Say goodbye to your life...

Say goodbye to your life....

1998. A year that seems so far gone I can hardly remember it. The twin towers were still standing, the whole world was still bricking it in fear of the dreaded 2000's, the sun seemed higher in the sky, and yours truly was only 11 years of age. The Mega Drive was a console that people still had plenty of time for, and the whole world was going barmy for a new breed of gaming consoles.

I am talking of course about the N64 and the Playstation. I won't mention the Dreamcast, as that was way ahead of its time and as such failed considerably as a popular games machine. Even I, though so young at the time can remember games like Grand Theft Auto, Crash Bandicoot and of course Final Fantasy 7. But what happens when a game is released that goes beyond the boundaries of gaming?

Enter Gran Turismo.

I bet you can remember your first time playing it! I certainly can. After having a huge build up of confidence after being the best in my house on Mario Kart, and after thrashing games like Crazy Taxi I felt sure I could handle a little racing game like GT. Famous last words - "What's wrong, the handling's all funny!"

That's right. Gone were the days of simple drifting, exaggerated speed and needle-edge turning. Here were the cold and dark tunnels of realism. To be honest, I didn't like it. Being a mere preteen I was completely unable to accept that driving had any place in the world other than in computer games, and since I was not even a fan of cars back then I just forgot about it. As such, Gran Turismo 2 came and went like last nights curry.

GT3 on the PS2. Ignoring the level of acronyms here, it was a mind numbingly impressive games. With nearly photographic graphics and enormous tracks backed up by an arsenal of cars and tuning options, even I was able to get involved. The handling which was so loathed became bearable, and even a few good hours of genuine fun was gotten out of it, tuning and slamming rides like Evolutions, Skylines and of course MX5s until they performed like F1 racers. The one downfall was that it was just too damned hard! To win races, you needed good cars. To get good cars, you needed money. To win money, you needed to race. See what I mean? Unlike games like Need For Speed, you couldn't just use gaming skills. You needed real drivers skills.

Anyway, enough of the flashbacks. To sum up a beginning for this review, I will skip to the info bought out prerelease. As a teenager who at the point of production was (and is) heavily into cars, I took a good couple of looks at the screenshots to check they were genuine. Even in the early days the cars looked stunning, and the courses were just incredible. The extensive list of cars had been added to, and there were more modifications. Even accessories like spoilers were going to be included. The library of cars was even going to include the earliest mass produced cars! It was predicted to be a motorists dream. Was it? Read on....

Bring on 2005. This year saw the long anticipated release of GT4. Every car enthusiast was being urged to buy the game from every gaming and even most car magazines. And they did. However, me being the tight pocketed individual that I am, waited. Almost a year after the release, I paid £7 for a copy. I now feel like a thief.

Initially, the game blew me away. I simply popped the disc into my PS2 and waited. I remembered the awesome half-video half-CG intro to GT3 and as a movie began expected something similar. And so a camera begins panning along a car. I note the intricate detail on the carbon-fibre spoiler, the glint of the light on the alloy wheels, and the reflections shown on the paintwork. Then the camera moves back to show a car stationary on a cliffside road. Then... what’s this? The seasons changing? But I thought that car was real!

Ah yes, I can't even begin talking about anything else regarding GT4 ("What, aside from the history lesson?" I hear you shout) without mentioning the incredible graphics. I sat open mouthed for about five minutes even after the introductory movie had ended. The cars look so real it hurts, even away from the CG side of things. Although the cars in the last one look good, they now look perfect. I loved looking at my favorite cars and noting all the perfections. The tracks all look amazing as well! The lazy looking courses from the last ones are gone, with their horrible 2D crowds, and now we are treated to picture-perfect landscapes and towns. Beautiful. The occasional human being in the game looks a little out of place, although they are still above the standards set by other games. Alongside the cars, they just couldn't look as good as they would in, say, a fighting game. The one thing that winds me up slightly is the blurring effect that is set off whenever you collide with something. It makes everything look more lifelike, so I don't really understand why they don't have a slight blur all the time, but that's probably just me being picky.

Now, the cars wouldn't be great if there weren't plenty of them to show off the photo-style graphics, which is fine. There are absolutely HUNDREDS of cars to pick from. I haven't even heard of most of them! A lot of people were complaining about the still noticeable lack of Ferraris, but with hugely popular car makers like Ford, Jaguar, Mercedes, Peugeot, and Lotus you really won't notice. There are also cars that can only be obtained through winning races. Almost all cars can then be tuned up, with a fantastic range of options at your thumb-tips including ride height, down force, and gear ratios. You can then add alloys, or even change the cars appearance with a spoiler. This is a nice new feature, and makes me eagerly anticipate a Gran Turismo title with more advanced modifying options. Seriously, get some neon’s and body kits in there! Something else which is pretty damned cool are the concept cars you can unlock or buy.

I also touched on the courses earlier. Most of the old GT tracks are here again, but each with a much needed facelift. Even the Test Course has been edited until you can hardly recognize it! On top of this, a huge amount of real - and world famous - tracks have been added to the already impressive roster, such as the Nurburgring. It is really great to be throwing your favorite car around a genuine race course, especially if you don't like the idea of paying to do it for real! The sheer amount of races has been increased as well - I have been playing it now for over a month but haven't beaten even a third of the championships yet.

Now, the main problem with the other titles has been the accessibility. They just haven't been playable enough due to being so painfully hard, with impossibly difficult "license" challenges to beat before you can even being racing. GT4 has thrown this out of the window with the addition of an exciting new game mode, called "B-Spec". This is basically a mode where you race in the third party, controlling your driver by instruction him/her to work fast, slow, overtake, pit.... anything you want. You can either watch the race as you would watch the Grand Prix, or watch it in a statistics menu in up to triple peed (think Championship Manager games). You can race in any tournament at any time, and still get full prize money and prize cars without having to sacrifice hours on the still challenging license tests.

The handling is still incredible. With the tuning you can really feel the difference in the driving. Increasing down force makes your car stick to the road like glue, and adjusting the gears affects the top speed and acceleration in a really noticeable way. Even the simplest things have been improved on compared to previous titles, such as braking - now, if you have loose suspension and brake, you car lurches forward onto its springs, adding a real sense of realism. Lowering your car also has an effect on the view - it feels like your backside really is slammed into the road!

I mentioned the fact that there are more championship races to choose from. Indeed, I still have trouble believing the difficulty and length of some of the races! The endurance races have some malicious additions, such as 4 hour sprints where you need t cover the most distance, and insane 200 mile races. There is even a championship called 1000 miles !, which sees you racing a pre-70s car around three tracks. Having to do 25 laps of the Nurburgring is not for the light car enthusiast! There are also special "model" races for fans of, say, Mazda or Nissan where you pit one or two of their popular models against one another.

Onto the other aspects of the game, the soundtrack is impressive. With a list of tracks almost as extensive as the list of cars, it features bands such as Feeder and the Kaiser Chiefs. It has to be said, if you aren't a rock lover you will probably find yourself turning the volume right down; being a rap man myself I tend to have my music playing on my lappy-top with the TV volume off completely. The cars sound prefect, with the dump valves hissing and the turbos whining, and even stock cars sound just as they should. I personally think the American Muscle cars deserve a mention too - how they got the beastly roar of the engines right there is beyond me!

The menus are clearly set out and easy to navigate. You have the race types (beginner, professional, extreme, endurance, then the special courses like rally and snow) along with the countries for you to buy cars from. You also have a few used car dealerships and the home, which is where you get to keep your pride and joys safe from the outside world. The controls are easy enough to get the hang of - like I said before, the handling is tougher to get used to, and a couple of buttons have switched around, but after a few minutes you will have perfected it. The arcade mode is good for when you get fed up of playing the GT mode, and for when you just feel like a quick race. GT mode is the main game, where you play to win money and cars, and no doubt you will spend most of your time here.

There is also a new game called Photo Drive. I personally find it a waste of time and a real clogger of memory cards, but it simply lets you take a car, take a level, then take screenshots of you driving around. It sounds good, and it really could be.... but there is no way to put these pics onto a PC so it is kinda wasted. And as I said, it fills up memory cards like an apple fills an anorexic.

Multiplayer was always a big deal in the T series, and it is no different. Now, as well as the split screen two player racing, you can now race with six people by hooking up your PS2s together via a LAN. This is, it has to be said, very hard to do. You will probably spend most of your time trading cars or racing in the two player mode, purely because it is easier to do. Another little extra that they added is the ability to take your credits from GT3, if you played that before buying this. It is a really good idea, because it means you can start off with a decent car, be it new or second hand.

Anyway, I think I have waffled on for long enough. If you didn't like the last few games for any reason other than the difficulty, you probably won't enjoy this. However, if you are a car mad individual, who loves the idea of having a seemingly infinite garage at your disposal to fill with real cars which you can then tune the balls off, before gunning it around a real life circuit... well, who wouldn't want that?

This game is easily the best driving game about. Not the best racer admittedly, but if it's realism you want, it's realism you get. I can't wait for a PS3 release - c'mon GT team, get some proper street mods in there. Car lovers dream? Nah... no one could dream all of this in a million years.

- Authors note - edited slightly from original due to language. See www.ciao.co.uk/Gran_Turismo_4_The_Real_Driving_Simulator_PS2__Review_5585522 for the original version -