I've spent some time with the just released uber-hyped Gran Turismo 4. What an absolute load of crap. PD claim it's the driving simulator? Simulator where?
It's an absolute joke, there's no damage at all. You can ram into things all day and not get penalized for it, you wanna use another car to get you around the corner? Yup you can, come on even Sega GT nailed something as simple as that. Physics are just as bad the cars just bounce off each other, it's like bumper cars, I mean seriously, what have you been doing for the last 3-4 years PD?
Then we come to audio - absolute rubbish, some of the Japanese cars sound all right, but everything else just sounds synthesized and tinny, you wanna try and work out what wheels are locking up or how much grip you've got on some tires? Dream on, you get a mix of like 5 different tire sounds. Then of course it's only Pro-Logic - read stereo, although to be fair this is a limitation of the PS2.
Graphics, the area where all the hype goes into. What an absolute let down. The screenshots look great, but if you actually see this thing running on a PS2 - disgusting. Extremely low resolution textures, silly border lines on flat polygons (all over the side of the tracks). You've got the standard PS2 flickering rubbish, it also doesn't support PAL60, the standard PS2 lack of decent filtering (resulting in shimmering textures) then the low resolution, no anti-aliasing. The only near good looking thing in the game is the sun-glare you sometimes get on the cars. The screenshots were obviously totally touched up, the game looks nothing like the screenshots.
Online? Doesn't exist. So much for Sony's online flagship title. Oh and still no Ferrari.
One of the biggest dissapointments ever. Forza Motorsport - going from a 6 month old demo with one track and a handful of cars absolutely destroys this game in every aspect - imagine what the full version of Forza Motorsport will do to it in May when it's released.