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Review

The US release of Gran Turismo has been a much-awaited event. Sony made some changes to the domestic release, but for the most part, it’s still the same game. Gran Turismo is about as close to driving a car you can without, well, actually driving a car. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse, however, depends on your point of view.

There are two main modes to choose from. The arcade mode is a quick and dirty race, which lets you pick from a number of cars right off the bat and features slightly simplified physics for more arcade-style play. There is a two-player split-screen option in arcade mode, but the frame rate takes a horrible dive, making it almost totally useless. The arcade mode easily rivals most arcade-style driving games, but the simulation mode is where the meat of the game is. You start the simulation with enough money to buy a used car that should be good enough for the first few races. Of course, you can’t actually enter any races until you’ve earned your license. There are three licenses in the game, each one more difficult to attain than the last. There are eight segments to each license test. Most of the segments involve taking a set of turns in a certain amount of time. These segments are supposed to teach you the proper way to corner and make you a better driver. Unfortunately, all they really do is block your path to the interesting races and tracks in a very frustrating way. You’ll probably have more than one episode involving you wanting to place your foot through your TV, all because you’re half a second above the required time to pass. The worst part about it is that half the time you don’t even know what you’re doing wrong. A post-test critique of your performance would have helped greatly here. The license portion of the game would have been better as a tutorial segment that wasn’t a requirement to race.

Once you’ve toiled through the licenses, you’re cleared to race. From here you can select from an array of races, ranging from the fairly easy Sunday Cup all the way up to the GT World Cup. There is also a collection of special event races, such as US vs. Japan and front-wheel-drive cars only. Racing earns you money, which you can use to buy one of over 140 real-life cars. Several different manufacturers are represented in the game, including Nissan, Chevrolet, Honda, Dodge, Toyota, and Mitsubishi. The only glaring oversight is the lack of any Fords, but I assume there’s some grisly licensing story behind that. Once you’ve found a car worth sticking with, you can purchase parts for your car, including new engines, brakes, tires, suspension, and turbo. You can also have your ports tuned and undergo different weight reduction techniques to further streamline your ride. Whenever you fit a custom part to your car, the change in horsepower is displayed, keeping you from accidentally installing worthless parts. Lastly, there is the car wash, which gets rid of the road grime accumulated in everyday use.

The graphics in Gran Turismo are unmatched on the PlayStation. The replays look especially realistic. There are a few problems with polygons dropping out at the beginning of the race (the camera does a wide swing around your car), but once you’re off, there’s rarely a problem. The sound effects are perfect, and each car is represented with accurate-sounding engine noise. The music is pretty good and includes a track from the band Garbage, among others. However, I miss the goofy car wash music from the Japanese version. The game’s control is very good with the Dual Shock controller; the standard pad doesn’t do the game justice.

All in all, Gran Turismo is the most complete driving game on the market. The license tests may be extremely annoying, but behind them is a pretty realistic driving game with scads of options. Fans of arcade-style racers will probably become easily frustrated with GT, but it will surely satisfy people looking for more of a simulation-styled approach. –Jeff Gerstmann
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