Gran Turismo 4: The Next Generation of the Drive of Your Life!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Over 500 cars, simply AMAZING graphics, many new tracks and old, best racing game available!

Cons: Very poor and predictable A.I. and no online play besides LAN.

The Bottom Line: 
This game is worth every penny and is a must-have for fans of Gran Turismo or the racing game genre. This game will have you entertained for months to come!

Since racing games have started coming out, the most popular in the entire world has been Gran Turismo. Any fan of the racing genre will say they have tried one Gran Turismo or another. It started for the PS1 with Gran Turismo, with unreal graphics that no one had seen before and many cars. Then came Gran Turismo 2 also for the PS1, showing much improvement over Gran Turismo 1. Then, Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec for the PS2 blew everyone away. It truly showed the power of the PS2 and many people bought the PS2 just for that came. Now comes along it's big brother, Gran Turismo 4. This game truly has the best graphics out of any racing game or any game, period, on the Playstation 2. This game could qualify as a PS3 game as it's graphics are just stunning. This game is incredible and should be picked up by any fan of the racing genre.

First of all, this game has over 500 licensed cars, and real-life tracks, new and old! The cars details have all been redone and look exactly like real-life models and the backgrounds have shown improvement over Gran Turismo 3 as well. Playing Gran Turismo 4 after Gran Turismo 3 is like "cleaning off a pair of dirty glasses to see the world as it truly is." Okay, enough with the graphics, but is the game good? The gameplay and physics of the cars feel exactly as they would in real life while we were driving (if we could afford these amazing cars). The physics engine has been improved from the classic games and is now better than ever! The first time I popped the game into my PS2, I spent literally 1 hour just looking at the 250 available cars at the beginning of the game and just drooling, they're models look amazing as they are exact replicas of the real cars down to the last detail!

In this game, not only do you have the standard career mode and arcade modes, you also get B-Spec Mode and photo mode. B-Spec mode is basically just auto mode and the race goes by itself in 1/3 of the time and is a good way to collect money for other cars and tracks. Photo mode, however required much more effort. You get to look at all the replays of a race and choose from multiple camera angles and take pictures of the car in mid-race. This sounds kind of dumb, but it's much deeper than it sounds, I felt like becoming a photographer after playing around with photo mode for a while.

The bad thing is still the A.I. as they are very predictable and very sloppy. Just hit them into a wall and pass them. Another problem is there is still no online play!

Even with those few problems, this game is definetely worth the $49.99 price and will be in your collection for many months to come and might even last you until the Gran Turismo 5 release, and hey, who knows, maybe it will be released with the new PS3.