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Exorbitant, extravagant, immoderate, indulgent, intemperate and all those other words: Gran Turismo 4 is excessive in every sense of the word. Polyphony Digital packed a hell of a lot into GT4, stunning visuals aside. I thought things wouldn't get much better on the PlayStation 2 when Gran Turismo 3 was released, but Polyphony did a good job proving to me that I was apparently living in some far away cave. With such fine attention to detail on over 50 tracks and hundreds of cars, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed.
As mentioned, the graphics are much improved over the once spectacular Gran Turismo 3. While watching a replay at the end of a race, my brother actually walked in and asked me why the hell I was watching racing on TV. (Hey, racing isn't exactly big in the northeast!) The finely tuned details prove every track to be remarkably accurate and every car so closely resembles its real life counterpart. I can't help but wish I was playing on a 1080i HDTV widescreen instead of my seemingly lowly S-Video. To think the graphics were stunning on my setup, I can't even begin to describe what they would look like in HD.
Gran Turismo 4 is long. Very very long, though sometimes artificially long. As the game starts out, you receive a measly 10Gs to do as you please. You can import cars and money from GT3, but I took the hard route and started from scratch, so I took the money and bought a Mazda Miata and promptly put a turbo inside. With my Miata, I ran the same circuit at least 8-10 times as I earned enough cash by winning and selling the prize car over and over again, and in doing so, wasted a good 5 or 6 hours as I slowly doubled my car's horsepower. Returning are the license tests which are once again grueling, boring, and repetitious. Fortunately I won a Sunfire comparable to the Miata that already had near 50Gs put into it just for completing the A license test, which helped speed the game up considerably. As the cars get better and you begin to win races with prize money flowing, the game finally starts to progress and prize cars begin to pile up, ready for entry into seemingly hundreds of different circuits ranging from Amateur to Professional, from Japanese to American, from Mazda to Mercedes to Honda. For the car nuts: if it exists in a car, chances are you can tweak it in Gran Turismo 4. Listing the various tweaks isn't even worth the text it would take. It's much the same as Gran Turismo 3.
The only aversion I have towards Gran Turismo 4 takes form when entering races in a car with comparable horsepower to the rest of the competition. Nearly all tracks that don't take place within cities have some sort of short cut that the player can easily take, though they're not meant to be used. In one such track, there's a semi circle turn that leads in the same direction before and after the turn, but there is no fence leading into the turn. Yes, I went straight across the grass and continued straight the whole time, and yes I often won by 10+ seconds every race by taking advantage of these turns. I just wish a wall blocking these spaces was put into place, even though it would take away somewhat from the realism, but lets be honest, how many of us actually know what Laguna Seca Raceway looks by heart. To make matters worse, the returning lack of crash damage makes hitting a hard corner so much easier when you can just bounce off of opposing racers, sending them onto the gravel and you on your merry way...though I won't lie I enjoyed doing it in multiplayer.
As the game progresses, so too does the amount of cars available, the types of races available (dirt racing or stock car, anyone?) and the seemingly pointless A-Spec and B-Spec points accumulated from each race. With every race won, the owner gets points based on whether the race was performed in A or B-Spec modes, and to this day, I have no idea what the hell their purpose is. For Gran Turismo 4, Polyphony Digital introduced the new B-Spec mode where the driver turns into the manager and you no longer race the car but instead instruct it, be it move faster, overtake, slowdown for a turn, turn into a pit stop, etc. Considering my genuine lack of interest towards the actual sport, I found this mode very lackluster and just couldn't enjoy myself while playing B-Spec, probably because I just told my driver to go as fast as possible and overtake everyone...like I know any better? Besides, who wants to be watching a screen of cars without tracks when they're racing around Times Square and watching the billboards turn?
Excessive is the amount of customizing available, excessive is the amount of cars available, excessive is the number of varied tracks and modes, and excessive is are the various types of circuits available. It's a good thing excessive isn't a bad thing.
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