Fox's Review: Gran Turismo 4

[Fusion]

What happened?  Tell me... WHAT happened?

Gran Turismo 4, the game that blurs the line between "exciting" and "boring."  Chose from over 400 copies of cars which perform quite a bit better IRL, with 1 special customization feature, and worthless upgrades that don't do crap except make you do more work.  Only thing good about it is the De Lorean.

Graphics: Don't get me wrong, the game's in-game graphics have pretty much the most realistic graphics to them.  The game runs at a solid 60 FPS... Usually.  The lack of tire skidmarks helps you forget where you messed up, and your car is as solid as a rock.  Not to mention your "driver" will struggle trying to keep up with your actions.  But at least he exists.  The menus are also not that exciting, and are often a bit too complicated to keep up with (what happened to simplistic?)  There's nothing special about the getting a liscence appearances now.  You're just shown a boring certificate.

Sound: MOST.  BORING.  SOUNDTRACK.  EVER.  You get classic tracks from the 70's & 80's & early 90's as well as some music that's clearly not racing-themed.  More of like stuff thrown in at the last minute.  The sounds of the cars are pretty much just recycled from Gran Turismo 3... Almost all of them.  The only things that really differ are the -once again- different menu sounds.  The tire screeching sound is ear-grating, and will get on your nerves, as much as the sound of a turbo upgrade will.  At least they included an on-roof camera which plays the quieter inside tune of your car.

Gameplay: No gimmicks.  Just straight racing.  No car bashing, no guns, no explosions, not even a car that can flip over!  No damage effects, a lot of stuff that just does nothing but increase your speed, and even though the game claims to have realistic AI I smashed one guy so many times he should've just went nuts on me, but he just kept racing that same line over and over again.  To boot, you can't take a Model T to a race.  It's a "special" car.  I WANTED to lose!

There's just so many things wrong with this game that makes it far from the exciting simulation it should be.  Don't be fooled under the guise of this, folks, Gran Turismo 3 is far better.  Gran Turismo 4 is just a slight rewrite of GT3 with more vehicles.  Gran Turismo HD?  Probably just Gran Turismo 4 with extra graphical enhancements.  Hell, everything past the original Gran Turismo (which had better customization!  You could, for 85,000 each, buy a RACING version of the car you own!  Whatever happened to THAT feature, Sony?) sucks for the genre.

Oh well, the game's only fun if you have an Action Replay MAX and all kinds of speed cheats on, just so you can watch cars think they're F-Zero racers travelling at about 2,000 MPH.