Gear-up, motorheads! The greatest racing-simulation game franchise in the world has a new entry in Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2. It may have been repeatedly delayed and the promised online mode is nowhere to be found, but the game still is the closest many gamers will ever get to driving some of the greatest cars ever made on a bevy of worldwide tracks.

It has been a while since Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec hit the streets in 2001, the year after the launch of the Playstation 2. In the intervening time the good folks at Polyphony Digital have been hard at work making the next installment beat its predecessor in every way. As a matter of fact, one of the significant downsides to GT4 is that the Gran Turismo series has had no real competitor in the simulation racing genre, so the developers just seemed satisfied to make what was in the previous games better rather than actually innovating. The few new modes are not really big breakthroughs and at times seem almost tacked on so the marketing department had some new features to tout.



Of course the heart of Gran Turismo 4 is the career mode. In it players will live the life of a GT driver. Cars will be acquired and tweaked in the garage to make them the best they can be. It is also in this mode that the player will unlock additional cars and tracks to play on. The license system that has been a mainstay of the franchise has returned. In these license challenges the driver is presented with a series of goals that must be beaten to move on to ever-more-challenging races that require the preceding licenses to enter.

Gran Turismo 4 makes it worth the player's time to drive through challenges and unlock the cars and tracks too. The list of cars includes 720 different models. There are over 100 tracks to drive when counting both the normal and reverse courses. The cars represent vehicles from the humble 1949 Volkswagen Beetle with a lawnmower-sized 25 horsepower engine to the toughest, most powerful muscle cars ever made and the height of automotive engineering. The tracks include everything from the fastest high-tech speedways to city courses and even dirt tracks. There is probably enough variety to satisfy just about everyone. In addition to the single-player career mode, there is also an arcade mode for quick races, a split-screen 2-player race and a 16-player LAN mode. As mentioned before, the announced online mode never materialized.



When it comes to the actual simulation of driving a car, Gran Turismo 4 simply cannot be beat . The physics engine that drives the game is outstanding. Players can almost feel the G-forces as they go around corners. You really feel in contact with the road. I'm not sure how they manage it, but they do in a big way. It is very easy to get lost in the zone while driving. The world of your room just fades away.

Of course the graphics and audio have a lot to do with immersing the player in the world of auto racing. The graphics have taken a vast jump in realism. The cars are incredible. I've heard the figure of over 5,000 polygons per vehicle. This makes for a very realistic looking machine. The environments are no less impressive. Whether the player is on a closed-course track or on the curvy roads of the fantasy Grand Canyon track, the detail of the environments are near photographic. The road itself shows every little crack and line. The vistas into the distance are breathtaking. Add in the game's ability to take advantage of 480p and 1080i high-definition TV resolutions and the graphics package is downright awesome. If there is a weakness in the graphics, it is the spectators. They look a little cookie-cutter to me with limited movement.

Audio is equally impressive. The sound of engines is throaty and full, and many cars sport a very distinctive sound. At one point I was driving a 1968 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and I could have sworn I was hearing the real thing. Tortured tires also squeal realistically as you race around the track. The music is a pretty good mix of hard-driving, rocking tunes, but this is one area of the audio that simply cries out for a feature like the Xbox console's ability to rip songs from CDs and then use them in-game instead of the stuff the developer managed to license.



One thing that does jar the player out of the racing world created by Gran Turismo 4 it is the opponent A.I. It becomes fairly apparent that the computer-controlled cars are driving a set line on the courses without any regard for what the player is doing. This results in some collisions with other cars that are a little annoying.

Collisions bring up another aspect of Gran Turismo 4 that will break the racing simulation illusion: there is no damage modeling. I know many will say it is not the developer's fault since car companies don't want to show their cars all beaten up, but this is supposed to be a simulation of driving. If I plow my car into a wall at 100 miles per hour, I'm going to significantly screw it up myself too for that matter. I suppose the developer has to choose which ding he is going to take - no damage model in what is supposed to be a simulation of racing or not having the actual cars that are used in racing. Guess it is a classic Catch-22 and Polyphony Digital opted for the real cars and no damage. So be it.



New in Gran Turismo 4 are the B-Spec and Picture modes. B-Spec mode allows the player to get out from behind the steering wheel and become the manager of the racing team setting strategy for the race. Photo mode has the player posing his car, take pictures of it, and even printing the pictures with a compatible printer. Both of these modes feel more like gimmicks and are unlikely to hold the attention of the hardcore Gran Turismo fan more than a very short while.

I don't see how any developer has much hope of matching the depth of racing experience that Polyphony Digital has achieved with Gran Turismo 4 in this generation of consoles. With the notable exceptions of the damage model and opponent A.I., which knocks off a full point on this review, the game is about as good a racing simulation as has ever been achieved on a home console. And while for me it will never have the pure fun factor of a driving game like Burnout 3, it is sure to give simulation fans exactly what they want.



One more small note, don't try to race a 25-horsepower - 9 VW Beetle on the mountainous roads of the Grand Canyon track. It has all the excitement of a geriatric Rascal scooter race.