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.

This game has a special place in my heart, because it came at a time in my life when everything was going to shit. It was my means of escape and in a way it saved me from doing something I would've regretted.

That aside having poured many hours into this game, I still believe there are some elements in the game that people will not invest in like the chain system, trust me it takes a good while to get a good flow with it but it can be done, and it's a great system for levelling up weapons and characters quick. And the story is very easy to pick up (never played the first game until later on). There's a character for every playstyle that you can main if you get tired of the other three (not until Playthrough 2 though when you can play as all four), worth mastering them all though and feels great when you can take on any enemy with any character it's one of the best feelings ever.

Forgot to add I love Weapon Lore, and this game has that in spades and some of the stories behind some of the weapons can either be really satisfying, depressing or both. And some weapons are a little tongue and cheek take Nobuyoshi for example I bet the devs had a field day with that one looking at the weapon traits.

And a final point, a certain boss battle on Playthrough 2 and 3 may cause panic and stress if you hate timed missions.

Have fun.