Gran Turismo 4 Preview

ãã¾ããããsã®ãS writes "FiringSquad has published a preview of Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo 4, the upcoming flagship online racing title for PlayStation 2." Acccording to the preview, where the last Gran Turismo made us all adopt a Playstation 2, this one will have us adopting network adapters for online racing. The preview's also got some notes about the lengths Polyphony Digital has gone to in order to make GT4 as realistic as possible.

Some physics glitches...

[Palshife]

I'd love to see some of the blatant physics mistakes fixed from GT3. Two examples:

1) The axis restriction. No car can rotate more than 90 degrees in any direction from normal on any axis. It's to prevent the car from ending up upside down, something that wouldn't fly in GT, as there's no "abort" button a la "RUSH."

2) The wheelie 700 Mph trick. It's fun, and it's cool to do, but it's probably indicative of a larger shortcut in the physics engine.

Either way, I'm already drooling for GT4. Online play is enough to make me want it, but man, I really wanted hard drive features. Importing my own music is something I've wanted to to with GT4. Oh well, there's always 5...

Network games for PS2

[Ron Harwood]

What Network games are available for the PS2?

I guess my real question might be - are there any network games for the PS2 that make buying the network adapter worthwhile?

Graphical Observations

[cgenman]

It appears they are doing distance color washing with blur, and generally toning down the image to mimmoc a television broadcast. Whereas Ridge Racer's ilk went for hypercolor, the artists on GT4 appear to have chosen realistically muted shades of grey and dirty brown. Texturing seems to be pretty spot-on too, without delving too much into the extremely textured look of many games. Thankfully GTA3's much abused car-top reflections appear to be muted too. In fact, between the muted colors and muted textures, the game is definitely not a visual feast for the eyes, which is perfect for a realistic racer.

Sorry, I'm just not that excited this time around!

[Mantrid]

This isn't that exciting for me...don't get me wrong GT3 was a great game and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But what is Sony really adding here? A few new cars and tracks?

GT really needs an engine overhaul:

- better collision physics - I get tired of racing against other 'bricks'
- car damage - now pieces falling off etc., would be very exciting and cool, but even something as simple as a damage bar to represent what is going on and reduce performance. There's just no way in a game as realistic as GT3 (in other areas) that the fastest route on some tracks should involve setting up a nice billard ball bounce. That should totally screw up your car. The best would be individual parts breaking, and affecting handling, as well as cosmetic damage that may even affect aerodynamics.

Without some major changes, we're still just playing GT1.

I'd gladly wait a couple of more years for GT4 if it had actual new features!

Ughh...I hate previews like this

[Zed2K]

Why do magazines insist on doing previews but showing screen shots of outside views which are basically just replays. You never see those fews when you play the actual game because you are too busy behind the wheel. You don't see the pretty scenary fly by and you rarely have time to see the other cars. Show screen shots behind the wheel, not majestic shots showing courses.