Gran Turismo 4 has some big shoes to fill. I know that little adage tends to be overused, but I think it really truly applies to GT 4. Since the first Gran Turismo was released for the PS1, the Gran Turismo series has always been synonymous with REAL racing. The physics have always been closer to the real thing than anything else out there, the graphics have always been top-notch, there has always been a dizzying amount of licensed cars to drive and there has always been an absolutely staggering amount of things to do. Gran Turismo has always lived up to its self-proclaimed title: The Real Driving Simulator. It’s been a few years now since the last iteration of Gran Turismo hit the shelves and it’s highly anticipated sequel has seen delay after delay to the disappointment of thousands of eager gamers. It comes as no surprise then that expectations are VERY high for GT 4... maybe a little too high. The real question here is whether or not it still manages to be an enjoyable game to play, and I think for the most part, it certainly does.
First things first: Gran Turismo 4 is freakin’ huge. It features over 700 different cars from over 80 different automobile manufacturers. There are over 50 different courses that range from real life courses such as the dreaded Laguna Seca to fictional courses that showcase fantastic scenery such as the Grand Canyon, to some pretty spectacular Rally courses that take place on dirt, snow and ice. There are 5 new license tests for you to tackle that are even more difficult and frustrating than ever before. In place of the sorely missing online mode, you can race friends over a LAN network that allows up to six racers at once. As was the case with its predecessors, there is dizzying amount of things to see and do in GT 4: more than one could ever hope to cram into one review... but I’ll certainly try.
Gran Turismo 4 primarily consists of two different modes: Arcade, and Gran Turismo mode. Arcade mode is pretty much what you would imagine: pick a car, pick a track, and race single races against a friend or the computer. You probably won’t spend much time here though because the real meat of the game rests in Gran Turismo mode, where you will end up spending the majority of the next three or four months of your life. It is here where you will buy and sell both new and used cars, race to your heart’s content, take driver tests to earn your 5 different racing licenses, tweak every conceivable setting on your cars, and try to earn your way towards having as many cars as humanly possible. Of course, in true Gran Turismo fashion, many cars are only available as prizes for winning specific races or other special events such as License Tests or the Driving Missions, and on top of winning a car; you also make money for winning races, which can then be used to purchase new cars and new parts.
You will start off pretty slow in GT mode. The initial amount of cash you are given is 10,000 credits; this is just barely enough to buy yourself a low-end car to run in the Sunday Cup beginner races. I opted to scour the used car shops; instead of trying to buy a brand new low-end machine, I opted for a ’97 Honda Civic Type R which packs a little bit more punch than say... a brand new Dodge Neon. Once you have your first car, it’s time to build yourself up. Most people will race the beginner races for a while until they have accrued enough money to buy a faster car and some faster upgrades. Once this is accomplished, you will have a car fast enough to win the bigger races with bigger prizes. Also worth mention here is that if you are lucky enough to still have your save from GT 3, you can transfer up to 100,000 credits to your new game as well as both your A and B licenses. Very nice.
Somewhere along the way you will want to take your license tests so that you can run in the bigger races. There are a total of 5 licenses to earn in GT 4. The A, B and International B licenses weren’t too bad, but once you get to your International A license test, things get rather difficult. Some people just eat this stuff up, but I have never been a fan of the license tests. While I like the idea of the tests, I think they tend to be a little bit too difficult. The average gamer will probably never acquire the Super License simply because it’s far too frustrating. There are also a couple new tests in GT 4. One of them has you following a Pace Car around a track for at least one lap. All you have to do is keep up. The problem lies in if you pass the pace car, bump into it, or go off the road, the test is automatically over and you are forced to retry. This is a huge waste of time: the short tests were ok to keep retrying, but entire laps? That’s going a little bit overboard. Whether you like it or not, the License Tests are back: bigger and better (or worse) than ever.
The feel of all of the menus has been greatly improved. The map system is very similar to the ones found in previous games, but finding a specific car manufacturer is easier than ever because they are all arranged by their country of origin. There is a yellow indicator to tell you where to go to buy upgrades for whatever car you are currently driving, which proves to be quite handy. Your garage has received the same ease-of-use overhaul too. Now you can sort your cars by year, manufacturer, class... it makes a huge difference when you have hundreds of cars in your garage and you are only looking for one specific car. Settings are also easier to tweak because they have been rearranged in a way that makes much more sense than before. I imagine it would be tough to put together a really good menu system for a game like Gran Turismo with so many options, and after 4 games, I think they have finally nailed it down. My only real complaint was that the options menu was rather poorly laid out as well as the jukebox options. They just seemed much more complicated than they had to be. Trying to configure a third-party wheel was excruciatingly painful...
The cars themselves aren’t too shabby in the handling department. As you probably know, you won’t be power sliding around corners and crossing the finish line first in the same race in GT 4. It’s all supposed to be as realistic as possible, which means keeping your tires firmly planted to the tar as often as possible to maximize speed and control. All cars are supposedly modeled after their real-life counterparts in terms of dimensions and handling; I would say that seems to be a reasonable statement, but I cannot confirm this as I have only driven maybe 3 or 4 cars in real life that make an appearance in GT 4. On the minus side, there are rare instances where certain cars may behave in a rather unpredictable way. One example would be the Honda Civic mentioned earlier. Everyone knows that a Honda Civic is a front-wheel drive car, but I found mine to handle much more like a rear-wheeled muscle car than a front-wheel drive import. Even from a standstill, burnouts were possible just as though the car was rear-wheel drive. Strange. Another flaw is the Driver Assist options, which are set to ON as a default. The kind of person that shells out $50 for a driving simulation game does not want any namby-pamby driving aids. Not only do they make your car completely unpredictable when going into corners, but they also take out half the guesswork involved in harnessing a machines power and throwing it around a racetrack with absolute precision. It defeats the very purpose that this game sets out to fulfill, and unfortunately, you will have to deactivate these each and every time you get a new car.
Speaking of cars, there are a lot of them in Gran Turismo 4. Most new cars that you would expect to be here are here and then some. There is also a ton of used cars that range from the 70’s to today. The muscle cars of the 60’s and 70’s are present and accounted for, and even the old Ford Model T makes an appearance in GT 4. I was very surprised though with some of the cars that didn’t make it into GT 4. Namely, a classic Mustang... ANY classic Mustang would have been great: a Boss 302, Shelby... even a plain old classic Mustang would have been awesome. The Dodge Charger and Chevelle SS help to make up for it but I was disappointed none-the-less: the Ford Mustang DEFINED the American muscle car and yet, it’s nowhere to be found here.
The controls themselves are just right, as they always have been. One note-worthy addition is the ability to actually activate your NOS with the press of a button. I do not recall having that option before, and I absolutely love it: jamming on the NOS button on a straightaway can give you a tremendous boost of speed, and you can adjust the rate at which you burn up your tank in your cars settings menu before the race. The dual-shock works great, but if you can get your hands on a decent steering wheel the gameplay improves immensely.
Other notable new modes/features include b-spec mode and the photo travel mode. Neither of these are really even worth your time: b-spec mode pretty much puts you in the position of the dreaded backseat driver: tell the driver when to drive more aggressively, when to try to overtake another car or when to pit in. Pretty boring stuff. The phototravel mode can be interesting for a short while but the novelty wears off very quickly.
One of the things that surprised me the most with Gran Turismo 4 was the graphics. I will be honest: this game looks absolutely gorgeous... for the most part. Hell, I will go so far as to say that this game is gorgeous even in comparison to some of the best looking Xbox titles out there. Every car was meticulously recreated making for some of the most beautiful car models I have ever seen. The courses themselves are also drop-dead gorgeous: the developer used some really neat tricks to drop photo-realistic backdrops to each stage that look truly realistic. That being said, I was extremely surprised to find some rather careless mistakes in the graphics department. Often during replays, and rolling start intros, the screen flickers and the graphics become blurry especially on courses that take place at night. Sometimes, the flicker would carry on into the actual race as I played, and the only way to remedy the problem was to pause the game for a moment. I am amazed that such an obvious glitch managed to sneak its way into the final build of such a high-profile game. Load times are also horrendous no doubt as a result of the highly detailed models in the game. The automatic replays after every single race only adds to the frustration because there is a separate loading screen for the replays alone.
Sound is pretty good. Everyone will probably find at least one or two songs in the game they will like, and others will find a whole lot of music they like. I found “Panama” by Van Halen to be a surprisingly good driving song as well as the Judas Priest tune. Actual sound effects aren’t too shabby either. Tires squeal with realism like no other game I have ever played. Muscle cars roar menacingly; an effect that is greatly enhanced with a good surround system. Import cars whine and scream just like the real thing, and the crowd can be heard cheering you on as you pass the grand stands. Once you get a high-end car moving along at around 200+ mph, the sound of the wind can be heard over the roar of your engine and road noise becomes noticeably louder; letting you know that you are moving REALLY fast. The sounds of your tires hitting different terrain are also realistic. Since there is no damage in GT 4, the sounds that your car will make as it smashes head-on into a barrier or another car are extremely un-satisfying. All you’ll hear is a weak *thud* and off you go...
Speaking of which, there is no damage in Gran Turismo 4. This to me was a colossal disappointment. It’s not like I was expecting it, but this is supposed to be the real driving simulator... not the real bumper-car driving simulator. In fact, this one omission alone seriously impacted the overall score. On one hand I want to ignore it because this feature was never promised in the first place, however, this is not the late 90’s anymore: car damage, in one form or another, is a standard feature in all racing games these days and I am amazed that Gran Turismo has fallen so far behind the times in this area. There are absolutely ZERO consequences for slamming into another car around a corner or brushing a barrier. I want to be forced to drive carefully and intelligently and pay the price if I fail to do so. I also want the AI drivers to feel this way so that they stop slamming into me as though they didn’t even know I was there. I’m sorry: it’s just NOT realistic... at all.
Another notable omission was the online mode. Personally, I couldn’t care less, however, I am certainly in the minority here and there has got to be a lot of people out there that are pretty upset. That being said, I would like to point out that it is nice to see a developer focus it’s efforts on the offline game before worrying about the online aspects. I would take this over a great online game with a shoddy 1-player experience any day of the week.
In the end I had a blast with Gran Turismo 4. Actually, I am still having a blast with it and I will probably continue to have a blast with it for weeks to come. It did not live up to all expectations by any means, but it does accomplish at least one thing that it set out to do: be as addicting as possible and be fun at the same time and I suppose that is really what counts here. This game is an automobile enthusiast’s dream come true and proves that racing can indeed be an incredibly deep and rewarding experience. It’s too bad that the last really big step in terms of gameplay was the addition of Rally racing way back in Gran Turismo 2 all those years ago. I let it slide with GT 3 because it had some killer graphics for it’s time, and I let it slide this time because of the insane amount of cars, but I won’t be so forgiving a 3rd time. If it were not for the absence of car damage, occasional gameplay and graphical glitches and the absence of penalties for taking off-road shortcuts, this would quite literally be the most perfect racing simulation ever made.
