Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec (PS2)

...‘meat’ of the game – Gran Turismo Mode.

Arcade mode is, as it suggests, the place to go for a quick blast of fun. Choose your difficulty level and your car, and that’s it – away you go! You can choose from a number of different race modes, including a timed race, a single, one-off race or even a two-player race.

For me, though, ‘Gran Turismo’ mode is where the real fun is at. ...
...off as a new racing driver, and must purchase a car (and obtain a racing license) in order to compete, earn more money, hone your car’s performance and progress towards the more challenging races.
Sounds easy, right? Well, believe me, this mode of play alone is worth around 80 hours, by my reckoning.

Yes, you read that right – EIGHTY hours!

In ‘Gran Turismo’ mode, there are several categories ... more

GT…two little letters that, some might argue, separate the normal, humdrum, everyday motor car, from the elite, the pinnacle of engineering, the most tub-thumping driving experience you’re ever going to have. A ‘GT’ badge on the back of your car symbolises something, it makes a statement about your car and, more importantly, its owner….

GT actually stands for ‘Gran Turismo’. The publishers, Polyphony Digital, of this third iteration of the game of the same name have really taken the whole ‘GT’ ethos on-board, to create this snarling, tyre-shredding beast of a game. Released back in 2001, this game is certainly no spring chicken – but can it still keep pole position over what’s arguably been a formidable line-up of driving simulation game releases? I’m here to find out!

To put things into perspective, and to sweeten the deal, so to speak, I’ll start by saying that this Playstation2 release is now part of its ‘Platinum’ range – meaning that the R.R.P. of the game is £19.99. For the budget-conscious (whom I count myself amongst!) this is probably going to be a big deal, especially when you consider a full-price Playstatrion2 game usually retails between £40 and £50.

For your money, you get a fairly Spartan DVD-style case, a flimsy instruction manual and the all-important game disk. The instruction manual isn’t up to much; it simply details the controls, menu options and so forth available in-game. Veterans of the previous ‘Gran Turismo’ games may well have a good idea of what’s to come, but I’ll be going into all that in-depth shortly. Gentlemen (and ladies, of course!), start your engines….

Upon loading the game, you’re treated to a frankly quite spectacular ‘medley’ of various different cars, racing round tracks. It looks fantastic, and set to a heavy rock track, it’s guaranteed to really ‘fire you up’ for a race. It’s all the more impressive when you realise that this ‘introduction’ is no film recording or pre-rendered animation – it’s taken from the game’s graphics engine. Which means that, graphically, you’ll be seeing in the game what you just saw in the introduction.

It was at this point I realised, graphically at least, that this game was going to be no slowcoach in terms of its graphics. Incidentally, the in-game music is all written by some fairly well-known rock bands – but if rock’s not your thing, you can turn the music off!

Once entering the menu screen, there are several options available – Arcade Mode, for instantly-accessible gameplay, an Options menu, a menu for manipulating information stored on your Memory Card (You’ll need a Memory Card with about 210 k free on it to save your games!) and the main ‘meat’ of the game – Gran Turismo Mode.

Arcade mode is, as it suggests, the place to go for a quick blast of fun. Choose your difficulty level and your car, and that’s it – away you go! You can choose from a number of different race modes, including a timed race, a single, one-off race or even a two-player race.

For me, though, ‘Gran Turismo’ mode is where the real fun is at. This is rather like a ‘story’ mode – you start off as a new racing driver, and must purchase a car (and obtain a racing license) in order to compete, earn more money, hone your car’s performance and progress towards the more challenging races.
Sounds easy, right? Well, believe me, this mode of play alone is worth around 80 hours, by my reckoning.

Yes, you read that right – EIGHTY hours!

In ‘Gran Turismo’ mode, there are several categories of race – Beginner, Amateur, Professional, Endurance and Rally. The names of the first three categories are as they suggest – in the Beginner category, you’ll be racing against easier opponents, however in the ‘Professional’ category, the other ‘drivers’ will be using highly tuned racing cars to great effect.

When first starting out, the game can seem rather repetitive - indeed, in a bid to earn more cash (for better cars and tuning accessories) you might find yourself racing the same races many times to win the prize money. This isn't really a huge issue, but to be honest, it did frustrate me a little in the earlier stages of the game. Still, I think it's the game's way of ensuring you only acquire the better, faster cars in the later stages of the game - otherwise it would be unfairly weighted in the player's favour and present no challenge whatsoever! Imagine driving a sports car in a race where your competitors are all driving small-engined compact family cars....get the idea?

The ‘Endurance’ and ‘Rally’ categories are somewhat different; the ‘Endurance’ races pit you in an extremely long race, often lasting two hours or more. That’s a long time to be playing a game! The ‘Rally’ category, my personal favourite, sees you race other drivers on dirt courses. The whole driving dynamic changes as the car (in true-to-life form) slides and slithers all over the track, and your ‘driving’ style must be adjusted accordingly.

Add to this, the fact that each ‘Category’ contains roughly 50 races (some single races, some as part of a championship series) and you can see where my time estimate comes from. But the real question – is it fun, or would a drive round the M25 be a more pleasant way to spend your time?

Well, the learning curve on this game is gentle enough to ensure that you won’t be throwing your Playstation2 control pad at the television and howling in frustration – at least, not at first. To compete in the ‘Arcade’ mode and the easier races in ‘Gran Turismo’ mode, very little ‘real-world’ driving knowledge is needed, making the whole gameplay experience easily accessible, providing almost immediate ‘fun factor’.

Whilst the ‘Arcade’ mode presents a decent, fun challenge, my personal favourite is the ‘Gran Turismo’ mode. Acquiring the appropriate license in order to compete (there are six licenses in all to obtain, which allow you to compete in the more difficult races) is a great way to learn how to drive ‘properly’ – you get to grips with some of the more advanced concepts such as cornering under a variety of circumstances, and dealing with different types of car. Acquiring the licenses takes the form of eight timed ‘challenges’, where you have to complete a section of a racing track within a set time.

The license ‘tests’ are not too difficult, and acquiring the various licenses allows you to compete in races which have larger prizes – again, essential if you want to purchase new cars and tuning parts for them.

Which leads me rather nicely onto the selection of cars on offer…..

Firstly, let’s look at the negative side of the selection on offer. Firstly, there are only about 150 cars available (considering there were roughly 400 to acquire in the previous ‘Gran Turismo’ game) and although this initially seems like a great selection, the cars are not all high-performance machines – indeed, some of the lower-priced cars that you’ll be using early on in the game are fairly standard, everyday cars (think BMW 328Ci, Mazda MX-5, Alfa Romeo 156) that you won’t be using later on in the game, when the competitors are all driving race-tuned touring cars!

The selection of manufacturers isn’t that great, either – you do have the usual multitude of Japanese manufacturers (Honda, Suzuki, Subaru and Mitsubishi) and a decent range of European cars (Lotus, Audi, Peugeot), but the bigger ‘supercar’ manufacturers (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche) are noticeable by their absence.

In contrast to this though, you’ll be pleased to hear that a great number of pre-tuned, race-prepared cars can be won by winning races. There are even some old 1980s cars available to be won, which you’ll probably be reliant on in the earlier stages of the game. Another rather unimportant, but nonetheless enjoyable aspect of the different cars is that they all sound different – no two engines sound the same, and the engine noise changes depending on how you modify your car!

My favourite point about the cars, though, is that later on in the game, you can win Formula 1 cars for winning the more difficult races. These cars are not ‘branded’; no mention is made of any particular manufacturer. But these beauties are based on the 1980s Formula 1 cars – at a time when these cars were tuned up beyond belief.

A final word on the car selection – because the game was released in 2001, some cars (e.g. BMW Mini, Ford Focus RS) are conspicuous by their absence. It’s a shame, granted, but it shouldn’t detract for your enjoyment of the game. There are more than enough tuning options available to customise each car – although unlike many recent game releases, this doesn’t include items such as bodykits, spoilers or neon under-lights!

In fact, tuning and honing the performance of your cars is an essential skill later in the game. Many mechanical parts can be replaced on the car, to give superior performance, increased traction and just some plain old-fashioned power.

Fitting some of the components requires them to be tuned; for example lowering the car’s ride height is possible by purchasing a racing suspension kit. You can then choose how far you want to lower the car – lower it too far, and your dampers won’t work as well as they should – keep the car’s ride height too high, and your traction to the road won’t be as great.

Another example of how polished this game is – making physical changes to your car will result in the car appearing differently on-screen – so, for example, if you lower your car, it will appear in the race, scraping the track!

Fear not – the advantages and implications of changing your car’s parts is fully explained in-game (although sadly not in the instruction manual) and it’s this deeper, more technical side of the game which would be most likely to put off ‘casual’ players. In the later, more difficult sections of the game, tuning your car is absolutely vital – even down to the compound of the tyre you choose for the race!

In the ‘Arcade’ mode, you never have to think about tuning your car – which makes that portion of the game much easier to get to grips with, and fortunately it has sufficient depth to keep you involved if you don’t fancy sitting there for half an hour, pondering about ride height, camber angle, damper bound and gear ratio!

My only complaint, really, lies in the fact that there isn't a great variety of tracks. Don't get me wrong, what's there is good - however I did notice some re-hashed tracks from the previous 'Gran Turismo' game - as well as a really well-modelled (and staggerinly accurate) Monte Carlo (Cote d'Azur) track.

In fairness, though, I really think there’s something in this game for everyone, from the player looking for some lightweight driving fun, to the racing purist who eats, sleeps and breathes motorsport. The gameplay mixes arcade-style action with realism in terms of driving behaviour – for example, if you hit a wall at 100 miles per hour, your car won’t shatter spectacularly – you’ll just come to an abrupt halt and carry on. At no time is the pace of the game interrupted; the gameplay is always kept bubbling along nicely and doesn’t fall flat at any time. Combine this with an intuitive control system (and compatibility with the ‘Steering Wheel’ and ‘Pedal’ controllers!) and you’ve got all you need to get into the driving seat and start winning races.

My only complaint about the gameplay, really, would be the behaviour of the computer-controlled cars – at times it seems as though they’re affixed to your car by some odd ‘rubber-band’ system, so they never go so fast as to lose you completely, but it’s very difficult indeed to gain too much distance on them.

Even though this game is some three years old, I can honestly say that it’s still a worthy addition to anyone’s gaming collection. There’s an enormous amount of depth in this game that I haven’t even covered here; recent releases in the same genre (e.g. ‘Need for Speed – Underground’) have proved that, whilst being excellent driving games, they can’t really offer the blend and instant ‘plug and play’ fun that ‘Gran Turismo 3’ can. Plus, of course, this game is suitable for all – no swearing, violence or destruction mean that it’s rated ‘3+’ by ELSPA – suitable for players aged three years or over, although I might suggest that any prospective players have some sort of interest in cars and motorsport!

Three years old it might be, but there’s plenty of mileage left in this game…..I'm awarding this game an 8.5 out of 10 - reflected here as five stars. At £20, it's an absolute bargain, and with so much gameplay and readily accessible fun, there's very little about this game that would persuade me not to recommend it. If you're after a decent driving game, you could do better than make a pitstop to collect a copy of 'Gran Turismo 3'.
 

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