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Gran Turismo 4 Review - PS2

25th April 2005 by
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Recently we’ve seen a lot of sequels. TimeSplitters 3, Resident Evil 4, Doom 3, Project Zero 2, Splinter Cell 3, Fight Night 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, and so on. These games have all proven to be worthy sequels, which seems to be a happening trend for games, unlike movies. Gran Turismo 4 puts everything on the line as it tests your true driving skills in what Sony believes to be the most realistic racing simulation ever. Let’s review.

The release of Gran Turismo 3 took the world by storm. Never had anybody seen graphics so beautiful in a racing game. Fortunately, we got our hands on an imported PS2 to play a bit of Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 before they were released here in Australia, and it almost seemed too real to be true. Looking back at that moment in 2001, it seemed racing games couldn’t get any more realistic. Along came the Project Gotham Racing games on the Xbox. All of a sudden Sony had some serious competition! Gran Turismo 4 would have to be the best racing game that they could ever conceive, and it would have to be released relatively soon. Delay after delay after delay caused Gran Turismo to slowly slip out of everybody’s most wanted games list, however it did eventually come out, and it was worth the wait in many respects.

Gameplay

First of all, Gran Turismo 4 allows you to transfer over as many as 100,000 credits from GT3. This allows those that played GT3 through to death to get a rather good head start on the game, but you’ll still have to prove your worthiness in the licensing. Gran Turismo 4 has five different licenses to obtain: National B and A, International B and A, and Special. Once obtaining all these licenses, you are able to compete in any events all over the Gran Turismo 4 world, as long as you have the right type of car. This allows steady competition to continue throughout the game, as even if you get 100,000 credit points, you can blow it all on the wrong things, and cause yourself a bit of trouble throughout the game.

Luckily though, in Gran Turismo 4 (much like the predecessors), you can compete in races several times and continues to get more credits for doing so. You won’t get anything towards your track rating, unless of course you get a better placing, but the money building up will allow you to purchase parts which you can upgrade your car with, or even buy a whole new car all together. There are so many unlockables in Gran Turismo 4 that you’ll be playing it for a long long time. We’ve put in loads of hours at the GameBiz headquarters, and still have many hours to go until the game is classed as 100% beaten.

There are three different camera angles while racing around. You can be in the car with a strange view of the bonet, it can be ... (continued next page)
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