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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.
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.
The ______ Agenda
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!