have to make sure you not only stay on the course, but also avoid other cars. And have other cars avoid you.

Sure, you might say that it's hard to do damage modelling. True. The PS2 might not be able to handle it and the great graphics. But you can simply penalize prize money, or do what they do in real life - give a time penalty.

I was watching a GT style race today on TV, one at Road Atlanta. A Panoz Esperante was fending off a Porsche of some sort. The Esperante was slower, but could brake and turn better, so every straight away the Porsche would get in front, but couldn't turn in front of the Esperante when it came to a corner, so had to drop back. It was griping stuff. Until finally the driver snapped or slipped, and the Porsche spin out the Esperante. The Porsche driver was black flagged and had to go to the pit for a bit.

Long story, but it illustrates my point - racing is not just against time or the track, but against other drivers. Not having damage or any sort of penalty simply just isn't racing. The above example is what makes racing great, and simply doesn't exist in GT4.

On a similar note, the AI is just plain bad. It can handle the track well enough, but when coping with other cars (or the player), it either slows down a lot (your B-Spec driver), or acts like the car isn't there and plows into them (the AI driver you race against)

Graphics
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Graphically it's very good. The best on the PS2, and better than most Xbox driving games. (I would say that Apex and Toca 2 on the Xbox are better looking, IMHO, but that's about it).

The cars are very well detailed. There is a roof view, and you get real time reflections off the hood and rooftop, which is snazzy (Apex and Toca 2 and even SRS do this as well, though they have hood views, not roof), though it's very much obscured by the HUD (and there seems to be no way of turning off the HUD).

On the downside, while it's 60 FPS, there is occasionally some blurriness, mostly at the start of races, and generally only on a few tracks.

The quality of the track graphics vary, though. Some are just beautiful, like El Capitan. Most fo the ones that are old GT tracks look more realistic than past incarnations, but at the same time, more drab and less colorful.

Also, while the cars look great, you are pretty much stuck with what factory ones look like. There's a very limited selection of colors on most cars (and no repainting) and you can't really customize the looks, other than picking the rims, and adding a huge wing. Now, I don't expect neons or brightly colored gas flowing out of vents, like in some street racing games. But at least let us paint the car any color we like. Just about every game on earth does that. Some of the cars come in really really ugly colors.

This is especially perplexing given the game's photo mode. Yes, I can take a picture of any car I own. But why? It's not really my car, it's just a stock one, like any of a million others out there.

Sound
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Supposedly the cars in GT4 are based on real life car sounds. But the same is supposed to have been true of earlier versions, and frankly, the car sounds still are awful for V8s. But it's perplexing - large engines often sound right when you use a 3rd person view (that is, outside the race car). But switch to the bumper camp or the roof view, and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I guess they were trying to simulate how it sounds while wearing a helmet or something, but other cars have the opposite happen - they sound like vacuum cleaners from the outside view, but roar in the 1st person views.

There is a wide selection of music. I really didn't like any of it except the one Joe Satriani song and Panama from Van Halen. But at least they tried using a lot of music from a lot of genres, even if most of the music was not very good.

Final Thoughts:
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So while it's probably the best entry in the Gran Turismo series, I think it's definitely showing it's age. While GT was once the driving force in racing games, it now excels in only one area - graphics, lacking features found in even budget games. There's a lot of nitpicky stuff that bugs me beyond the lack of features, but I think it still deserves a 9 and not an 8.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/05