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> Results: Gran Turismo 4
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If I had to pick a console game to use to try to teach a teenager how to drive a car under stressful conditions, I would go with Gran Turismo 4. Tagged as "the real driving simulator", Gran Turismo 4 is the latest in a line of high-quality, graphically impressive, immersive racing titles. Unsurprisingly, it is a must-have for fans of realistic racing games. Its depth, difficulty, and presentation make it only one choice among many for someone looking for a "good racing game".
The first thing you notice is the impressive graphics. Cars look sleek and smooth while driving through scenic and detailed environments. Sure, the racing fans lining the streets are only two-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but the cars and the scenery make it enjoyable enough to sit back and just watch. With all the pretty graphics flying around, there is the occasional graphics glitch and/or slowdown, but it occurs only rarely and doesn't distract from the gameplay. The opponent car AI is reasonable and there is a new feature that discourages players from performing "bumper-car maneuvers" in order to win a race. In many races, if you hit a wall or an opponent at too high a velocity, you are penalized for up to five seconds forcing you to run in first gear for the duration of the penalty. While it isn't overpowering, it does penalize you enough to keep collisions to a minimum.  The game can be quite challenging. Unlike plug-and-play styles of arcade racing, this game requires some thoughtful control. Try to run through a course without taking your thumb off the gas pedal and you'll spend most of your time spinning out of control. Thankfully, the game comes with several training courses made up of a series of lessons. Make it through all the lessons in a course to earn a new license. This unlocks new racing modes and difficulties that usually reward you with a new car. One of the high points of the game is the huge, intricate system of earning cash in order to buy improvements to current vehicles or purchase new models. Placing well in any race will earn you a few hundred or thousands of dollars you can use to improve your cars. Give a car a turbocharger, improve its drive train, or even make some weight reduction modifications. Winning a series of races will reward you with an entirely new car to add to your stable. Winning a series race and selling off the cars you win is one of the best ways to earn large sums of money to buy higher-end upgrades or cars. A small problem arises if a strategic driver focuses on quickly earning enough money to upgrade his or her car to where it is significantly better then the opposition vehicles, making it even easier to continue winning races. This can work for awhile, but eventually the more difficult races will require even better cars and the game will become challenging again ﾖ at least until the next level of uber-upgraded car is purchased. If you find the racing difficult, one way to earn cash is to race in B-Spec races. Some races allow B-spec mode which is basically a coaching mode. You select and outfit your car in all aspects and then just tell the car how aggressive to drive throughout the race. The race can be watched at several angles, but one of the nicest features is an abstract representation of the entire course with each car marked with a triangle. In this abstract mode, the race can be sped up to three and sometimes five times faster than normal in order to complete longer races in a shorter period of time. While a good player driver should be able to have a better performance than the AI driver in B-spec mode, it is a handy mode for quick wins and great for beginning players who don't quite have the driving skills but have still managed to put together a pretty competitive car.  While it can result in some imbalanced races, buying and upgrading your cars is at the heart of the game and is one of the best features. Slowly earning enough cash to put together a winning vehicle can be quite fun. Since many races require specific types or styles of cars for entry, once you have a tidy sum of cash on hand, you can begin buying cars and customizing them to win specific races. This leads to one of the largest problems with the game ﾖ navigating menus. The main game menu is a small map of small cars, racing arenas, and a few other landmarks. The arenas represent groups of races that can be accessed such as off-road racing, beginner's races, and endurance racing. The cars are painted in colors of the flag from the country they represent. So, the white car with a large red dot represents all the Japanese auto manufacturers. To buy a car of a specific type, you find the car that represents that car manufacturer's country, enter a menu containing a list of all the manufacturers based out of that country, hop into a menu specific to that manufacturer where you can finally choose the menu that lists all the available cars from that company. Once you buy the car, you usually have to return to that particular manufacturer in order to purchase any later upgrades. So, the next time you want to upgrade your car, you need to jump through three menus past the main screen just to price out possible improvements. Since each menu has a bit of a delay while the PS2 searches through the program disc, navigating between car manufacturers can become quite a chore. For example, if you just won a race and want to spend some of your hard-earned winnings, you have to back out to the main screen, hop over to the correct country, delve into the right manufacturer, and then enter into their upgrade shop. With each menu taking a few seconds to load, you end up spending a significant portion of your time just hopping between menus. It gets even worse if you want to buy a copy of a spiffy car that just soundly beat you in your last race. If you don't know the country of origin of Panoz, TVR, Saleen, or even the maker of an MG TF, you might spend a bit of time searching. Car aficionados will not have any problem, but anyone unfamiliar with the more obscure makes of cars might get frustrated. Finally, many races have very specific entry requirements. This is great since it challenges a player to build up a stable of many different high-quality cars. However, since there is no central "car shopping list", just finding a good car that qualifies for a particular race can be difficult. The basic car limitations like engine location or convertibles only are easy to meet, but some limitations are more specific and hard to meet. For example, there is a race for only very tiny (short) cars, but since car length is not displayed in the car purchasing menu, it is sort of a hit or miss purchasing cars until you come across one that might qualify. While all the menus add a bit of realistic depth to car purchases and upgrades, a handy massive database of cars available would have been greatly appreciated and would have cut down on a lot of the down-time generated by menu navigation. In the end, Gran Turismo 4 is pretty much the game to play on PS2 for a realistic driving experience. Fundamentally, it hasn't changed too much from the previous version, but it is noticeably better with a few significant changes like up to 6-player racing over a LAN and the B-spec driving management mode. It is a highly recommended game for serious driving aficionados and recommended for racing fans in general. The car collecting and upgrading is fun for more general gamers but the realistic driving controls may be frustrating to some. The heart of the game isn't a "pick up and go" style game, but a driving game with a serious amount of depth. Fortunately, the arcade mode is available for those times where you want to challenge a friend who isn't used to the complexities of the standard game. 
The only thing to be concerned about with GT4 is the complexity of the game itself. It focuses on racing and racing only, so the producers never need to stoop so low as to add in gratuitous "car babes" or any other sort of incongruity into the game. If you're ok with your child racing a virtual car around virtual streets with little or no violent consequences to crashes, then you shouldn't have any problems with the game. Aside from the arcade mode, the game can be fairly difficult and unforgiving with the realistic driving controls. Younger children might find it a bit too difficult or frustrating, but middle school or older should have the patience to pick up the necessary driving skills to do well in the game.
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