GT4 Sucks.
Here's why:
- The infamous screen jittering bug.
- TCS and ASM are disabled in 2-player if you select a car from your garage. Supposedly there's a bug where you can pick a standard car and then pick one of yours and you'll get the driving aids back.
- They totally limited what cars you can take onto dirt tracks.
- The penalty system is lame. Even still, you can't enable it in 2-player! So it's still the fastest to ride the wall at high speed.
- The penalty system is lame. The other cars can hit you and give you the penalty.
- The AI sucks. I can win races worth 127 points and the AI can barely win B-spec races worth 50. It doesn't grasp exit speed at all.
- Apparently there are pretty serious bugs with the speed limiter in pit. I heard a story about a guy going into pit mid-endurance and it never took the limiter off. Ouch. I'll confirm once I unlock the endurance races.
- TOO MANY LICENSE TESTS!
- Why the heck can't you race on every track in 2-player mode? Some of them would be really fun!
- The driving missions go from braindead easy to extremely difficult just like that.
- If you're using the Logitech Driving Force wheel in a very fast race car on a bumpy track like Circuit de la Sarthe you can barely hang on the wheel. The force feedback really goes nuts. I get the feeling I'll be switching to a controller later in the game.
- The audio levels are really bad. Some cars are way louder than others in 2-player, giving that player an advantage. It's harder to know when to shift if you can't hear your engine.
- The difference in volume between being inside your car and outside is pretty drastic. Makes the replays seem kinda... boring.
- The music is way too quiet, even with the music volume all the way up.
- It just doesn't feel like a finished product. I'd give GT3 a 10/10, GT4 a 7/10. Maybe 8.
- The scrolling marquee text at the bottom of the screen gets old. Miss a sentence? Too bad.
- I'd like to see more detail in the cars and track (the LOD popping is pretty obvious, and some of the ground textures are hideously blurry) and less detail in the background. Please make the rear-view mirror useful too.
- It's not easy (possible?) to temporarily change the ghost settings. And they're set in the controller options section, per controller...?
- No ghost in the time trials with the pace car? What's up with that?
At least the physics are better. And the new courses are fun.
This guy is mostly right.
You insulted GT4! Better watch out, and prepare yourself mentally for a flood of people who will comment on this entry saying that:
(1) You're retarded. (2) You're gay. (3) They had sex with your mom.
All that being said, I obviously agree with you. The game is awful.
-peterb (a.k.a. "This Guy")
And yet... there's nothing better right now. I thought I'd never say this, but let's hope Forza gives Sony a run.
p.s. Love reading Tea Leaves, even though I was expecting more game development content -- found it on gameblogs.org.
Tea Leaves is definitely a mixed grab bag of "things psu and I think are interesting." The people who read it for the food discussions are bored when we talk about videogames, and the people who read it for the videogames are bored when we talk about food. But I like it all.
I am kinda fearing Forza. I tried the demo, and it just felt wrongly sized. Laguna Seca felt "small", the cars didn't really have a firm feeling on them. So I'm worried. On the other hand, that was a demo and it's at least 3 months old by this point. So who knows. Maybe it'll be super.
I have to get it no matter what, of course. It's a driving game.
-peterb
Tea Leaves suggestions: Maybe you could make it easier to see who is writing the current entry? I know your name is on the page, but it doesn't stand out. And the RSS feed always says it's from "Tea Leaves".
Regarding perceived size: This is one thing I think GT4 gets really right. The sense of speed is much more realistic (especially with a force feedback wheel!) than in GT3. If you're driving a 120 horsepower sedan, it feels about like it would in real life. In GT3, even the Astra Touring Car felt a little bit sluggish. (I went back and watched some GT3 replays today. :))
Thanks for letting me know about the problem with the RSS 2.0 feed. It should be fixed now.
GT4 is not a real racing simulator. I bought it in order to drift. I could so care less about the rest of the game.
I actually drift my S14, so I know what's supposed to happen when I do it. I've tried all kinds of cars in GT4 and none of them actually simulate drifting. And NO...Dirt and snow racing is not drifting, it's actually possible to drift on concrete/blacktop in real life. So why doesn't the "Real Driving Simulator" encompass drifting?
It lets you slide sideways and grind to a halt. Then it slowly creeps back into pace and goes straight. No matter how much I jam the accelerator into the controller the tires won't just spin and let me drift fluidly.
As for the Dirt and Snow races, good job...but I'm not a rally racer... and I would like to drift without having to get off the road or hydroplane.
I gave my GT4 to my friend for his birthday now and I'm gonna stick to actually drifting. Too bad it sucked, I thought with 4 years of production it woulda been so much better. Looks like they spent way too much time throwing stupid ass cars into the mix instead of perfecting the physics.
I assume you've turned off ASM and TCS. I've had some luck drifting in all sorts of cars, although I don't know how realistic it is... but grinding to a halt sounds like traction control...