As real as it gets on this generation of consoles

Gran Turismo has always been a technical, serious, almost clinically cold racing series. This is not a series for casual racing fans. It's not an arcade series. This is a series for people who worship the automobile. This is for people who love real driving. Gran Turismo 4 does not change any of that. It's an evolutionary step that stays true to what has always made the series work. Gran Turismo gets a lot of things wrong, but what it does right, it does better than any other game. For people who take their driving seriously, this is a must-own.

Note to those with short attention spans: This is a long, fairly obsessive review befitting a massive, obsessive game. So here's the executive summary: The game is great, it's evolutionary and the biggest, most refined GT game. No online, but the driving model is great. Get the Driving Force Pro wheel.

This is the biggest Gran Turismo game ever. GT4 has over 700 cars, although many models are very similar. I would have liked to have seen more real variety. Overall though, I can't complain about the car selection. It's thorough and spans more than a century! Generally, whether it's an affordable hot hatch, or a thoroughbred Le Mans prototype you're looking for, it's in the game. I'm also happy to say that the used car dealers are back. Once again you can jump into the fray with a respectable beater. Tons of new tracks have been added, including the Circuit de la Sarthe and the daunting Nurburgring Nordschleife, which looks and feels even better than it did in Project Gotham Racing 2. The original tracks have all been overhauled too and look great, with better textures and more subtle, realistic lighting effects. Overall, the mix of courses is excellent, ranging from real courses, balanced fictional tracks, rally stages, and city courses.

GT4 offers the usual performance upgrade suspects. There aren't really any surprises other than a nitrous oxide system and some custom suspensions and turbo kits. Also, while there's a wide range of tuner choices, including factory tuning arms and well known independents, the selection is, for the most part, identical, with only the aforementioned original turbos and suspensions being unique to some shops. It seems like more of a branding exercise than a feature of any real consequence. You still can't modify your car's appearance in any appreciable manner. You're limited to rims (all the same size per car, and all apparently the same weight) and rear wings. There's no paint shop either, so forget about changing the color of your ride.

The game's structure really hasn't changed much. You have your arcade mode. And you have your GT mode, which is the meat of the game. You start out with limited funds and need to buy a starter vehicle. You can only enter a limited number of races before going through the Driver's License gauntlet. Yes, those obnoxious license tests are back. This has always been a source of frustration for GT fans. I think we need to resign ourselves to the fact that these will never go away. Mercifully, bronze seems easier to attain this time around (or maybe I've played so much GT that it just seems easier), and if you have a GT3 save file, you can import your B and A licenses, as well as up to 100,000 credits.

The two newest additions are the B-Spec mode, and the Photo Mode. B-Spec is basically a coaching mode. Rather than driving, you can manage an AI driver, telling him how hard to push and when to overtake. You can watch the action firsthand, or control everything via a race monitor screen that shows a map, sector times, tires, and fuel. It's not the most engrossing mode, but it is useful, as you still earn money and cars, and your driver will improve over time. It's especially handy for endurance races. You can set up a strategy and let the race play out in accelerated time, and if you choose, switch "drivers" during pit stops if you want to drive the car yourself. It's not a groundbreaking feature, but it's a nice tool in your quest to unlock as much of the game as possible.

You'll either love Photo Mode, or consider it an entirely useless novelty. I love it. But then, I love cars as art objects too. Basically, you can make your own car porn using cars in your garage set against beautiful backdrops, or you can take stills from saved replay footage and then render them at high resolution (up to about 1 megapixel). You have full control over focus, zoom, composition, aperture, and shutter speed, allowing for some truly beautiful and dynamic photographs. Best of all, you can then save the images to a USB flash drive to export to a PC to do whatever you want with the images, or even print the photos directly from the PS2 using a supported Epson Printer. This mode does nothing to enhance gameplay, but I love that Polyphony Digital understands the obsessive mind of a certified car nut. There are already several galleries of gamers' works online.

As you would expect, the latest Gran Turismo game looks and sounds phenomenal. It's easily the best looking console racer I've ever played. The cars have never looked better, and the new and old stages are all meticulously detailed. Visual effects such as reflections have evolved nicely into subtler, more realistic enhancements. For those fortunate enough to own an HDTV, you're in for a treat. Gran Turismo 4 supports 480P and 1080i output, and it looks phenomenal, and still maintains a blistering frame rate. A lower end HDTV might not look much better at 1080i versus 480p, but a high end set really stands out. The added resolution not only looks beautiful, it makes it easier to discern detail, making racing a little bit more intuitive. The sound is also excellent, with all the audio feedback you need while racing. Engines sound distinctive, tires squeal, and air rushes past as you hit triple digit speeds. It's not true 5.1, but it does support Dolby Pro Logic II, and sounds great.

In my opinion, the biggest upgrade to Gran Turismo 4 is in the feel. This paragraph is sort of a review of the Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel as well. The wheel's great with Burnout 2, NFSU, and of course Gran Turismo 3. But using the wheel with GT4 is a whole new experience. I've never played a home game of any kind, with any wheel, that offered such immersive steering control and feedback. The much ballyhooed feature is GT4's support of the wheel's 900 degree steering mode for a full 2.5 turns lock to lock. For the first time, you can really muscle the wheel around like in a real passenger car. For some comparison, my Miata offers 2.7 turns lock to lock. The Mazdaspeed Miata offers 2.3. The Acura RSX offers 2.6 turns, and the Honda S2000 offers 2.4. As you can see, 2.5 turns is a nice number that falls right in the practical range of steering response in today's sportier cars. It really does make all the difference to me. The on-center dead spot is practically gone now, and every minor adjustment of the wheel is precisely transmitted to the game. The response feels right, it's not too twitchy, and it's amazingly satisfying. (Some gamers complain about the difficulty in drifting and rallying with the wheel. Having some experience learning how to drift my real car, I can say they're right. It is difficult in GT4 because it's really difficult in real life. I don't want rallying to be easy. It was too easy in GT3. Now it's real work, as it should be.) The force feedback effects add so much to the experience. The effects are quite strong in the game, and communicate the necessary road feel startlingly well. You can sense how the tires are gripping and what sort of forces are being exerted on the front wheels. Steering goes loose when you lose grip. Effort increases as you really work the front tires. I was also very happy at how different cars required different steering efforts. Not only that, but changing your car's suspension and tire setup also changes the feel via the force feedback wheel. I've never enjoyed racing with a controller (ok, the Xbox controller isn't bad), and having experienced the synergy between GT4 and the Driving Force pro wheel, I'm not going back. Other enhancements to the driving model are more subtle, but just as important. It's hard for me to describe, but the nuances of the latest physics engine feel more granular. Somehow, through the combination of vibration (or force feedback), noise, realistic shifting in the camera's angle based on G forces, and changes in car response, it all just clicks. This just really feels like driving. No other game I've ever played, period, has felt so right when it comes to driving. I can't stress enough though: if you have the cash, GET THE WHEEL.

So we've all heard about the biggest disappointment: online play was cut. The racing sim gods are cruel. On the PS2 we have the game with the best wheel and possibly the best driving model, but it's offline. On Xbox we'll probably have the best online racing sim (Xbox live is the best online service I've used) in Forza Motorsport, but no quality wheel to pull the package together. Fate is cruel. There are a few other disappointments in Gran Turismo 4. The AI still sucks. It's not that they don't drive well. They do, and they're pretty tenacious. It's just that they're completely oblivious and don't dynamically respond to changing situations. They have lousy situational awareness, and will often drive into you as if you're not there. And there's still no damage modeling. To be honest though, I'm not sure there's an ounce of untapped power left in the PS2 to offer realistic AI or damage. It's as if Polyphony Digital decided, "If we can't do it right, let's not even bother." If that's the case, then I'm frustrated, but can respect the choice. The driving tests are still frustrating, no matter how much they may help you improve. And you can still purchase victory. The old strategy of if you can't beat 'em, outgun 'em still applies. Also you can still bump and grind and cheat your way through the field. This fault is minor if you're like me and have the discipline to try to race right and improve your skill, and not cut chicanes. Those who simply want to unlock as much of the game as possible will bemoan the fact that you can cut corners and bully opponents while simultaneously relying on those exploits for their own benefit.

So there you have it. Gran Turismo 4 will not start a racing revolution. It's basically more, much more of the same, done really, really well. It's not perfect, and it's not really new, but it's the best technical driving game on any console. It's a disappointment in some ways, but only because we expected perfection. Clearly Polyphony Digital haven't been slacking. This feels like a labor of love, and I think it turned out the way they wanted, no apologies. I don't think they care that some people believe Project Gotham Racing 2 is a better video game. It is. But it's not a better driving game. If you're car obsessed like me though, you won't care. You'll be too busy driving.