Gran Turismo 4 Is A Highway, I Wanna Drive It All Night Long

Hard to imagine that it’s been almost 4 years since the last Gran Turismo release in the US, but indeed Gran Turismo 3 saw its release in July of 2001, and was hailed as the savior for a new console looking to acquire exclusive, AAA content with fierce competition on the way from Microsoft and Nintendo. Since then, the PS2 has established itself as a force more than capable of taking on the competition, and the lineup of must-own software is like a traffic jam on a California freeway. Yet now, we’ve made a complete circle, thanks to Gran Turismo 4. Releasing at a point where it’s not as high-profile or even as important as its predecessor, GT4 feels like an old friend back from a lengthy absence – albeit one that perhaps hasn’t changed much, but is still a very welcome sight because it’s just so damn good.

Since GT3’s release, racers have went online, have added realistic damage models, and have sometimes managed to make a game mostly realistic yet an extremely fun experience. GT4 on the other hand…well…is Gran Turismo. Nothing more or less, really – and this is not a bad thing by any means, since the GT series is Sony’s most vital. Polyphony Digital has managed to craft a deep, entertaining, and fun driving simulation, at the cost of progress, it seems. With online pulled at the 11th hour, the lack of any kind of damage system, and a real feeling of ‘more of the same’ GT4 will not be a catalyst for new GT fans, but instead the pinnacle of a beloved series, a perfection of sorts. Don’t read these critical words wrong – Gran Turismo 4 is an amazing, amazing racing game that is fine-tuned to perfection, but don’t think you’re going to see anything ‘new’ about it other than a seemingly endless amount of races, cars, and tracks. Simply put, if you’re a GT fan, Gran Turismo 4 is going to be heaven, for months upon months until you finally reach 100%. The game simply has no parallel on the PlayStation 2, despite itself.

We’ll start this out with statistics. 700 vehicles, from incredibly fast Ford GT40’s, Nissan Skylines, the 787B, and pretty much any of your dream machines, to common cars like a Chrysler 300M, a suite of Lexus vehicles, to bizarre additions like the Ford Model-T and a pair of Mercedes-Benz horseless carriages. Polyphony has tried to include a near-complete encyclopedia of cars, and though they’ve failed to do so with GT4, the ridiculous car selection that spans many eras is an admirable beginning. Though as always GT4 has a very Japanese-centric car selection, it does have many, many more American and European vehicles this time around. And in GT2 fashion, many dealers have their own special races for certain cars or car series (like type Z’s from Nissan to start), which is Polyphony’s way of making you check out more than just a few cars from start to finish if you wanna get 100 percent.

Next up, tracks. With reversals and variants, there’s over 100 tracks to race in GT4. Many make their return, including the triumphant PS2 debuts of High Speed Ring and Autumn Ring Mini, along with a ton of new courses, many of them city and world circuits. New York, Paris, Seoul, and Hong Kong join the likes of Tokyo R246 in the city courses, while famous tracks like Sears Point, Fuji Speedway, Motegi, and Suzuka (which has finally arrived in GT4 after appearing in every freaking racing game since GT3 came out) join up with Laguna Seca amongst other returning tracks. The rally tracks consist of Grand Canyon, Citti D’Aria (which was on GT4 Prologue and just an amazingly fast yet narrow road rally course), and even some snow rally tracks to add some variety there. Even without reversed courses and variants, there’s about 50 unique tracks, even if a lot of the real world courses have numerous versions.

GT4 contains the usual arcade mode and ‘career’ mode known as Gran Turismo mode in this edition. The arcade side is pretty generic and serves as a quick-race and multiplayer LAN hub, and likely where the removed online setup would have been. The decision to remove internet play near the end of the development cycle is awfully disappointing, since racers and online have mixed together since GT3 hit all those years ago. Sure, you can use Xlink to trick the PS2’s LAN setup a la XBConnect for the Xbox, but it can’t match the ideas Sony and Polyphony had in mind. It’s possible there truly will be a GT Online disc released sometime this winter or at least prior to the PS3 release, which might ease the pain especially if it retails for a relatively inexpensive price (such as $20).

For many though, online play would have merely been icing on the cake thanks to the GT mode. Like always, the single-player game takes on racing in epic form, thanks to exhaustive license tests, seemingly endless amounts of races, and more cars than you can shake a speeding ticket at. Remember how Gran Turismo 2 had a zillion race types, including those individual car maker races? Now about double that, and you’ve got GT4. There’s races for almost any kind of car you can imagine, and you’ll be at the game for probably 100 hours or more before you get around to all of them. Of course, you must get a car and get a license, but if you have GT3 save data, you get a break. That break being the auto-earning of the B and A license, and if you have 100k or more credits in GT3, 100k will be transferred over, in a sense making the game move along much quicker since you can buy a used Skyline or Lancer Evo and go rip through the easier races to make some headway. GT4 is structured where you really do have to use almost every kind of car to see and do everything – do so and you’re rewarded with some absolutely killer vehicles. License tests are in larger numbers – 16 per license, and one silly ‘coffee break’ test that isn’t anything important, just a fun diversion between the occasionally difficult tests.

GT4 also has a couple unique new features that are fairly irrelevant in the scheme of things, but interesting nonetheless. Photo mode lets you put your car in a beautiful backdrop, and take snapshots of it for display. These make great computer wallpaper, but otherwise, it’s not much more than a diversion. You can print out the pictures if you have certain Epson USB printers, or you can use one of many different USB memory sticks to save on and move to your PC for sharing online, placing on your PC’s desktop, or printing up to hang on the refrigerator or something. The other thing is B-spec. Regular races you participate in are called A-spec. B-spec races make you the ‘director’ of a race, while the AI drives according to your commands. You can actually race regular old cup/championship races with B-spec, taking the game hands-off, so to speak. This is a great thing for those who hate the endurance races – including one that’s 24 hours long (I believe you can swap between A and B-spec in this particular race, I haven’t been insane enough to attempt it yet). Instead of actually racing it, you make your car far more powerful than the others, set up aggressive driving, and go on with your life while it wins the race for you – they’ll even know when to pit for fuel (yes, you can run out of fuel) and new tires. It’s an interesting concept though I’m not high on it – if I want to watch racing, I’ll just turn on Speedvision.

If you’ve perhaps just emerged from a cave, or are perhaps new to the PS2 world, GT4 is a pure-bred driving simulation. Though it may never get technologically possible to create a truly realistic racing game, GT4 comes pretty close, and you have to drive the cars like its real. For vets, GT4 will play slightly different than before, though it won’t take long for you to get used to some of the changes in car weights and braking strategies. Yes, back to you newbies, GT games have actually emphasized smart braking and turning, since you do this process more often than pure straightaway speed. Unlike a lot of games, mostly in the arcade racing genre, the brake button is merely there because a car has a brake; usually you just coast or powerslide through (this is of course not saying it’s lacking fun – Burnout 3 is the single most amazing racing game in its genre in years). Not in GT4, where half the adventure is proper stopping and turning to go through corners at optimal speed. Races are won in the curves, not on the straightaways, and Gran Turismo 4 emphasizes this.

GT4 as always is not just about racing, but also about tuning and customization. Now, it’s not a requirement or anything, since you can pretty much slap parts on, upgrade your car, and go, but the car geeks get into tuning a car’s transmission to shift better and faster, adjust suspension to better handle their own driving style, fiddle with the brakes to get more out of them, etc. Some cars are hiding their potential behind some needed tweaks, so if a car just doesn’t seem to perform right, perhaps some time in the tuning menus will unlock their best qualities. GT4’s parts and tuning options are actually more in-depth than before, meaning even experts may find themselves learning new things to get the most out of their cars. But again, aside from buying upgrades to make your car faster, lighter, shift faster, and brake better, little is required unless something you’ve bought has actually screwed up your car (and it does happen).

For the most part, GT4’s racing gameplay is flawless technically – the cars handle great if they’re tuned right, the sense of speed is as good as it’s ever been, and the challenging tracks test your ability to drive them. Yet...in 4 installments of the franchise, the AI has likely never been attended to. I have a saying that AI like this is far more artificial than it is intelligent, and GT4 proves it. Now, the cars are pretty tough and you tend to not win races going away unless you have an overpowering beast, but the AI vehicles run in the same damn patterns that place them squarely inside a little world to themselves where you don’t exist on the track at all. They demonstrate zero unique actions other than occasionally flubbing a turn or going around a corner too slow, leaving you to deal with them as they ignorantly ram into you while they drive in their preset patterns. Though it could be worse (such as say the rubberband AI that many arcade racers use), it really does need help; even Sega GT 2002’s AI shows more brains than GT4’s. It’s a good thing the racing part is so damn good or the AI would stick out even worse than before. They have a good idea in mind of having decently smart racers opposing you, but let’s get these guys to acknowledge your existence and execute some defensive driving techniques next time around.

The issue of car damage is a very polarized one. On one hand, the addition of damage would add realism, but at the same time, the game still has to be fun, and mangled cars that lose their potency would be somewhat annoying (though the Colin McRae Rally series does a fine job) to that extent. Me, I’m in the middle – car damage like Project Gotham would be fine, but it would hurt the realism trademark that Gran Turismo strives for if it doesn’t hamper performance. It’s a delicate balance. Yet, something has to be done, considering you can pretty much bounce off walls instead of braking sometimes, or knock cars around to pass them. Granted, on many courses, even going offroad can be killer since the cars become extremely slow on dirt, rocks, grass, etc. They experiment with a system of punishment in rally races, with a 5 second penalty where you can only go about 35 MPH, but that in itself is very dubious since the hit detection is so shoddy – sometimes you graze a wall and get nailed, other times you slam the hell into the same wall with no punishment. Even touching a car hard can result in a penalty…at least if the dumb AI hits you, they’re punished. The only thing I can think that might work is a variant of Sega GT’s ‘damage’ system that takes away from your victory payout the more expensive the ‘repairs’ are. It at least has a punishment system in place, making you drive better instead of recklessly. Especially if the game goes online someday – wall-rubbers and dirty drivers will feast upon these ‘breaks’ extensively.

Still, you may be wondering how all the complaints and flaws can lead to the score it’s received. It’s simple – despite all that still needs work, it’s still the exact same thing that makes the Gran Turismo series so beloved, to the nth degree. You shall find no other – I repeat – no other racing sim that has as much depth as GT4, and that in itself is an incredible achievement. As long as you can realize that GT4 is an un-evolved game, one that was still fresh in 2001 but now is standard procedure, the staggering amount of things to do will keep you addicted and happy for months, if not years. This is truly a fan’s game – if you’re not a GT fan, you just won’t get how a game can be a mere fine-tuning and huge expansion, yet be so damn good at the same time. Yes, things need work, and it’s likely that PD and Sony will do something special for the first PS3 edition. Cynics wonder why this game has been delayed so much since it’s a beefed up GT3; I’d say the addition of hundreds of races, 700 cars, and over 100 tracks is a good enough reason. Does it make up entirely for the things that haven’t been fixed? Perhaps not, but GT4 is still in a class of its own, and until something comes along that’s better, it will stay that way. Perhaps it will be Forza Motorsport on the Xbox, perhaps not. Until then, Gran Turismo 4 is the king of racing simulations, and that’s why all the shortcomings can be forgiven – because nothing has topped it yet.

Visually, Gran Turismo 4 grabs you from the opening cinematic – which is stunning – and doesn’t let go. The cars are so realistic looking that when you take a picture in photo-mode, it looks like the real deal; you could probably Photoshop a picture of yourself next to a car and nobody would doubt its authenticity. The tracks are designed with the utmost care, especially the real-life tracks that include all the sights and unique trademarks of them. Many courses have incredible backdrops that were ‘pre-rendered’ through the use of photographs, but phony or not, they add a layer of quality to visuals that seriously push the PS2. For the HDTV users, GT4 runs in 480p and a form of 1080i hi-def, and looks amazing. It has some rough edges like shimmering and jagged edges in places, but it goes away once you get into the game – the faster you go, the less time you have to notice them. One thing that’s a bit strange is the fans they place in many spots; they’re very cardboard-like. It’s especially easy to notice when you’re doing a rally and the usual crazies are in front if you…it looks very fake. And it’s too bad you can’t ram them down and end their cardboard lives.

The sounds of loud engines and screeches introduce you to the sound of GT4. Like always, many cars at the outset sound like the real deals, though as you tack on new parts and whatnot, they all fall into the same generic loud engine noise. It all sounds great though, as the engines growl and whimper when you accelerate and brake, respectively. At the same time, it’s all too similar to Gran Turismo 3; but then, there’s not much you can do when you’re trying to emulate realistic sound effects. On the opposite end, GT4 has the usual good soundtrack, with GT4’s being quite the loaded one, with a ton of variety. Old-school stuff like Joe Satriani (‘Summer Song’ is a perfect fit), nu-metal like Papa Roach, really old-school Earth, Wind, and Fire with a ‘GT Remix’ of ‘Getaway’ to throwback rock like The Donnas. Almost every genre is represented and you can go into the jukebox and turn on and off whatever you want. A downside is the music is fairly muffled by default, with the on-track effects taking precedence over the tunes. Which is likely how it was planned, since this *is* a racing game.

The Last Paragraph

Lack of evolution or revolution be damned, Gran Turismo 4 is the pinnacle of its genre of simulation racing on consoles and will hold that title until something knocks it off, be it GT5 or a competitors product. The game needs work, this is for sure, but if you’re a GT fan, you’ve dealt with these things before and probably don’t care, or at least won’t be bothered as much since you’ll be so into the game and its nuances. If you don’t like GT, this one won’t change your mind. It’s pretty much that simple. While Burnout 3 is probably the best pure racing game on the console, regardless of realism or arcade-style (and quite possibly the best ever placed on gaming platform), GT4 dominates its driving/racing sub-genre with a clenched fist not unlike Final Fantasy’s grip on the role-playing genre. Regardless, no other racer – if not game, period – offers more depth and replayability than Gran Turismo 4 does, despite itself, sometimes. By the time you’re done with this one, Gran Turismo 5 may be out; though going by the 4 years since GT3 and 4, this may not be. Yet, with so much to do, it may take 4 years to completely master it.