international nut of pastry - I think this lines mostly filler.

Developer: Polyphony Digital
Distributor: Sony Computer Entertainment

The Gran Turismo series has been around since before I knew what this fancy PlayStation thing was, and is far too vast for me to review everything about the this, the fourth iteration of the classic game.

Over the years, I've managed to play GT1, GT3 and GT4: Prologue, so I can feel confident in saying this about GT4:

Not much has changed over the years.

Oh sure, there are many new features (some of which I'll go through) in the game, but nothing that really pushes the franchise further. I'm not counting the hundreds of cars as a feature, simply because most people will only choose a few cars, not even bothering with most of them.

Features:
While I won't go through all the features or changes, but I'll try to give a few words on some of the more significant changes. In no specific order:

- B-Spec: Directors mode
Surely this was put in because they received too many complaints about having to sit through an entire 2+ hour "endurance" race, and equally as dull races. Meanwhile, you basically have to "teach" the B-spec driver how to drive well by letting it race on a wide variety of tracks. Thankfully you don't have to feed it, or entertain it either. The fact that it isn't a great driver straight away means you won't be using it all the time, which is a good thing. Choosing which races you want it to learn with can be easy or difficult depending on the cars available in your garage.

- Photo Lab
This feature is surely for the posers that don't have the money for their fancy cars and want to print out a picture the in-game cars. But it does bring an interesting feature of being able to save pictures of a compatible USB Flash Memory device. Hopefully the PS3 will take better advantage of such devices. You can set your car in a number of international locations, or snap a picture from the replay of a race.

- 5 Second Penalty
In the absence of car damage, this little gem will keep you driving correctly. In certain races, if you bump into a car too hard, or a wall, you will be penalised for 5 seconds by being limited to 50km/h. While some have said that the computer controlled cars aren't under the same rules with regards to the penalty, but I've not found this to be true. On numerous cases, I've had a car hit me and watch them slow down in my review mirror. Obviously this doesn't happen all the time, as the penalty isn't in every race. But it does happen.

- Pit Lane
Yeah, you could pit before, but now you have actual control over tires--replace them, pick what kind you want on, if you want the B-spec driver to take over, and even if you want to refuel. Yes, fuel is now a factor in races. Since I've not played the game long enough to be able to do the endurance races, I can't tell you what happens if you run out.

Blah Blah Blah:
Having played GT3, obviously there was a save game on my memory card. Having this gave me the opportunity to transfer $100,000 over to my GT4 save. That definitely gave me more options when choosing my first car and throwing a few mods onto it. Basically, I didn't have to start at the bottom . . . at least, not the absolute bottom.

The game plays out much like GT, GT2, and GT3. It seems obvious that too change is not acceptable by Polyphony. You pick a car, you race it in the few races you can, build it and your funds, realise you need to purchase other cars to enter them in specific races. Repeat as much as necessary.

I have noticed that this time around there are some very good prize cars given and it is possible to hold off on buying cars simply because of cars given to you fit into the categories.

Final Opinion:
Online play is something that is sorely missed in GT4. While it won't stop this game from selling in large numbers, it would have been a feature that would have got more people talking about it-- since they'd be challenging each other to races.

Gran Turismo 4 is still the driving simulator, but instead of trying to further the franchise with each release, they choose to just improve a few things and add a lot more cars.