There's something intoxicating about sitting behind the wheel of a 2003 Bentley Speed 8 racecar and streaking through the Côte d'Azur at 170 miles per hour–even if the windshield is your TV screen, the bucket seat is your couch, and the wheel is attached to your ironing board.
With Gran Turismo 4, the PS2-only super-racer, you'll cruise through 52 different tracks in some of the planet's most beautiful spots–zip down the Champs-Élysées at midnight, dart through Times Square during lunchtime, or flash through central Seoul at dawn–while outwitting and outswifting five other drivers.
The range of cars is mind-bending: You'll be handed the keys to a 722-car garage. Instead of focusing on racing-world hotrods, GT4 serves as a sort of vehicular museum. There are scores of cars commonly found on American streets, like the Mini Cooper and Honda Civic, as well as many from racetracks. But there are also surprises like the Model T Tourer from 1915, or the three-wheeled Daihatsu Midget from 1963.
The expansive car list is tops, but driving them is a serious challenge bordering on excessive realism. Beginners will have a hard time successfully navigating around the track; just one minor slipup, and the race could be over. Too often, you'll be relegated to sightseeing. There's also no story to speak of. The motivation to continue playing feeds solely on your desire to win races and unlock new cars. If you're getting killed time and again, that desire is rapidly doused.
But even with the pain of losing, it's hard to deny the bolts of adrenaline that come from screaming through the German countryside on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The sense of speed is exceptional, but oddly, it isn't dangerous–the cars can't be damaged. They stay perfectly intact, even after a head-on with a concrete wall. The tradeoff is access to a monstrous number of cars, but this sizable shortcoming diminishes the game's fantastic production values.
Beyond the gameplay: GT4's biggest vehicular surprise has to be Jay Leno's 2003 Tank Car. There's little chance this mean machine is street-legal.
Worth playing for: Driving through an empty Times Square calls to mind the opening scene in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky.
Frustration sets in when: Arcade Mode doesn't pair up like-engined cars, so you'll often run into pretty intense mismatches. Fall behind, and it's game over, so you're left to suffer through a Sunday drive.
Final judgment: Though GT4 is big and beautiful in almost every way, from car list to track list to song list, its fun factor is lacking, unless you're a bona fide car-obsessed grease monkey.