Gran Turismo 4’s Career Was the Best Example of Something We Might Never See Again
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- Опубліковано 8 гру 2023
- Stay a while and listen to me ramble on for far too long about how used cars, photo modes and license tests made Gran Turismo 4's campaign the best sim racing career mode we've ever seen.
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the thing Gran Turismo 4 had was it's non-linear approach to each event
you can start with an Evo 1, per example, and you are eligible to do the Sunday Cup, the Evolution Meeting, the 90s Japanese challenge from the get-go or even risk at the Special Events, and i think that made the game amazing
upgrade for a bit and then cash cow incoming
something that even number of gran turismo will do at start
@@muhammadrizkisatria5059Honoka Kousaka remembered a lot about the 2002 TOYOTA RSC RALLY CAR as well. When sold, it net you $265.524, only half compared to $500.000 from 1998 TVR SPEED 12.
@@muhammadrizkisatria5059 You could also do that strategy in GT 1, where the best way was to win the Sunday Cup twice, do the qualifying laps, and sell the price cars in the end. Then you buy a Viper, and smoke the Normal Car Championship, over and over, until you build enough credit to buy any car you want. One successful championship would net you 400,000 credits if you did the qualifying laps as well. If done right, you could easily get these kinds of credits in about 40 minutes
GT7 is disgustingly linear. One event at a time, and just happened to unlock the exact car to use for that event: it’s one of the worst racing games I’ve ever played. What happened to the freedom to do what you want? GT4s campaign was so repayable, there were so many different routes you could go down. The disappointment of GT7 for me was enormous, and it truly baffles me people can sit there defending it.
I'm so glad I didn't bought the 25 Anniversary edition. I got to the point to put it on my shop basket on Amazon then I chose to wait for the reviews and gameplays on UA-cam. Man, I don't even bought the digital version. I confess I just got sad that the game came out to be that linear...
GT4 is definitely among my favorite racing games of all time. Unfortunate that the newer generations will never get to experience a game like that.
I was born a year after GT4 released, so it was well before my time. I recently started emulating it, and holy crap. This game is a pure blast. The feeling of buying a sucky slow car to eventually upgrade and find your favorite is incredible. Its what most modern day racing games (especially forza horizon) lack.
One of my biggest regret in terms of gaming is abandoning GT4 at the time because i accidentally sold my first car after losing my first race. After i did that i kinda lost hope and just left it behind and went back to playing NFS. One of my biggest ever gaming regret especially after GT7
@@maymadethisfire I agree! The pacing of progression in the early GT games(GT1-GT4 at least) is perfect and a big part of what makes you want to keep playing.
My first GT game was GT3 which was new at the time. I remember buying a Miata as my first car, won a few races, upgraded it, and was so pleased with the improved performance of my cheap beginner car. I eventually bought my next car which was an Evo 6 Tommy Makinen edition and was blown away by it. This game made me a car guy at a very young age.
@@e-money9251 You definitely missed out on an amazing and very nostalgic gaming experience. The NFS underground games back then were fun too but GT3 and GT4 had my heart.
@@gapplebees oh i Definitely missed out a lot. Back then i’m suck at simracing having been accustomed to arcade racer
You're absolutely right, single player career is what about 90% of players want based on both GT7s and Forza MSs trophies/achievements showing only 12% in each game have completed an online race. Are the developers too dumb to look at these simple stats to see that online multiplayer is the minority interest? 😢
Gran Turismo 3 and Project CARS 2's single player overall progressions also are legendary.
@@purwantiallan5089 PC2 career was 110% the best out of the PC series
@purwantiallan5089 i didn't enjoy PC2 single player as much as i enjoyed GT4. A series of races took too long and the jump between the type of car was odd. But it was definetly better than most other games.
For mutiplayer money can be made. By micro transactions. That isnt something you can fly in singleplayer experience.
Modern gaming gaslights us to believe AAA gaming is unsustainable without monetization, some means of hooking players into constantly paying. Funny, when gaming never needed this before. Only since the evolution of content delivery, financial engineers invaded and turned companies into machines seeking constant cash flow.
Guild Wars, for example, made a name for itself with discrete campaigns and cosmetic items, but with GW2 the companies acted like it was unsustainable without radical changes which turned it into a clone of other lame grindy cash shop MMOs.
GTA, too. GTA IV had expansions; single-player stories all connected to each other. GTA V? None. Rockstar split the team and, after release, spent 10 years expanding online mode. None of this is necessary or most popular, it's a financial decision. This is also predatory, as games are scientifically designed to create addiction, meaning more of that sweet revenue from gamers who keep paying for more dopamine. All we want are fun games, but we lost that when passionate software engineers and artists were replaced by money men who were put in charge of billions of dollars of industry.
What I don't like about GT7 is how normal and mundane having a race car is, back in GT2 it was so rewarding having to afford race cars because it wasn't easy to get them.
It's changed like this because racing games became a marketing tools for motor companies. Of course they have to expose most of the cars to the playerbase.
I agree, but it also makes tuning a street legal car to beat a race car much more fun
getting race cars to early is also bad because when you tune street legal car you get attached to it and also made getting your first racecar very rewarding I still remeber when I got a camaro racecar on GT3 and even if it wasnt the best car it was cool since it took me a while to get one
@@ludensarahan they've always been marketing tools for motor companies, no? the whole point of the gran turismo series was to get new people into motorsports.
That's what I hate the most about newer racing games, they literally throw you straight into the fastest cars in the game and they give little to no thought to adding cars to the games that people might drive in their day to day life
I just turned 30 but GT4 was my introduction to the series. It was quite the departure from the NFS games I had played previously. I adored that game and was pretty much the start of why I now appear nearly autistic with my level of knowledge on a wide range of cars. That and the GT5 Collector's Edition handbook.
GT4 despite had 350 less cars than in GT5, it is as unbeatable as GT5 in terms of passion when playing the game.
I turn 40 this year.. And I still play GT2 on Duckstation.. Even only at 720p.. The simulation mode.. The 90's n early 2000's cars.. are my best memories ❤
I feel like people are not talking enough about Need for speed: Porsche unleashed, you get that feeling of progression from going from a very slow and clunky car to a GT track car and worrying about driving the car you are driving because not only are you racing a car, but you are racing a car that needs to be taken care of.
Porsche unleashed had a carrer mode that sends you through different eras of Porsche's history starting from the classics to the modern high performance track cars and each part of the car is affected by damage even after the race so you're going to have to balance the difference between risk, caution and reward, if you become too much of a reckless driver you can eventually end up losing your money having to sell your what cars you have left/sell parts or downgrade to a used lower performance car, you can even completely bankrupt yourself and lose the career entirely.
This level of progression and management and the ability to let the player be in a state of complete failure I haven't seen replicated and felt like a real 'carpg' and wished more racing games gave you that aspect of managing risk/reward.
So true-GT4 and NFS PU on the PC are my favorite racing games of all time
Porsche Unleashed to this day had the most creative way to approach a brand focused racing game experience which hasn't been replicated ever since, sadly. I also loved how the game adjusted the pricing of vehicles according to their age. The Porsche 356 you start with is worth around 100k towards the end of the game, for example, whereas some (for the time the game came out) less liked vehicles like the 944 lost value compared to their initial price. It made the game feel a lot more immersive too.
That game was epic I passed all of the challenges/licenses available I didn’t get too far in the career mode after that. I was about 8 years old lol.
@@feuerdrachen6573it is also the ONLY ever NFS game to solely focused on a single car manufacturer in a racing game in NFS (PORSCHE ONLY CARS).
@@moiv8basically passing all challenges in Factory Driver Challenge in NFS PU already gave you 89 percent of the Porsche cars.
Race Driver: Grid (2008) had a class racing career. you even had a team mate and a team manger giving you updates during the race. it was a real gem of a game
No game will ever have a better introduction scene than GT4
I like intro in GT1 or Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift more.
Moon Over The Castle is still really cool though.
Hellyea, introduced me to Van Halen
I think lots of people also loved playing the likes of NFS U2, GT3, Most Wanted, and The Run.
But the top tier racing games are Midnight DUB, GT4, NFS Carbon, and The Crew.
Not sure about the F1 series, Forza Motorsport, and the Forza Horizon games due to my limited experience with them. However, one controversial addition is GTA V with the amount of cars, modifications, races, and physics it encompasses.
For me winner is Gran Turismo 2 Intro. And I think best GT is 6.
Gran Turismo 1 and 3 had WAY better intros than Gran Turismo 4.
Gran Turismo 4 is the crowning achievement for Polyphony Digital. We were like 5 boys in our neighborhood and we all played GT4, sharing saves inbetween because one completed license b and the other one had some endurance races done. It wasn't about beeing competetive, we just enjoyed cars thanks to our parents. There was a concept car for a Mazdaspeed 6, my dad bought a Mazda 6 MPS just a year later. I was able to drive my dads car around the Nordschleife or Le Mans. Also as mentioned, the sandbox nature or the non-linear approach made it so easy to dip your feet in any thinkable raceing scene. I loved the used car dealers. Buying a MB SL500 R129 for under 50k? Hold my beer now. The selection of cars was a bit of a miss for me, I am a german dude and having a huge selection of japanese cars but no decent collection of german or any european car brand turned me down for a while. Today I still play it on my PS2. Thanks to component cables it still looks great.
Agreed, although you have to take into accounting that PD is a japanese based studio and GT4 still had a relatively wide selection of non-japanese cars, compared to previous titles. With every game they included more of such cars and now have plenty of non-japanese cars.
as someone also from europe, i'd argue there was more than a decent amount of german cars in there. you can't expect to (example) have each generation of audis, vws etc. i think they got the more important cars down, and that's what mattered
As the years roll on it becomes increasingly obvious how special Gran Turismo 4 actually was.
I remember playing this in middle school, I was down in the basement and just started a 2 lap race at Nurburgring. First time ever racing that track. My mom calls me up for dinner "Ok I'll be up in like 5 minutes, let me just finish this race" Little did I know it was a 10+ Minute lap time. Needless to say she wasn't too happy with me taking so long.
Fast-forward to today, I actually work in the automotive industry...in Germany. I've been to Nurburgring probably about a dozen times for work, races, festivals, and have even driven around it twice. To say GT4 had an influence on me is an understatement. haha
Part of the issue is also no unlocks. That was a huge part of it. The excitement of not knowing and then getting an amazing (or sometimes terrible) car.
No one wants something locked away anymore because it creates "grind".
Which is a shame, because that over everything else in those old GT games was my favorite part.
Good video 👍
No DLC requirements in GT4 also such a massive bonus.
Grind was abused to vreate "hours"/$ when games were accused of turning empty in the early 2000s.
Back in the 1990's consoles they were just hard to make the player work for the final screen =)
Somewhere along the line the industry missed a sweetspot of not to hard for casuals and not to grindy for those who want a challenge =/
GT4 balanced that beautifully ❤
One of my favorite parts of GT4 is when you go Home , and see your car in the garage looking back at you. plus when you lose a race you see the back end.
I..... Never noticed this. Wow!
You’re probably correct that getting these new sports cars as a first car is probably due to marketing. I don’t understand how brands don’t see that it devalues that car for audiences. Instead of saving up for a brand new BRZ and viewing it as a goal, you’re just given one which implies “this is the shittiest car you’ll have”
100% agree. GT4 is my fave of the series, and one of my fave games of all time.
Best career mode of all time in any racing game period, imagine how a career mode like this would make gt7 the best gran turismo game of all time,
I think Gran Turismo 4 cannot be topped. The feeling, the passion for cars, the amount of cars, the fact that it is mostly a single player game, it is something unique nowadays. I have PS5 and I play Gran Turismo 7, I do not like the fact I need to download all the time content, fixes, back in the days, Poliphony Digital could make a game on a dvd, I could put it in my PS2 and play. No need for internet and no need for updates! It worked flawlessly.
I wish publishers understood there are still a lot of gamers that see online gaming as a nice to have feature, not the only one!
Gran Turismo 4 had 721 cars from 80 manufacturers, 51 tracks, Gran Turismo 7 has way less cars and does not have real endurance races just like the real 24 Le Mans or 24 Nurburgring, the 200 Miles Laguna Seca for example.
I want a complete game. A game I can play on disc wherever I am and whenever I want to.
We cannot own games anymore this way! I can replay a Gran Turismo 4 whenever I want, I will not be able to play Gran Turismo 7 whenever I want, we all know that!
Dlc, micro transactions and pre order bonuses ruined this style of game. Nowadays you're just about handed the high end cars within an hour. Game makers are too afraid of upsetting kids to make a game difficult, or take effort.
Playing GT4 as a kid was the coolest thing to me. This and juiced were among my favorite racing games because how you really started out with cheap beater and slowly moved up. I also thought B-Spec was the coolest thing as a kid and its always baffled me why it was never in any other game. It's such a cool concept being able to manage another driver and what they do on the track in your own car
Maki Nishikino also still remembered GT4 very fondly.
It's crazy that this video dropped because ever since the new Forza Motorsport dropped, I've dusted off the PS2 and played probably 100+ hours of GT3 and GT4 to cure my single-player disappointment. I'm so happy to find out I'm not the only one thinking about this. I agree with every point you made in this video. I think it's definitely possible to build a great "Simulation Mode" single player whilst still having very accessible sandbox options and cars for multiplayer. It's unreal how quickly I'd spend my money on a GT3/GT4 remaster, and I'd probably spend it even faster on a new game that adopted the concepts you discussed in this video. Hopefully it can happen sometime, because you cared enough to make a video, and everyone else cares enough to comment their support! Studios need to know that the market is still there for something like this!
people usually make fun of insane number of cars in GT4 that are just various models of the same car, but rarely mention its list of available tracks, easily the biggest and most varied
Yeah this game IMO was and still is the best GT game in the series. They can still do career modes like this, heck tie in co-op multi-player into it. It can be done. I think it's the developers and publishers focus to make more money on their investment. It's why every multi-player now follows the fortnite model. They just try to capitalize on their users as much as possible. Games like GT 4 were console sellers cause of the experience. I also really enjoyed the career mode on Forza Motorsport 3. What publishers forget that racing games and simcade games were originally made to sell hardware to gear heads and car/racing enthusiasts. They were never for the casual gamer, especially GT and FMS.
Back then publisher and developers actually made system sellers.
Nowadays you just wanna sell your system
@@mr.fister4738whilst all the same time got thrashed by reviewers due to its awful and buggy game products. Look at FM8, despite got 82 on Metacritic, the User Score is at abysmal 0.7 based on 67299 REVIEWERS!
GT1, GT2, GT3, GT4 mindset: "We love cars and we love driving. How many cars and how much driving can we cram into this game for people who love cars and driving as much as we do?"
This is a mindset that has grown ever more rare as the years have passed.
I agree with pretty much all your points.
Unfortunately while the new FMs upgrade system is flawed, the general reaction from a staggering amount of the player base of being put in a position where the gameplay loop of buy car instantly upgrade everything wasn't a thing, makes me think that this style of game in the mainstream is practically dead.
Picked up Super Woden GP II on PC and that had the classic GT2 feel, but as fun as that game is, it's still niche.
It's been so long at this point that I don't even want a new GT2/3/4 or FM3/4 - I just want someone to do something *new* with the genre for the first time in a decade+.
Oh, and arcade racing games too. The hole in my heart from PGR and Burnout is real.
I'm not even a car person but between Life of Boris video on cars and this I've taken a whole new appreciation for car enthusiast. Also, MAN your eloquent, I've been glued to the screen watching and nodding, even tho my only GT experience was absolutely sucking at GT2 on the PlayStation 1. And even though I've been hearing the term "games as a service" I've never thought about how games just don't build on previous single player mechanics because it's better to move everything on multiplayer. Really nice video man, appreciate it ❤
You guys should check out Assetto Corsa Evoluzione. It's a huge AC mod that is basically an entire Gran Turismo-style campaign within AC. But this one goes even further, and has even more features and options than GT4. It's insanely good.
Assetto Corsa Evoluzione? Was that the next gen ACC?
No, it is a p c only mod for the original assetto corsa
@@isamuu99 does it have used car lot and shitboxes? Like the whole point of racing RPGs like Gran Turismo or NFS Underground was that you start in a bad car and upgrade it (or swap to more powerful) down the road.
@@KasumiRINA that's exactly what it is bro. It's the whole purpose of the mod. The RPG elements are it's main draw.
Oh FUCK that sounds dope as hell
I love classic GT campaign, I love that you get a car as a prize reward for everything. I love doing all the new races because I want to know, get, and collect every single prize car out there. The prize cars kept me going.
The closest thing to this is forza horizon seasonals, and I pretty much only do those and left normal races to dust. Only having cash as a prize made me lose interest on completing every event very quickly
Couldn't agree more especially regarding the whole buying an attainable but still special used car in the earlier GT games. I remember i used to start a fresh career occasionally as the beginning of the career gave me the most enjoyment for that reason!
The only game I see this mechanic in now is BeamNG’s “still-in-development” career mode. I am so excited to see what they do with it, because BeamNG is so much fun!
Beamng and Automation are a dream come true for me.
this game is has great support on pcsx2 and a number of mods to improve/bring it up to date. Highly recommend a second play through, I already dropped 40 hours on it.
As much as I love Forza Motorsport 2023, FH4, FH5 etc, GT4 will always be my Favourite GT game and my most cherished racing game.
How can you love FM23? That game is horrible…
It's not horrible. It had a rough launch just like GT7. Both games are solid. I kinda prefer GT7 this time around tho
@@anakinGTI And? I can love any game regardless of your "opinions"
I was 11 and the year was 1997 when I played a demo of Gran Turismo. Back when you subscribed to PlayStation magazine and they’d send you a demo disc of all the new games coming out. Something about Gran Turismo just stuck. I quit playing the GT series after massive disappointment with GT5 and turned to Forza, only to be let down a few years later when FM4 was replaced by FM5. Thanks for the great video about GT4.
Racing games used to have an iron grasp on the gaming scene, but nowadays, not so much. As a result, the studios that develop these games cast progressively wider and wider nets in order to attract more and more players, simultaneously diluting the more complex and interesting aspects down in order to increase accessibility for people new to the franchise. Car nerds will spend thousands of hours playing the game and engaging with the wider community, but they make up such a small slice of the playerbase that appealing to them is not financially viable. This is why a vast swathe of modern games feel soulless - they sacrifice nuance in order to cast a wider net. Enthusiasts have been outcompeted by the uncritical casual playerbase who just want to hop on and drive a big fast supercar for an hour after work. The ceaseless need for profit margins is what's killing these games, and the studios won't learn from their mistakes until they go too far. We're clearly on the cusp.
and ironically enough that casual market isnt really interested in anything besides forza horizon, and even then most of that "casual" playerbase is literally just children or game pass subscribers playing for a couple hours. in the interest of sanding down all the sides for mass appeal, it ends up turning around and appealing to no one in particular. back in the day EVERYONE had copies of gran turismo, need for speed, etc for their playstations - they were some of the best selling games out there. nowadays most gamers roll their eyes and yawn at the mention of any racing game. and who can blame them when none of these games have any character or charm or anything really compelling about them as videogames, even if they can competently allow you to drive a fast car around a detailed track? im sure there are other factors at play, too, but it certainly doesnt help that theres nothing that ACTUALLY makes these games appealing to anyone who doesnt have an interest in cars - the simplicity and genericness means its just boring for everyone, enthusiast or not.
I think the "change engine oil" mechanic for instance is one of those lost gems for new drivers.
We've technically never gotten anything else like it, because Super Woden GP 2 's campaign is like GT3 not 4.
GT4 and NFS Most Wanted are the legends of sims and arcade racing games.
Sad to see the state of the current games in the series... even Forza Motorsport that pointed out ways to even surpass Gran Turismo in previous titles ended up being the huge disappointment of them all with the new game.
GT4 was the first video game I ever played, it's the sole reason I got hooked on cars. I can't imagine what my life would be like without it honestly. Still have never come across a game quite like it.
Agreed, I was so disappointed with FM career that I pulled out my old PS2 and started playing GT3
GT3 WAS THE GOAT
Making me want to dust off my PS2. If I had the skill and knowledge I would build a game with realistic handling and a similar progression system to GT4. I have waited forever for something like it and the closest I found was Forza Motorsport 4 but even that didn't feel as good. Surely someone out there knows how to mod something like this into Assetto Corsa or something? I'll help for free in whatever way I can!
I used to hang out with buddies every weekend and we had 2 PS2's linked up with LAN cable and 2 Logitech Driving Force GT steering wheels and we'd race all night on it, winner stays on. We had our own rules and steward enquiries and disqualifications for dirty driving, lap time competitions with cars we had built. Grand Valley and Trial Mountain in the Subaru Impreza's or Honda Civics were always a hit. Very fond memories. I still to this day have pictures on my living room wall that I took in GT4 and saved to a USB stick then had printed as proper photos. That's how special this game was to me. I had like 86% complete and I still have the memory card, my PS2 and 2 copies of GT4. Always promised myself I would finish it. Honestly adored this game for all the reasons you pointed out, buying rare used cars and spent hours just building and taking photos of them.
I agree and hope some developers can capture the fun of the GT4 singleplayer and replicate it.
can we talk about how insanely good this thing looks. How did they manage to do that on a PS2?!?!?
well I'm sure he was upscaling it through the emulator for this capture. That didn't look like native resolution to me. But yes in general for a game that old it does hold up pretty well
I agree. I remember playing Forza motorsport 3 at launch, had to pick a budget city car, got a Ford Ka and after 20 races I could engine swap an RS200 engine under the hood! 600 BHP in a sub 1000 kg shit box. It was hilarious!
Focusing on PvP completely destroys preservation, you can easily boot up GT4 20 years later and have the same experience as you did when it launched, that just simply won’t be the case for new games.
What hurts GT4 most is the small field of AI cars. 6 Cars on track was bad enough in 2004 but in 2024 this has just aged really bad.
I love how you provided an argument to why this might not be possible to pull off anymore. Too many youtubers point out a valid complaint but offer no understanding of the inherent reason behind why a market shifted in a particular way. Great journalism!
Wonderful editing with the race ending and win music after your last talking point!
As an xBox kid I never played around much with GT4. But I will say that I think NFS has the best career mode I've ever personally played. My favorite aspect was the 'race weekend' where all the events happened at the same racing facility. It made it feel like such an event as compared to Forza motorsport where you're having three lap races spread across the entire globe. It also might be controversial, but playing as a character, Ryan Cooper, gave the game a lot of flair. Hearing the announcers scream about how incredible of a driver Ryan Cooper made me feel like such a racing stud in a way no other racing game has.
NFS Pro Street with a racing sim's physics would be a dream come true for me.
Recently played through GT4 again and it was worth it
7:57 This. The more I fiddle with these kind of games, I come to the same conclusion: I run out of tracks and events long before I run out of cars. In fact, I often don't feel the need to get a new one as long as I still have events for the current ones.
Perhaps no game distilled a career mode to its core pieces than NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona. You start each league with a car barely adequate for it, having to save up for better parts. When you win each league, you unlock the next, but can still play the earlier ones if there's no schedule conflict.
Some thoughts I've had for a career mode are to allow the player to choose the starting year for their career starting from around 1950 up to the early 2000s. The races and vehicles available to buy each year mirror real life and used cars have realistic mileage and price for each year. Every race entered takes time out of your career so there's also the extra layer of scheduling the races and not being able to do everything, which would also counter grinding credits. Vehicle damage/driver injury also takes time, and on hard mode the driver can be killed in a bad accident. The intent is a career that's hugely replayable, with the goal of getting as much prestige as possible before your driver retires after about 30 years.
Bying used cars was SUPER cool! GT4 was my favorite ever. I never understand exacly why but this is part of it for sure!
After all these years gran turismo is still my go to racing game.
This video is brilliant. The concept of a racing life simulator is amazing and it’s exactly what I had no idea I wanted. We have to get this video into polyphony digital’s and turn 10’a hands!
My only gripe with GT4 as a child was the 6 car limit (probably a hardware limitation). It often made the track feel empty / lifeless to me. I always wished there were at least 10-12 cars on the grid.
Other than that I loved the game, still do. Definitely one of my favourites - along with GT1 & GT2, the latter being my all time favourite.
I miss Racing Modifications so much...
Man that hairline finish was a great cherry on top of the video!
I started on GT2. Tech kept getting better, GT3 came out and blew GT2 away. Then GT4 came out, I played it literally for years when I was young and had much less on my plate.
Wish I could find a way back to that happy place in my mind for sure.
I was so excited for future installments.... but..... they just never got it right again after GT4. Haven't found a replacement yet and probably never will.
You hit the nail on the head as well with the humble beginnings thing. For me... a neighbor had a Miata growing up and I always liked it. Then in my early teens. Not even... I was probably like 12... we would ride to see my grand parents. We would drive by this textile mill, and I guess one of the employees must have driven this mustang with side pipes and side skirts and a full body kit I guess. It was almost always in the same parking spot. Every time we would drive by the mill on the way to my grand parents I would look for it. If it wasnt there I always thought "dang the guy is off today and I can't see the car!"
To my point.... This game allowed me to live that young dream of owning all the different cars I ever wanted and to race them. To live the day dream. And that's the hook. Living that day dream.
Then once you're hooked, it's a natural progression. Faster cars. Bigger prizes. Eventually, race cars with sponsor stickers all over them. And it really felt like you had achieved something when you got your first race car. Then you got used to it and felt like you were in the big leagues then! Then you discovered the little indy cars.... man those were fast!
I would start new saves just to experience the progression all over again.
It's cool too how everyone's experience varies a little. That skyline race car at the end is the only one from the clips you showed that I remember also owning. It's like everyone found thier own sets of cars they liked and ran with for the play through. My progression was always the good ol miata, the Ford Mustang. The Dodge Viper. The Ford GT. Then from there between prize cars and the money I made the sky was the limit!
Great video. Thanks for sharing
I absolutely LOATHE online racing, and competitive online multiplayer games in general. If a game doesn't have a single player, I just won't buy it. For me, the challenge of beating a difficult or unique event, earning a rare reward car and unlocking new exciting locations and events is far more enjoyable than beating some random person in just another inconsequential online race rotation. There's nothing fun in the only reward being a slight change in a driver rating, especially not when your driver rating can drop lower from a single dirty driver causing an incident, than it can go up from an entire days clean racing.
I used to be a gamer, but I hadn’t touched a console for ages. I got GT7 hoping it would bring back the nostalgia of GT4, but with a fresh twist. Boy, was I mistaken.
Polyphony and Turn10 have both lost their way. The 4th games in GT and FM still stand as the goats and they've never gotten close since.
Get a cheap mini pc on sale. Then just run the ps2 emulator on it.
I dusted off the ps2 earlier this year and started a new GT4 campaign and it has been so much fun. I think I’m at 52% completion. It is a bit hard sometimes depending on the event, and the game has so much content it can feel overwhelming and grinding. But it has been sooo much fun, I’ve really enjoyed knocking out the manufacture events. It’s been a long long time since I’ve had such a positive feeling about playing a game and actually taking the time to grind it out.
Now I have the new forza on pc… it’s… terrible. 12-11-23
You can play gt4 on Your pc and have it upscaled and even add hd textures if you Want.
Also gt5 and 6 are playable on pc via emulator.
@@Heaven_Is_A_Wasteland How's PS3 emulation these days? GT4 has given me a little trouble getting to work properly at first, but after that it was fine. I'm hoping 5-6 don't give me even more.
@@ablationer
For rpcs3 you need to have god cpu especially for gt6 that thing is really demanding especially later in game when there is 20 cars on track. So for gt6 you need at least i5 7700k or amd equal and for gt6 at least 11 gen intel for 30 fps i have i5 12400 and have 40 to 60 fps in gt6.
You can also check out some of gt5 gameplay on my channel.
I remember buying a Dodge Intrepid in GT2. A Dodge Intrepid...it would hit 505hp...a Dodge INTREPID. Also being able to buy the old but gold Dodge Neon in that game, which later inspired me to buy myself a Dodge Neon after I got my license and I actually really loved that car.
Toca race driver 2 had suuuuch a fun career mode
After seeing GT4 I went out and bought a PS2 Slim package including it. My favourite racing game and now I'm tempted to hook it up and play it again!
If you have a reasonable PC I'd say emulate it rather than play it natively, that way you can at least upscale it a bit and try to make it look a bit more smooth
This is the only game I ever preordered. There was a year and a half of delays. I had so much faith in polyphony back then that every delay made me think, "oh this is going to be so awesome, take as much time as you need." These were the days before updates. Good times.
With Gran Turismo caving in to eSports, yeah, we may never see something like this EVER again, let alone a new style of career mode. I'm not saying that GT8 should be like GT4, that would be wrong, instead it would be really nice if GT8 is more of a brand new experience for single player that makes as much sense as the old career mode.
The ideal single player racing format that you described sounds awesome! I'm right there with you, I think going through the whole zero to hero racing experience, with authentic challenges, budget implications, and meaningful decisions would be incredible.
Hey Hoki! I love this video. I am a sim racer literally because I played GT4 growing up! Project Cars 2 is the only thing close I’ve found to a single player career I enjoyed. And I think it was just that, working up the ladder. But it wasn’t this car sandbox like GT4 was. I miss that.
Very good video and takes. Even though GT4 may be The Real Understeer™ Simulator™, the amount of "obscure* or attainable (at the time) cars available and laid back attitude of the game make it the perfect career mode. Even though I hate the handling, I've endured GT4 because of the charm it has. There's something special about buying a second hand car and building it in a realistic manner and going through championships with it. The license system also works very well. There's a real sense of progression and the game really respects your time where you can get on top of things in a few hours if you know which challenges to partake or just chillax and put in an hour or two after work because life happens and still have a meaningful experience. I'm tired of being bombarded by hypercars or buying top-of-the-line models a la Forza or modern GT games. Give me shitboxes to build and earn through playing the game. Good times that will never be repeated.
I found out recently that the assists being all cranked all the way up by default on every car is part of the "understeer simulator" issue. I wish I had known to turn all that stuff off back in the day lol
True also North American version has way better handling, music and is latest version of the game.
@@Heaven_Is_A_Wastelandand also has the most complete package available in GT4 until Spec II Mod comes in.
@@purwantiallan5089 PAL version has harder challenges, one more car and more songs, how tf is NTSC "the most complete package". The first time in my life I see 2 random dudes saying that the NTSC version was better than PAL lmao.
Brah went deep and doesn’t know how to turn TCS OFF 😂😂😂
Adding on to your point about linear progresson. One thing that almost every game gets wrong, is that you still progress, even if you "lose" the race.
If I come dead last in every race within a championship, I should not be allowed to continue, until I'm able to finish in a certain position or higher, over the course of the whole championship. It's no longer win to progress, but participate to progress.
For me, it was GT2. I miss Racing Modifications so much...
Crazy to think that it is apparently impossible to replicate such a seemingly "simple" formula again 20 years later.
This is how games should be made, with pride, passion and polished to a mirror finish. Not rushed out the door because they need it released now and they can patch it later. Worst part is experiencing that high standard at a young age and whilst graphics and playability have improved, the soul feels devoid of 95% of games I play today.
I agree with pretty much all of this. And I loved B spec mode in GT4. It was nice to break up the grind a little bit.
I'm actually quite surprised that none has modded GT4 style career mode to AC for example.
I feel like if we were to have another experience like GT4, then we are at the hands of indie developers as that's typically where the new ideas or more adventurous takes on gameplay come from these days
I'll just add this, one thing I would really love to see in a game is having to get in your car, whether in the pit box or paddock, starting it up, doing a formation lap, do the actual race, then the cool down lap before parking the car up where it needs to go. Crucially for the playerbase, this should be optional, but the option to have it would be really cool to me
@MuscleCarLover Some old Nascar and F1 games had you start qualifying on pit road, but they never went that far. It would be a neat idea for an option or even as a mode where all races in that mode start that way. Especially would be neat to be able to do a LeMans running start.
@@Dartingleopard I would love to have Le Mans starts, especially in something like a Le Mans game that went through the historic years.
I think rFactor had cool down laps? Can't quite remember though
Definately a GT-4 guy here. I grew up with games in arcadehalls. The consoles were like heaven at home. I'm not an online guy, I like to sit and continue my career. Unfortunately, that's not possible anymore. Thx for the Video. Glad I'm not the only one feeling this way!
GT4 has always been and will always be my absolute favourite racing game, ever. Nothing will ever beat it. It was absolutely perfect.
I was 4 when GT2 released, and was lucky enough to have a dad who had a copy. 2/3/4 really spoiled me for offline content in racing sims. Games as a service being focused on "longevity" just allows the devs to drip feed the game to us 1% at a time.. The older I get the less time I have for these games, and I find myself firing up PCSX2 waaay more often than GT7.
Totally agree with you. GT4 was hands down the best circuit racing game career I ever played.
Man this brings back good memories. Probably spent more time in this game than any other in my life.
I totally agree with the used car point. I still remember the Pontiac star fire that I raced with early on and think about it whenever I see one out in the wild. Special game.
Probably my biggest gripe with GT3 honestly. Lack of used cars, and just not many cars in general I suppose
GT4 has always been my favourite racing game until today. And after watching your video, I finally know why. Thanks a lot!❤
I definitely miss the incremental feeling of buying an ecu for a Miata, and really feeling the difference it made in the performance. The tiered system of the career was fantastic and I wish they mimicked it better in GT7, there's so much to be able to expand but they screwed themselves with a new style of career. The menu books should've been an off shoot, just additional content to the career. GT4 was put together so well, and had GT7 to build upon it's success. I just hope that the next installment learns from the current QoL issues.
I remember struggling with the license tests. When you finally pass and earn the right to race in a series that was previously inaccessible was so rewarding. You had to earn your way through this game, nothing was given!
After the first time I played GT4, nothing would tempt me to drive the Nurbringburg ever again. I am currently playing again and have won all the big races without needing that licence. I did however achieve 100% the first time I played without even knowing what B-Spec was. Those were very long days without much sleep until I learned to pause the game during the 24 hour races. B-Spec of course has many problems, particularly on the Sarthe track (which I am on at the moment). This will probably be the last time I play GT4 as my car just crashed into a wall for no reason yet again and there's still 15 hours to go but I'm still a lap ahead (somehow)...
Thumbnail is best thing what i remember as a teenager
Absolutely one of the all time greats, playing this as a young lad taught me how to race, the licenses were invaluable. The fact that you had to start with a used car and had to grind with that car for ages I look back now and think I’d love a gt4 remaster because as much as I like the new gt and forza there’s nothing to keep you coming back you get all the money you want and a gift car nearly every race there’s no reason to grind
You're absolutely right about single player mode being worth the developer investing a lot of time and effort into. If you look at trophy stats, a huge amount of GT7 players don't race online (myself included) and career mode is the main draw.
Such a good topic. Thanks. I still remember buying the used Skyline in GT4 that I slowly turned into a monster world-beater in the career. GT7 is a bore-a-thon.
You’re right bro, I especially appreciated used cars more on older sims, license in GT was a blast
17:55 - had me worried until the very end! (Laguna Seca race)
If you and Roflwaffle could get a small team together for a concept game. I bet it would get alot of backing from the single player racing community.
GT4 is the king of racing games. I was one that fully completed GT2 so it wasn't so difficult for me. I really miss those tracks like Seattle and Rome. I loved the fictional tracks much more than all the boring looking real life tracks we get nowadays.
I hella agree. For THEE longest time I've always dreamt of a race-life/lifestyle racing game! And for me it doesn't even have to be a sim but just like a really good NFS where I can also buy a house, get out of my car and walk around, and do a little bit more than JUST racing. Like you said racing life is often times about more than just the race day and it'd be cool to see that really brought to life in a game and ran with.
Nice video. I share the same love for that style career as well. I'm making a game that will have that kind of buy, build and race used cars and become the champion.
Personally I've always liked the GRID approach. Specifically the first game but I don't think Legends was a bad attempt either. A little unnecessary in production, but not a bad attempt. I really like the spoken and unspoken rivalries, the connection to your sponsors, the team building, etc. There's another game that never gets talked about and is really hard to go back to since it's only on Xbox, but Apex Racing Evoluzione had a very similar single player campaign. With the added variable of you "building your own cars" (I think they were TVR or something like it), and building your own racing manufacturer up and promoting it. There's so many ideas the industry just abandoned that were legitimately incredible.
This game still holds up. what a gem
Trying to get gold in all licenses in GT1-2-3-4 taught me, at 8 years old and up, to drive a proper racing line. By 10 years old, I was running perfect racing lines and had no friends that challenged me. It was forced but was lenient enough with the trophy system that it was still doable for the average end-of-day gamer. To achieve gold, you have to maximize what is provided for you. While the physics may be a little simple, it's still a set of physics laws you have to understand to maximize your times. I still mention the license test of old to teens and young 20s of today and recommend running golds for perfection sake. Great video man, very well put. You've got a sub
I believe there is still a very strong crowd for single player simracing experience, but it's being marginalized by multiplayer crowd who tries to appropriate the genre for themselves and push the developers to focus on multiplayer experience, disregarding the single player elements as "gamey" and "unrealistic", completely unaware - or willfully ignorant - about the fact that the multiplayer framework is just as much part of gameplay design as single player modes are.
That said, there are still very successful projects focused around immersive single player simracing. You have third party career modes for racing sims, like Racing Life for Automobilista 2. You have GPLaps channel basically coming up with his own scenarios for single player racing. You have an entire bunch of content creators focused around F1 career mode. There are simply many aspects of racing that you can only experience properly in a hermetic, carefully crafted single player environment. And I believe the genre will come around to this revelation the more people realize how detached from reality the most extreme multiplayer end of the simracing spectrum actually is, with bizarre setups, ridiculous exploits and over-the-top approaches and that it's not the be-all, end-all way to simulate real racing, that both approaches have their own unique, and equally valid ways of doing that.
Although I do see one obstacle in recreating the career mode in style of GT4, and that's just the sheer complexity of modern simulation models, which hinders the ability of any developer to actually build a proper simracing game with such a wide, varied career mode without sacrificing the quality. I believe simracing games will follow the trend of becoming more and more specialized. And I'm not against, because I believe one can still achieve a lot of depth without huge amounts of car variety.
Tourist Trophy did a very similar job with motorcycles. I got a ps2 at the lake place and still hit it up at least one trip a year.
You are spot on.
My personal GT career was GT1 through GT6, and even the poorer ones had a more thought out progression system than many newer sims.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's time to give GT4 another replay, it's been at least three years since last time.
I'll also check out the AC mod mentioned by others in the comments. At a glance, it seems the creators like the same stuff you and I like about the old GT games.
16:23 when you were saying all of this, i kept thinking about racedriver grid. One of the best singleplayer campaign along with GT4
But you are absolutely right, the racing genre got stagnant because of the lack of innovation and no real singleplayer experience. They all got a formula and will stick to it. As you said a blend of singleplayer and pvp elements can be the winning formula and i strongly suppose this will come from an indie developer, because all the big development houses will be too afraid to risk it with something new. Here's to the hope of a new resurgence of the racing genre
Loved GT4... played A LOT.
I actually won a local video store tournament back in the day where we ran the same car on the same track for lap times.
Took the whole thing by about a 3 second lead.
Felt good cuz I knew I was fast, but I kinda felt bad that I wiped the whole field by such a margin and took all the prize goodies. 🤷🏻😂 S'all good.