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As with other Gran Turismo games, GT4 contains the familiar ‘Arcade’ and ‘Gran Turismo’ modes. And while Arcade already gives a lot of options to play with (Time Attack, Head to Head, LAN Battle and such), the heart of the game is of course, the Gran Turismo mode. In here, you start out with a measly 10,000 credits (not even enough to buy a new Honda Civic Type-R) and no racing license (although if you have GT3 A-Spec, you can export both cash and racing licenses to your new saved game). Like any aspiring Kimi Raikkonen, you have to earn your racing stripes first in a series of license exams. Each segment teaches proper cornering and braking techniques, all of which are surprisingly accurate to real-world racing situations. Those who have gone through the Tuason Racing School clinic will surely remember a thing or two. After that, you participate in a series of races or championships, most with special requirements. During the countless days or weeks of sore thumbs, rewards will be bestowed on you in the form of special cars, usually concepts (Audi Nuvolari), racing cars (Chevrolet Corvette C5R) and ultra-exotic sports cars (McLaren F1). Don’t be ticked off with the seemingly long playtime time. For starters, anyone who considers himself a car enthusiast will definitely be submerged with the sheer amount of cars and tracks in the game. The learning curve isn’t that steep too—a few minutes, perhaps an hour at the most, is all that’s needed to find the best way to tackle a challenge. Probably the biggest challenge in the game is getting the right set-up for each car. Since GT4 is a driving simulator, expect the more than 20 engine, drive train and suspension set-ups to be unique, varying even on the type of track you’re about to race in. If this is too complicated, GT4 introduces a new mode called ‘B-Spec’. Here, you can play professional team manager ala Flavio Briatorre. And like the Renault F1 boss, you order your driver to push the car, overtake a competitor or even conserve fuel and tires. Completing Gran Turismo 4’s extensive list of features is the ‘Photo Travel’ and ‘Photo Mode’ options. For once, here’s a mode for those who wish to explore their artistic side by using a SLR digital camera. In these two modes, you can take your car to any of the racing venues in the game or some selected photogenic locations around the world including Beacon Hill, the Grand Canyons and downtown Tokyo. You can set-up the perfect shot by adjusting just about everything from focal length, shutter speed, aperture, white balance and the like. The icing on the cake here is that you can either print your photos on a number of compatible Epson inkjet printers or save them on a USB flash drive with a resolution of 1.2 mega pixels! So while the world has become accustomed to one-minute managers, thirty-minute meals and run-flat tires, the team behind Gran Turismo 4 is living proof that being obsessive in the details is what makes a product a cut above the rest. And although you’ll probably find the aspect of becoming an instant racing champion all too silly, that really doesn’t matter. What counts is that Gran Turismo 4 gives an unparalleled sense of realism in just about every aspect of competition racing: whether it be from behind the wheel, on the pit wall or behind the lens. |
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