Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Tag: gran

Is Gran Turismo 4 The Greatest Racing Game of All Time?

Posted on by Viljami

Although I have still not finished Resident Evil Village I picked up Gran Turismo 4. I have thought about playing GT4 for a while now. It is said to be maybe the best game in the series and it is definitely a very good racing game. It is definitely the best racing game for PlayStation 2.

Another very good racing and actually a rally game of this era is Richard Burns Rally. It was for propably a decade the most realistic racing simulation to be found. It was released also for PC and original Xbox while Gran Turismo 4 was released for PlayStation 2 with exclusive righs. Richard Burns Rally lost its spot as the best rally simulator since there were newer games released in this genre. I can mention titles like Dirt Rally and its sequel Dirt Rally 2.0 just to name some games.

I am playing GT4 with a game pad. The game supports also many tpyes of driving wheels. It would be nice to play it this way. I do have a driving wheel  but I am too lazy to try to learn using it. I would also like to have a decent driving chair. I currently don’t have one. But the game supports driving wheels and why not pedals also.

In Gran Turismo 4 you start with no license and also no car. You have only 10 000 credits. I started with getting a driving license. The first license and also the easiest to get is B license. There are several other driving licenses that give you access to competititons.

You have to upgrade your car if you wish to get some credits. Then you can upgrade your car more and maybe after a while you get a new more powerful car. Sometimes the game gets a bit repetitive because you have to compete in same chllenge for many times to get enough credits so you can make some progress. This can be dull at times.

Gran Turismo 4 has hundreds of cars. Getting a good car can be hard at times. You have to buy some upgrades to get to fiddle with your cars settings. The first thing I got to adjust was the transmission. You can set your car to have a high maximum speed with a lower acceleration level or the other way around. So, you can also make your car accelerate fast which then lowers the maximum speed. This can be handy in tracks that have lots of slow corners and not so much straights.

Graphics are a bit dated. Controls defnitely aren’t. There could be more decent music tracks in the soundtrack. I am talking about these nice tracks that we had in the first Gran Turismo. If you are thinking if you should return to the first game we can consider that if you haven’t played Gran Turismo 1 or 4 at all I think the fourth game would be a good way to start getting into Gran Turismo. I also liked very much the latest game of this series, Gran Turismo 7, that was released last year for PS4 and PS5.

Gran Turismo 7 – After Ten Hours of Playing

Posted on by Viljami

Gran Turismo 7 was released 4th of March. I got to play it early since I had ordered it in advance from a local game shop. Gamers all around the world have been waiting for this game to be available. Gran Turismo 6 was released on PS3 just before PS4 was getting to markets. So, we have been waiting for this for a while.

I would definitely like to play this racing game with a PS5. The circumstances are what they are and I have to satisfy my needs of some Gran Turismo racing with my PS4. I can see how a somewhat more advanced controller and better graphics would enhance my whole experience about this game. But even played with PS4 instead of PS5 I can be very satisfied how this game feels like.

I have to warn you. I usually play games longer compared to what is the average completion time expressed in for example How Long To Beat website. I have played already 48 hours of Diablo II Resurrected. It is said on How Long To Beat that its main story takes 18 hours to complete. Maybe I am a slow player or maybe I am a comletionist.

So, I have played Gran Turismo 7 for a bit over ten hours. This game made an impact as I started playing it. I had played a bit of Forza Motorsport 3 for Xbox 360 lately. It is older game but I immediately understood how good of a racing game the Gran Turismo is. You can set the difficulty level suitable for yourself. There are assists for breaking, steering and changing gears.

Gameplay is not simulation and it’s also not also arcade. It is somewhere in between. This can probably raise a question if it is a good game for some eSport sessions. Playing against your mates through network is an option if you like to play games that way. In the beginning of the game I chose intermediate skill level. I soon wanted to turn off automatic breaking. I tested a bit the settings and finally found ones that I liked. So there is a challenge for every racing fan that wants to play this game.

Graphics are amazing. Driving is fun. I don’t know how long it takes to finish the game since you can play it, I think, eternally, if you wish to do so. This is definitely the best we can get out of a racing game for PS4. I would like to try this game for PS5 but as you know there is a limited availability for a PS5 still. So you can play Gran Turismo 7 for as long as you want.

There are lots of goals in this game. You can try to called all the cars and unlock all the tracks. There is a cafe in GT7 from where you get missions, or menus, that give you something to achieve. You get a reward from achieving a goal. It is usually some new tracks or cars. You don’t immediately get to drive the fastest sport cars in the beginning of the game. You have to drive some time with some slower or not so sporty cars first.

After ten hours of playing Gran Turismo 7 seems to be everything I expected it to be. I have talked about this game with some of the persons I know since I heard that it was going to be released. It’s finally here. Now it’s time for me to enjoy it. I can definitely recommend this game.

Xbox’s Answer to Gran Turismo

Posted on by Viljami

Xbox was released just a bit after PlayStation 2. The first PlayStation already had it’s racing game. That game was Gran Turismo. At the time it was the most realistic driving game ever released to any gaming console. As Xbox started to challenge PS2 they just had to have a good quality racing game for the system. This is where Forza Motorsport comes into play.

PS2 had Gran Turismo 3 and it later had the fourth game in this series also. I am familiar with many of these games but, actually, haven’t played all of them. You might already know that I am a big fan of racing games be it rally games or other. Actually back when I was playing PS3 only I played a lot of Need For Speed Shift 1 and 2. They differ a bit from Gran Turismo and it’s rival Forza Motorsport. But they also are street racing games and you also have circuits that you race on instead of real streets or muddy tracks (or something like that).

So I’m talking about how Forza Motorsport seems to feel compared to Gran Turismo. I have played this racing game only through twenty percentage or so in the career mode. I did play Gran Turismo through earlier and I have played just a bit Gran Turismo 3 and 4. I am playing with a Xbox 360 and this game was released in 2005 for original Xbox. Thanks to _Xbox 360’s backward compatibility it plays very well on it. All of the games of original Xbox aren’t compatible on the 360. But this game is.

You have several cars to pick up from. I think it’s supposed be like that you more like collect these vehicles. In Gran Turismo you had to really consider selling your cars to get money for updates. You can also tune your car. Every car feels a bit different. I don’t see a big difference on how the cars behave if we compare these games. Forza Motorsport does have this green-to-red display element that gives you an idea about at what speed you should approach the next corner. This wasn’t available in the first Gran Turismo. The driving seems to be very realistic.

You can definitely play this driving game with your game pad. I haven’t even tested it as my current driving wheel only supports PS3 and PS4. I think it plays just well. This game is taking a long time to complete. I am not very sure if it’s a good choice if you want to play a racing game as it is a bit old. You can see it from graphics and they are a bit dated. Music in this game is very generic compared to it’s competitors.

After all this is a good game. I originally bought it from flee market for three euros. It’s definitely worth that. It is a keen part of history of driving games. I didn’t mention this but the Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport are not released on other consoles so Gran Turismo you can play with PS2 and Forza Motorsport you can play only with an Xbox. I took the picture featured here as I needed some graphics for this blog post. I have lots of games for Xbox 360 as you can see. To be honest I haven’t had time to play all of them. I do have Forza Motorsport 3 and I am definitely at some moment going to play that game. I am also looking for a good racing game for my Xbox Series S.

Spending some time with Gran Turismo 4

Posted on by Viljami

As I may have mentioned earlier I kind of missed PlayStation 2. So it’s finally time for me to pick up Gran Turismo 4 and start getting in to playing it. The game was released in 2005. With over 700 cars and almost endless possibilities to race and tune your vehicle to it’s maximum performance it brings a huge game for the player to enjoy for a long time.

My history with Gran Turismo begins as I picked up the first game of the series. It was end of the 90s. Graphics were beginning to become more realistic. The capacity of CD-ROM brought more details and content to be used by game developers. Gran Turismo was also good for promoting PlayStation. It soon became clear that PlayStation would see some very nice driving games. The second Gran Turismo game was also released for PS1. The third one started the era of PS2s racing games.

There are lots of games that are dealing with driving a car or some another vehicle.
Gran Turismo made a difference. It delivered almost pure racing. Almost nothing else included. It had real cars and not only some but hundreds of cars that actually existed also in real life. It’s amazing to understand how the attributes of these cars tell you exactly how they behave while being handled on the road. These include mass, suspensions, tire selections, engines capability and so on. There are lots of things to mess with. You can modify the settings while testing the car. Upgrades to your car are essential. You have to win to get money for the upgrades.

I really enjoyed the first Gran Turismo. I hope my experiences with the fourth game of this series are enjoyable. I have to bring this fact up. The graphics aren’t too smooth or nice. It has been 15 years since the release. What could you expect? As the sixth game was released for PS3 there haven’t been a release of this series for a while now. Gran Turismo Sport did appear to the gaming stores but I think it was more of a eSports type of game.

We are expecting Gran Turismo 7 to be released for the newest PlayStation. I have to Google this one. And yes, the release is scheduled to quarter 1 / qurter 2 of 2021. As Gran Turismo 4 is even today a very enjoyable game with many interesting features you have to wonder a while what could there be inside the seventh Gran Turismo game.

Some of my experiences with Gran Turismo

Posted on by Viljami

I first played Gran Turismo on Sony PlayStation. It was my first full game that came with the used console I had bought. My PS1 had also some demo discs included. I didn’t really get in to using racing wheel. And the game didn’t in my opinion necessarily need one. PS1 had many great driving games. I definitely enjoyed also Colin McRae Rally series as its first two games were released on Sonys first gaming console.

Gran Turismo was something amazing. It was released in 1998. It brought realistic graphics and gameplay to console gaming systems racing games. You could also test and upgrade your vehicles. You could buy new cars and tune them and buy more parts. It had over 150 different cars. You got money from completing races and finishing on top positions. There just were so many goals you could try to achieve. Think for example collecting all the cars the game offers.

You can see the second Gran Turismo game on this posts image. I never really played that. I didn’t play GT3 or GT4. But the game I did play some years after getting into the first game was the fifth game of this series. Racing gamers have seen many good games that were developed after the first Gran Turismo. I can name for example Richard Burns Rally and Dirt 3. In my humble opinion GT5 doesn’t come close to these. It is named as Gran Turismo 5 and it is a good game. But…do you have to play it just because it has a strong brand and some earlier games in this series were good? Is that good enough reason? I don’t think so…

Gran Turismo 3 and 4 were great games. I broke my PS2 a while ago so I couldn’t play these on it. And I don’t know if these games have aged well. Racing fans just have so many alternatives to turn to. Dirt Rally 1 and 2.0 have been released and also we can add Dirt 4 to this list. There is already one new Gran Turismo (Sport) that was released for PS4. There does exist some good racing games available only for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. We are not going to go there…

Is virtual reality flopping?

Posted on by Viljami

Virtual reality was once said to be the next big thing in console gaming. Years have gone and VR hasn’t gained as much attention as was predicted. This may have something to do with todays graphics as they aren’t yet so realistic. VR as experience falls short. Maybe advancing to PS5 brings some change to this situation.

As VR glasses price is several hundreds of euros it is uncertain that they would bring that extra value to hobbyists gaming experience. Some games that come to mind that are using this feature are Resident Evil 7 and Gran Turismo Sport. Those can be played also without VR functionality.

Game types are yet to form inside this technology. Sony isn’t the only one on the markets as Oculus released their device some years ago. Even companies that have been usually associated with smartphone development are looking to get to this market area. Those include HTC, Samsung and Google. There is also a finnish company Varjo. Valve has been developing VR glasses also. Future tells if increase in graphics processing power brings VR closer to customers.

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