In case anyone in the group shares in my Gran Turismo obsession...
I had a long hard rant about Sony proposing to *sell* me a demo of GT4.
I mean, like I'm falling for that, get f*cked.
Until it was in the shops, anyway. Mr Yamauchi, I am your bitch.
It's a weird thing. It both is and isn't a huge advance on GT3. The
graphics are a huge disappointment. Sure, the cars are a bit more
detailed and the depth of field tricks are cool but other than that
there's really not much to talk about. GT3's terrible "cardboard cutout"
crowds now look like moving cardboard cutouts, and in some cases
cardboard cutouts that run across the track just before you get there.
But cardboard, none the less.
And why, when you're a company as smart as Polyphony, would you use
textures with lots of lines close together ... AGAIN? Did they not learn
from last time? Certain kinds of textures just don't work on the PS2 -
so they put them everywhere.
The physics engine, on the other hand, has clearly had a lot of work. I
would have supported an argument suggesting there was nothing wrong with
the physics in GT3 until I played Prologue. Just, kinda, different
really. The cars are very much more distinctive than they ever were.
Example: On the Italian course there's this long low visibility straight
followed by a nasty S bend. If you're driving the evil Skyline, you need
to get onto the anchors just under this white banner flying across the
course and be starting to come off the brakes in time to get some
steerage together for the S-bend. The brake disks glow more this time,
BTW. It's cool. Anyway, there's also an Evo 6 rally car that drives
completely differently. With the Evo you come off the straight at a
similar speed but can leave braking until very significantly later.
Then, even with the anchors full on you have enough control over where
the car is headed to be able to take the corner. It's pretty spectacular
once you suss how to do it.
Anyway, point is that from the perspective of being a video game, it
gives us three or four different ways of driving the course, depending
on the car and your mood at the time.
The courses, BTW, are great. The Italian village has this
across-the-board combination of hillclimb'y "straight line between
apexes" driving, a couple of "take this one gently not because of the
corner but because you need to be set up for the one after", some just
ludicrous "200kph on cobbles", a wipeout fusion-esque duck down a side
street and coming out of a series of backstreet corners there's this
just gorgeous dropping corkscrew turn. I got a Mercedes SLK airborne for
the whole length of it and thought we'd go through the road when it
finally touched down.
As you might be able to tell, I've grown into it.
The music's much better too. Apart from the music that plays while
you're navigating the menus and that's awful, and no option to switch it
off. Camera work on the replays is better too.
The lessons are much *much* better than the license tests on GT3. I
think it's a combination of a steadier learning curve along with a
spoken, animated and generally well done introduction to each of the
lessons. My partner, her indoors, SWMBO has even been seen playing it as
a result. The bonus DVD is surprisingly good too and has a short program
showing the making of the game, some shots of what these lucky bastards
to for a living, and a good "how to drive fast" thing done with real cars.
There is no full on Gran Turismo mode in Prologue because, well, it's a
demo with lipstick on, innit?
So, in short: If you like racing games it's worth it. If you don't know
if you like racing games or not, get it because it's half the price and
if you don't like it you'll never like another racing game anyway. If
you played GT3 and never really got into it, don't bother. If you want
to see the latest most spangly graphics technology, don't bother. But
it's good fun, and I reckon I got my money's worth.
Dave
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