Gran Turismo 4

"A incredible game, not perfect, but it comes close"

First off, let me say that I am not a racing game fan. I do not like racing games or sport games much. Needless to say, I still wanted to pick up GT4 (Gran Turismo 4) because I heard such good things about it.

And I wasn't disappointed. This game takes PS2 power to the top limit, you can't get any more processing out of a PS2 system than what GT4 will give. Over the weeks I have played through the game multiple times, so have a good feel on the bad parts and the good parts. Continue on for a fair and balanced review from someone who is NOT into racing games.

GRAPHICS: 10/10.

No contest in this department, anyone playing will instantly see that the graphics for this game are outstanding. The cars and tracks look so realistic sometimes you'll find yourself just driving along looking at stuff, not even paying attention to the game. Incredible lighting, car details, shading and shadowing, and even bystanders and camera men taking pictures on the track as you go by.

You can not push any more graphic excellence out of the PS2 system, GT4 is at the top peak. Simply drive down a track and watch the hills, trees, and signs on the road fly by and you'll instantly see what I mean. Looks the same as when I drive by them on the highway. And the CARS! Don't get me started. You can't believe that they get the cars looking so good, from backfires to the tires, to the advertisers on racing cars.

SOUND: 7/10.

This is sorta in 2 areas. The actual sounds of the cars are a 10. It is just so enjoyable to jump into a Minolta race car and blast down the track at 200 mph. Screeching tires, down-shifting and turbo, all contribute to a realistic feel to driving.

The 2nd area, which is lacking, is background music. There are a bunch of songs that play while your driving, and many of them are just plain boring or do not fit in the game. Classical? I think in the music department, the makers of GT4 had to scrounge and beg to get artists to give the ok to put their music in the game. There are a few great scores, but many of them are plain stupid. Its a good thing that you will be concentrating more on your driving than on the music, but still it was a letdown.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10

You will have a incredible time racing in this game. There are literally over 700+ different cars you can get, from 15 hp little street cab trucks, to 1000+ horse power Formula racers. The variety is endless. You can go through the game with a set of cars, then the next time play through with a entirely different set. You can make the races as easy or as challenging as you want, depending on which race car you enter, and what modifications you get. Many races are easy to do if you get the top of the line car and tune it up, but how much fun is that?

Controls are perfect. You do not have confusing combinations of buttons to push, they are simple and straightforward. X is go, Square is stop, and different buttons are assigned for Turbo, Emergency brake, and rear view. Very easy. I hear the game has been vastly improved when working with the add-on racing steering wheel and pedals you can get for certain racing games. I personally never used one, but many people have said that it works very well.

You can also tune up your vehicles you use. From adding on extra horsepower boosting items like turbo upgrades, superchargers to increasing the quality of your brakes and suspensions, or even just putting on some eye candy like new rims. Hey, racing isn't always about racing. Sometimes you just want to look good. Most races don't require major tuning of your car, but there are a few races where boosting your car is a MUST. Some races you are going against finely tuned opponents, and taking a stock car into that mess will quickly leave you sitting at the starting line wondering why your the only car in the race....oh, was that blur that just went by me another car?

REPLAY VALUE: 6/10

I give the replay value a low rating not because there is a lot to do in the game, but that replaying the game isn't what you think.

During the normal playthrough, you will play for a extremely long time. There are literally hundreds of races and events to do, so its going to take you a while. Plus you can go back and tune cars to try for quicker lap times or course times, or do speed races and drag strips for entertainment. The only reason to play through the game over again is to try and get maximum high scores. Any other mission or quest you are on can simply be done the first time playing. There isn't any need to "restart" another game.

BAD THINGS:

Now onto the bad parts of the game. No game is perfect, even a great game like this one. It does have its bad points. The good thing about the bad points is that none of them will make you send the game back or throw it down in frustration and not play any more. But they are still there.

SAVING: Saving in the game is done automatically, either every time you enter the world map, or ever time you change cars. YOU CANNOT save and reload like you can in regular games. If you buy a car by accident or buy one that is really bad, you are stuck with it. No going back to try over. Once you buy a car, you game automatically saves and your stuck with it. No buying it to simply test it out and see how it works. This is extremely bad in the earlier parts of the game when your limited on money. A bad buy can mean the difference between racing more courses, and having to "practice" race a few times to get money to buy a decent racing car.

You also cannot save multiple games on your memory card. You have 1 save, that is it. You can't have friends with their own saved game, or brothers or sisters with their own, you have 1 file. Thus if you and your brother want to play, its either buy a new memory card just for them, or share the current saved game. Very bad brain cramp for whoever thought this up.

UNREALISTIC HANDLING: I don't mean the cars with this, driving the cars is a fun and wild time. What I mean are the secondary realism's. Crashing your car into another car doesn't damage anything. Crashing into a wall at 200 mph doesn't hurt you (or the wall). You cannot flip your car, you can hit a incline at 200 mph, maybe spin a time or 2, but your not going to go flying end over end ruining your race. Sadly, since they made the game to try and be realistic driving conditions, when you and the opponent cars are constantly bumping each other, or slamming into each other to knock them off the road, or using the wall to "bounce" around corners, thats not realistic.

Also many tracks during normal racing allow you to simply drive over grass, or around obstacles, thus giving you major shortcuts which the computer drivers do not have. This means many tracks with these "shortcuts" are pretty much a win no matter what, unless you want to use the honor system and stay on the track. Hard to do when your on the last lap of a 10 lap race, and you realize that you will lose unless you take that shortcut coming up.

B-SPEC DRIVING: God! how we all hate this. B-spec driving was introduced in this game. Basically it means that you have a computer driver who you can train and use to race with. So, maybe you might get bored or something, you can turn the race over to your computer driver. While at first this sounds like a ok feature, all of the players of the game realize that B-spec driving is a WASTE OF TIME. Why would you put a computer driver in a game that YOU should be driving? You might as well just watch the Indy 500 on TV, its the same thing, your not doing jack. Plus now you have ENDURANCE races where you have to race around the track for 24 hours. Thats right, 24 hours! Do you want to spend 24 hours on the same track, over and over and over, driving for hours, and more hours, doing the same....thing...forever... No. So they have the B-spec driver who can do it for you, except, its not needed. Why even have the B-spec driver doing it, if your car can win the first 4 laps, it can win the next 400 laps, so why even do them? Why not just have the race "computer driven" and instantly come up with the finish.

If you use your brain, you can figure out why having a computer doing all the work in a video game really doesn't help YOU any. What if you could play FF 10 and let a in-game computer AI play the game for you. Isn't that called a "movie"?.

CAR INTRODUCTION: another major sore spot for gamers who like the game. Winning races can give you free cars. Nice ! Except, many times those free cars are vastly superior to the cars you currently have, so the game is handing races to you on a silver platter. When you can play the game for a little bit and suddenly the prizes showing up are 400 HP rally cars and 800HP street racing cars, wheres the incentive to buy used cars from the lot and experiment with them and actually have a contest vs the computer opponents. Na, easier just to whip out that 600HP prize car you just won and win the next few races.

A bad game plot design there sorry. You should have to build up your cars and talent, not have them handed to you.

CLOSING:

So as you can see, like with any video game, there are usually good points and bad points to it. Gladly, this game has way many good points than bad points. Many of the above bad points you might not even notice or care about while your zipping around a mountain top dirt gravel track in your DODGE RAM 1500 4WD suped up 600 HP truck. <hehe>. You will gladly overlook them to have more fun. But they are still there... lurking...

This is a must buy game, both because its excellent, and because there is SO much to do in the game a week rental won't cut it. (plus you can get it for about 30 bucks currently anyway). Take it from a avid game player who never buys racing or sports games. I bought this one and loved it. You will also, even if you don't like racing games. The visuals will get you into the game, the racing will keep you in the game. And death will eventually stop you playing the game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/15/05