Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)

I bought this game the day it came out and played endlessly, then, when more or less complete, lent it to a friend and of course never saw it again. That is until last week when it was suddenly returned out of the blue, so, two years after release I thought I'd write a retrospective review having picked it up again for the first time in an age...

Firstly, the graphics are literally awesome, even now two years on, okay so the frame rate does not get up to the speeds of say the Burnout series but nonetheless they are crisp and impressive. The car choice is also incredible, as is the choice of race types, upgrades and special events. The load times between screens is slow though.

Progress through the game is also slow, you pretty much have to complete all the licences first (if you press down on R3 at the start of each test you do get a guide line though so pretty easy - maybe 2 hours if yer good), not just so you can enter all the race types, but also so you can build up your car collection free of charge. Then you have to get to know the cars and how they drive, not to mention the courses, which can take ages too. However it is all very gratifying, for instance, whilst it may seem at first that the cars all handle badly, that would actually be bad driving, patience and you can find the best way to get any given vehicle through a course quickly, Panda or Skyline.

Okay, its not a pick up and blast game like Burnout, TOCA, N4S e.t.c, its a simulator which rewards patience and skill, and as has always been the case, GT4 is the king of driving games, well, until GT5 that is...

this is Gran Turismo! what more can I say? To the millions of people out there it only mean perfection! And thats what the latest delivers! People can say about how none of the cars handle perfectly, but they do, have you ever driven your car at these speeds? And then gone and accuratly measured its performance? because thats what the makers of GT4 have done! OK there could be more cars, more tracks, and yes compared to some pc games the gfx are lacking, but this is on a PS2 system, and this system is over 5 years old and its tech specs havent changed! So if you really think about it the makers are really stuck for improvements due to the lack of system capability, the system isnt powerful enough to handle more than 6 cars, and the AI, and photo realistic cars and scenery all at the same time! but they've done a damn good job at trying!

The graphics are second to none! the tracks do look amazingly detailed anyway, and yes the technology is there to make it photo realistic, don't get me wrong, but its the PS2's capabilities that let the game down, the cars look amazingly detailed, although if you look closely you can see that some of the cars dont have drivers, and the wheels arent amazingly detailed it is still an amazing acheivement! the light effects on all the models in the game is also amazing and does look very realistic, ok you wont go round noticing all these little details but it does add to the atmosphere which is something you do notice! And amazing IT IS!

The pure number of tracks is amazing, although the actual number is nearer 40 in total (including the short and long versions) there are about 50, no game offers so many tracks in such high detail! and the number of cars is amazing too, the game classes itself to have over 700 cars but this again is nearer to 500 as many of the cars race models are included, so technically there are over 500 DIFFERENT cars and over 700 total cars and in this 500 cars they range from the ford model T to the landrover concept version later to be realeased after the games realease! there are cars in all ages going from 1800's to the future!

Many people criticise the gran turismo about the cars which it does include in the game, so i'll try and settle this score, most people notice that porshe, ferarri and lamborghini are not included in the game (personally it doesnt bother me as i dont particually like these cars myself) this is because of gran turismos popularity belive it or not, since the series' realease around 2000 the car companies found that GT made for great advertising and increased car sales (no joke) and so allow their cars to be in the game with out GT paying for liscencing, where NFS does have to pay car companies for the rights to use their cars in the game, the exception to this are lamborghini and ferarri and GT doesnt see the point in paying for liscencing and so hapily does without these manufactures. Porshe is a different story, back in the day EA (the publishers of NFS:porshe challange) made a deal with porshe so that only EA games can use porshe! so for leagal reasons GT cant include porshe, but does include RUF, a company which modify porshes sooo much that legally there a different car! Some people may also notice that GT5 does also include ferarri!

The driving and handeling is amazingly realistic too, this is a driving simulator, so you have to drive properly and not like NFS, real life features of driving such as traction, momentum and air-resistance have been perfectly modeled, and have to be taken into account when driving the cars around the tracks, yes it does take a lot of getting used to, but at the end of the day its as real as it ever could be on the PS2, i feel thst GT4 does get a lot of unfair critisism on this point purely because some people dont seem to realise that its impossible to take a hairpin at 200 in real life!

Although most of GT4's flaws can be overcome purely by advancing technology and the GT5 on the PS3 WILL have overcome most of these issues there are some that are REAL issues which do flaw the game, but only slightly!
1. not all people notice so its not too much of a problem more of a niggle, most of the cars in the game are japanese! and it would e nice to see more EU/USA cars!
2. this 5 second penalty is a little bit harsh meaning sometimes you can end up with the penalty when you are hit by other cars! although this penalty is only included in a small ammount of races so its not something that becomes a big issue!
3. also todo with no.2 the fact that the penalty isnt included in more races, as it does mean that you can collide with other cars on a corner and send them into the side while you dont leave the track, i personally dont do this as i regard it as cheating but i have seen many friends do this and i would like to see it figured out for GT5
4. the rallies are soo much more difficult to drive, ok this is just me being a bad driver about this and i will admit that i can't drive off road, but i would like to see the handeling more like that for GT3 for the rallies
5. the tyres do wear out unrealisticly fast, 8/9 laps for most tracks on med tyres and 5 nurnurgring laps, i do wish they would increase the difference between the supersoft and super hard tyres! ideally i would like to see the med tyres reaching around 20 laps on the normal tracks (the nurburgring is soo amazingly long that it does wear out tyres much more per lap)

over all I (and millions of other people) feel that this game is perfection on ps2! and GT5 will be a million times better, I dont like people who say about how bad this game is when they clearly dont understand what makes a game, and yes, not everyone will like this game, but just because you dont like it doesnt make it bad does it? i'd advise anyone to give it a try at least, a long enough try to get used to it, give it a chance... after all it is the biggest game on PS2 and possibly ever!

this is the greatest racing simulation to date. the handling of the cars is realistic and the graphics are great. massive selection of cars will never leave you running out of cars to buy.

the races are varied and the tracks are designed very well an there are plenty of race events. with the sheer amount of race events comes the need for lots of persevierance, especially the 24 hour endurance events which take a minimum of 9 hours when using b-spec mode.

b-spec mode is a great mode to have in the game, especially if your driving skill is not up to spec or you just fancy a race on the sidelines to have a cup of tea and some biccies.

the five second penalty system can be quite annoying in the special events, when you are given a penalty if the rival car rams you from behind when you brake too hard when going into a turn.

there are a good amount of upgrades available and there are also tuned cars available from the independant tuning shops.

GT4 is a massive improvement on GT3s huge lack of cars and the lack of a used car shop, in which GT4 has 3, with cars from different time periods and even cars from the 1960s and 70s. the licences are relatively easy at the start and the special license is slightly easier than it used to be but still needs one helluvalot of skill as you are not allowed to go on the grass as in the other license tests.

although game progression is very slow, the rewards for your persevierence are great, but sometimes leave more to be desiredsuch as when you win a poor car for a difficult championship.