Gran Turismo 4. This is it. I don't think I can overstate how big this game is, both in terms of its content and its legacy within the racing game genre. This game basically takes everything from the previous GT games and cranks it up to inhuman levels. The GT series to this point has always been in the upper echelon of console racing games, but with this game, they basically created a golden standard for the genre. Like, when the developers for the first Forza game were talking about competing with the PS2, they weren't talking about the GT series as a whole. They, like many others, were trying to dethrone this game specifically. That's how big this game is. It's an absolutely monumental racing game that can absolutely last you a lifetime with how much content it has. With all that being said though, it still ain't my favorite racing game, or hell, even GT game.

Firstly, the good. They basically took GT3 and gave it a simulation mode that puts it more in-line with the insane sim mode in GT2. There's the same "do events, earn new cars that give you access to new events" loop that made GT2 so engaging, and there's things like used car dealerships to get rid of the credit-grind slog that was GT3's campaign. There are over 700 cars to collect across all sorts of events. Circuit tracks, city tracks, one-make manufacturer events, specific car type events, rally events, endurance events, you name it and it's here with an insane amount of polish. The driving in this game is the best that the series has been up to this point, with it having that nice realistic feel to it. I am no real life race car driver so I can't actually comment on how ACTUALLY real it is, but it certainly has a good feel to it. The UI and soundtrack are as fantastic as always (though I still found the licensed race music kinda eh but I think that's just how things are gonna be), and visually this is one of the best looking games on the PS2 with an insane amount of visual polish, and even support for progressive scan and a mode that uses some interlaced shenanigans to get a high-res mode of 576x960!!! Considering the power of the PS2 the fact that they can get something like that working at all is incredible, much less running as good as it does with the visuals that it has. In terms of technical mastery, gameplay polish, and stylish UI, this is the GT PS2 magnum opus.

But unfortunately, there are still quite a bit of qualms that I have had with this game in my entire playthrough. While I do have a decent enough PS2 wheel that I can use with this game, I really don't prefer to play with a racing wheel over a pad and I don't have a good place to even set up the wheel anyways so I was kinda screwed on the control front. The game uses the pressure-sensitive buttons on the PS2 controller and it's not able to ever be turned off, and I find the dualshock 2's pressure sensitivity to be a bit too mushy to be used as precisely as needed for a type of racing game like this. I played the first half of the game using a very cobbled-together wheel setup that shook when literally any FFB happened, before eventually giving up to use a controller with the steering bound to the left stick and accelerator bound to the right. Neither control scheme was really elegant for me. If this game supported the neGcon (which it very well could have), then this would all be a non-issue and it would absolutely elevate this game to an 11/10 status, but some things are just not meant to be. The high-resolution mode is also more of a gimmick than anything, as my upscaler didn't really like how it tried to display the image, my cables are too crummy to get the best out of it, and the menus and UI all run at 480i anyways so I honestly stuck to the default resolution the whole game as well. Lastly, my final issue with the game comes from its pacing. While the core racing structure of GT2 is back in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as well-paced when it comes to what agency the game gives through prize cars. A lot of events end up giving you a prize car that can't really be used anywhere else, leading to a lot of "dead end" moments, where I just kinda had to sell the car for credits to get the cars that I did need, or just ignored them altogether. Since earning certain things is locked to overall completion percentage, I found the best thing to do was just to do the rally events as they offered the highest payouts alongside cars that I could actually use in a multitude of events. Playing that way just meant I spent most of my time doing a bunch of really slippery rally events, when I'm honestly more of a fan of the street/circuit racing... And then the GT world championship at the very end is both such a huge difficulty spike and time sink, being 3-4 hours long for a single attempt with insane competition that I really got kinda sour by the end of the playthrough. Getting the REALLY good cars to breeze through the GT world championships involves winning the endurance races, and those can take up to 24 hours of real time to complete, and considering the fact I barely had time to attempt the 3-4 hour GT world championship, I REALLY didn't have time to get the best cars to smoke the competition. You could say that problem is def a skill issue from relying too much on better cars and parts over driver skill to win (and it certainly is, I suck at GT), but I think it's lame that the game lets you get away with that strat for everything BUT the one event I really didn't wanna get stuck in.

So yea. sorry for the long review, this is a game with a lot of things in it and as such I had a lot to say. It's honestly a masterpiece of the racing genre with so much care, attention to detail, and CONTENT put into it. I didn't even mention things like the B-spec mode where you can train an AI to race events for you, or the photo mode that allows you to render extremely high res (for the time) photos of your cars to a USB drive. It's one of those games that I'd absolutely consider for a "desert island" pick, for sure. But I still think that GT2s campaign pacing and flow was more engaging than this. Regardless, if you are even SLIGHTLY a fan of cars, racing games, the PS2, or just driving in general, you HAVE to give this game a go.

Never have I had my patience tested more than I did playing Gran Turismo for the first time.

For some context, I've never been a racing game kind of guy (outside of stuff like Mario Kart, Sonic All-Stars, etc), especially racing SIMULATORS. I've also never had an interest in cars at all. All they illicit in me is a deep apathy.

So you can probably imagine how fucking overwhelmed I was when I opened GT4 and immediately had to grapple with the challenging, hard to master controls and technical car tuning details and jargon. I pretty much had to have my friend on standby just to walk me through what I actually should be doing to win races. I had to learn the fundamentals of how to properly take corners, when to stop, when to break, when to measure to slow down. It was so much stuff that I really struggled at first.

Fortunately, you can cheese this game. It takes a lot of grinding, but you can easily buy OP cars that completely blitz the competition in whatever cup you're doing. In retrospect, however, I think this signaled the first issue with how I was engaging with this game.

Sometimes, something just isn't for you. I would find it quite implausible for someone to enjoy everything that world has to offer, and that's how I felt throughout the majority of this game. I was stuck in the same grind of doing the same race over and over again to get a car I could sell for a lot of cash. It was cheap, much like the victories I achieved because of that.

There were things I enjoyed and appreciated about this game. The soundtrack is full of fantastic and memorable licensed and original music that really gets you in the mood to RACE. I found quite a few of them getting stuck in my head even after I shut down the game. The overall UI and aesthetic is also fantastic. This game and GT3 epitomise the quasi-futuristic vibe of the PS2 era so well. All the menus are so slick and stylish. It's great. The game looks great too. I could appreciate the visual and auditory aspects perfectly well, it was just the gameplay itself that wasn't jiving with me.

My approach to the game was repetitive and narrowly focused. All I cared about was winning as fast as possible so I could move onto the next race. I was focused on beating the game. I looked at this game like an experience I could quickly brush aside and move on.

But the GT series isn't like that. If you want to beat these games, you actually need some modicum of skill and understanding of the game's mechanics. Take the license tests, for example. I spent many hours grinding away at them as I progressed through the game. I couldn't cheese these, and this is where I found some of the most frustration. Obviously, the game actually needs me to apply a fundamental understanding of the game, but I didn't have that. Still, through persistence, I eventually persevered.

There are multiple issues with the way I engaged with this game:

Firstly, I didn't have an enjoyment of cars or racing. I think a big part of why these games are so beloved is because they're so in-depth and so filled to the brim with content all about cars. If you love cars, you're going to love this game. There are so many cars, all highly detailed. If you loving racing simulators, you're going to love this game even more. So much attention and effort is placed on the individual tuning of EVERY car, not even accounting for how these aspects change as you modify them. All of the cars make the sounds they'd make in real life. All of the tiny details are accounted for. It's insane, and this is only a PS2 game. Can you imagine how mind-blowing this would've been to someone opening this game for the first time back in the day (and if saying "back in the day" for a game from 2004 makes you feel old, well, then, yeah. This game is 19 years old)? All I feel about cars is apathy. I've never been into cars. I tried to appreciate this aspect of the game, but I just couldn't feel anything. I made some funny jokes for sure, but that was it. The complex, in-depth mechanics surrounding the cars only felt suffocating for me.

The other, bigger issue was my engagement with the game. In my opinion, GT isn't a series you approach just to beat. Gran Turismo is an experience. These games have hundreds of hours of content that you can casually take in at your own pace, and herein I believe lies the issue. I think the way to getting better at this game is taking it at your own pace, slowly gaining skill over time. You may spend hundreds of hours just doing all the side content. To be honest, I can believe there's many people who play these games just to have that experience of racing cars. There's no concern about beating every race because that isn't what's in it for them. They just love cars. They like GT. The vibe, the aesthetic, the cars, the depth—all of it.

I looked at this game like a challenge I needed to overcome as quickly as possible, and as a result, I couldn't learn to experience Gran Turismo the way I feel a true fan would. I couldn't look at it with such love and appreciation. When I finally got to the GT World Championship, I had never felt such whiplash. Suddenly, I actually need to have some skill to win. I will never forget that fucking blue Minolta that I could just BARELY beat in each marathon of a race. Now I had to worry about my tires wearing down, and the skill of my actual driving because every corner counted. If I wasn't doing my best, I was fucked. And that broke me. I had to step away from this game for months just to get a clear head and be ready to try again. I've never had a game bring out such powerful, negative emotions from within me. All I was feeling was stress and frustration, zero enjoyment to be had. Now I can see I was being over-dramatic, but at the time, it brought out the worst in me. I snapped at the friend who got me to play this game, who loves this series. I yelled in frustration at every mistake. I didn't find it fun. It was terrible.

This was the game that made me fully understand something: is it right to critique a game; is it okay to make a comment about something if you aren't fully understanding or appreciating it for everything it has in the way a fan would? It's like if you asked a fan of platformers, who has no experience with first-person shooters, what he thinks about Call of Duty. Is it fair for someone so lacking in knowledge and appreciation to critique a genre he has no experience in? Of course he'll find it hard and foreign. He'll probably think the game is bad because he's never played a game like that before. That's what I think epitomises my experience with this game.

I finally beat the GTWC. I B-speced a race or two, but for the most part, my victory was still hard-earned. At the end, though, I still couldn't find myself able to love and appreciate this game. I respect it for sure, but I don't know if I could ever like it for the reasons a proper racing game fan would.

Because of all the above, I don't think it's fair to give this game a rating. I rushed through it and didn't take the time to enjoy it for all it was worth. I value the experience, but I think I can legitimately say racing sims just aren't for me, and unless I spent hundreds of hours playing them, I don't think they ever will be.

Esse jogo tem classe.

Bonito, realista, e com classe

Eu não sou o maior fan de jogo de carro puxado pro realismo prefiro os mentiroso

Mas esse aqui não tem como, joguei bastante o gran turismo 2 e de fato é absurdo como ele é a frente do seu tempo num console tão fraquinho como o ps1

Mas o quarto game não tem mais essa limitação de hardware. Nossa que jogo maravilhoso, em todos os aspectos

Eu amo principalmente a estética, a soundtrack, o layout, a direção de arte, tudo deixa o game com extrema classe, as músicas são absurdasss

Os modos são os de sempre porém a quantidade de veículos e modos de jogo obviamente aumentou, além da gameplay ter sido levada ao seu ápice, pra época claro, mas até hoje é ótimo.

De verdade algumas músicas desse jogo ecoam na minha cabeça até hoje

O sistema de progressão com certeza é o ponto alto desse jogo, aumenta e muito seu fator replay, magnífico

Eu literalmente tirei minha carteira de motorista nesse jogo esquece pai é motorista

Curiosamente também é um dos poucos jogos que roda a 1080i com cabo componente (sim não é 1080p porque a sony não gosta de potência prefere o embaçado do i vtnc que decisão terrível)

Um dos meus jogos favoritos de todos os tempos de fato

The best simulation racing game that will ever exist. The technological and licensing circumstances that led to this game will never happen again.

The game's presentation conveys a hushed, reverent worship of the automobile and motorsports. It's a classy, understated magnificence that no other racing game has come close to capturing. It also functions really well as a virtual museum of car history.

Shame the progression is so wonky and cheeseable.

Very much peak racing. With its problems I agree with it probably has the least for me personally for how many things it gets right. 700+ cars for a ps2 and over 50 tracks gives it a large replay value. The selection of cars are varied and a fair few come cheap through the returning used car sales. Probably got the best legendary cars with like 1 HP mobiles and stuff. The music is delightful and the presentation is mind blowing for a ps2. While the game is a bit slower to load the gt3. It's a lot faster than its sequels and it's impressive for the system and now. A great starting point for anyone wanting to race although the physics go for a more much Sim feel. Like a massive leap forward where I almost recommend a wheel is necessary. But man it's just a good time sink. Probably peak of the series even tho you still can't paint ya car lmao. This game is great and I'm having a good ass Time with this series. Also they added town of people and crows and they even have pit animations:)

A title that, at the time, felt like the absolute zenith of the series, it's shining monument. History alas, has shown this to be the case in a much different way. A metric truck load of content, but content that would continue to linger in the series for nearly a decade afterwards. The true beginning of Polyphony huffing their own farts to a substantial degree. AI problems that still are not fixed even today. And a game that while good, is weighed down by the power of hindsight and knowledge that many of the problems faced by GT today, really originate from this title.