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Hello and welcome to my car reviews site. This
is a website devoted to a variety of vehicles found in the Gran Turismo® games.
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I
started writing these just a couple weeks after getting into GT1 way back in December 2003. Originally I used my reviews
as a frame of reference so that if I drove a particular car for awhile, months later I'd still have some notes on it.
After getting into GT2 in March of 2004, I had somewhere between 15 and 20 of these mock-reviews
written. Looking back on them, they seem almost primitive! One day in May of 2004, it dawned on me that instead of writing
reviews by hand and later typing them into Pagemaker, I could directly type them into my own webpages. And here we are.
You won't find a review for every single car in these games, but I've driven and
raced a wide variety of vehicles, and have written about those that I've been inspired by. These are somewhat similar
to what you might find in any car magazine; except that I try to compare what I know about the real-life cars to
those in our games. As a mechanic in real-life, I also get to drive plenty of cars found in our games (although I don't get
to drive them at Gran Turismo speeds!). By reviewing, I am therefore judging these cars in a detailed, systematic way
that plots reality against the game's mock-reality.
There are plenty of walkthrough sites and Cheat/FAQs on the web that describe how to get
thru these games to the fastest cars as quickly as possible, and with a 100% win ratio. They usually suggest using "overkill"
cars while ignoring slower ones. There are plenty of these types of sites around, but hardly any websites with detailed
descriptions on how the cars (fast or slow) actually BEHAVE.
Our experience from game to game is important. The vehicles in GT tend to be designed
to drive differently in each version of GT; many times, even the same make and model will have various strengths and
weaknesses when placed in different scenarios found in each Gran Turismo.
To summarize, GT1 is often thought of as the hardest of the series by many players; the
most "hardcore" of all five GTs so far. Money doesn't just roll in until we're hitting the most advanced races, which
makes strategy important for those who are trying to win consistently. Such features as pole-position qualifying and the license
tests are sometimes more difficult to achieve in GT1.
GT2 has hundreds more cars than GT1, but feels incomplete at times. It is the easiest Gran
Turismo in my opinion; money is ridiculously EZ to come by even if the driver has mediocre talent. However, GT2 has
some difficult races here and there. GT2's license tests vary in difficulty. Overall, the entire GT2 experience feels
"rushed", as there are so many inconsistencies, mistakes, and glitches it can get annoying.
But GT2 has many features (like the Event Generator, the ability to set up to 99 laps in
arcade races, the ability to share records between multiple memory cards) not found in other GT games. It's also got one-off tracks
such as Red Rock Speedway, Grindelwäld, and Rome Nite which only appear in this edition of the series. Not to mention
several hundred cars which can't be found in other GTs.
In GT3, Polyphony obviously
put more detail into quality and it's a beautiful game, but it lacks the variety of cars in GT2. Some of the racing in GT3
starts off extremely easy...to the point of idiocy...but as you wind your way towards the Professional League, it gets a lot
more intense. There is lots of driving and lots of racing to accomplish in GT3. One of the biggest faults with this
game is the monotony of it all. Not only is there a huge lack of cars we all expected the 2nd game, I also
found myself bored as I drove the same tracks over and over and over.
GT4 cured the monotony with dozens of models (hundreds), many of which are not found in any
of the previous three games. Also, there are many new tracks, both real and fictional. The sense of driving is
also improved, in my opinion; it just feels a bit more real than the earlier games, in some ways. Many have complained
how "slow" GT3 feels, which is actually because of the way the view is portrayed as we drive, not because we're going
slower. GT4 cured this too.
Some faults of GT4? It's still an easy game in a lot of ways....still possible to cheat
our way through, and still there's no mechanical damage from wrecking. However, the "maintenance" angle (with oil
changes) started in GT3 is further defined in GT4, as it's now possible for a car's handling to get worse and worse with time
as miles get added, and bumps are encountered. There's too many new features in GT4 to mention here, actually.
GT5 is the one most of us waited for. There was a gap of 6 entire
years between GT4 and GT5! By the time it was released in November of 2010, this GT broke several new barriers. 5 was the
most dynamic game in certain ways, at the time. We have the game itself, but now we also have the ability to go online, and
race others. Again, there are way too many new things to mention during this monologue. :) The game itself is divided into
A-spec (we drive) and B-spec (the computer does the driving), that's the biggest change of all, outside of online ventures.
There is also Gran Turismo 6. You won't
find any reviews for cars in this game, or any latter editions of Gran Turismo. This is because GT6 was the first game in
which Polyphony Digital never added any testing grounds, and I like fully testing each car's acceleration, braking, and speed. Physics
in 6 are improved, graphics are improved, but the AI itself in GT6, as well as GT Sport and GT7, has become heavily rubber-banded.
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This is a fairly detailed account of each vehicle's usefulness from a monetary standpoint;
which should be especially useful to beginners (all 6 of them reading this) because they'll be able to purchase a car based
on how quickly they can actually drive it, modify it, and they'll also get an idea of how well the car stacks up credit for
mile. Lots of times, beginners are swayed by how cool a car looks. Some of the 'cool' looking cars in the game are actually
too much for a novice to handle, and some of them are absolutely useless in the long run. More advanced racers might find
some usefulness here as well.
--Also on this site are some web pages devoted to "fair racing": guides to make
GT2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 closer and more challenging. Go check out the Racing Guide links below (and in most
of this site's margins) to find out what they're all about.
This website is public domain and may not be used, in whole or in part, for profit of
any kind. No part of this document may be used without the express permission of the author. If you would like to host any
of these pages on a website, please contact me at www.GTPlanet.net ..my username is Parnelli Bone. Gran Turismo is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., copyright
1998. All manufacturers, cars, names, brands, and associated imagery are trademarks and/or copyright material of their respected
owners. All rights reserved.
Founded May 22, 2004
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