RUSSIATURISMO
6. Gran Turismo 4
Gran Turismo 4, the latest installment in Sony's wildly popular racing series, was supposed to allow PlayStation 2 racers to chase each other over the internet.
"Rabid fan" Seth Daam noted the game was originally promised in mid-2002. Then it was postponed to late 2003. Then early 2004. Then simply 2004. Now it's "the January-to-March window" of 2005.
"This title has been in development forever now, and a simple Google search reveals its impressive (and maddening) release history, dangled in front of this fan's greedy fingers like a carrot on a string," Daam said.
"Twelve more months of delay and they could release it for the PS3," said Peter Waldrab.
Adding insult to injury, Sony said in November that the game's online component would be dropped.
"I am tired of waiting," said Donnie Morrow.
I agree
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66195-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
well, the online play being dropped is the only legitimate complain i see, delays are common practice among any developer, and with PD you can be assured a delay isn't with out merit or because they are just lazy, they overwork, and always deliver eventually. But dropping a feature that they had allready put in the game because of worries of "ruining the GT experience" is just giving in to the whiners... (whiners that would complain that their game "looks wierd" when playing online when they play on a high latency connection.) there's even alternative methods that they didn't bother to include for those kind of people...
for me the fact that you can crash into another car in order to "brake" ruins it far more than "lag" ever will, and i'm sure any serious simulator fan would agree. why didn't they adress that instead?? oh yeah.. the whiners, if the game had the penaties enabled in all modes people would whine endlessly about how hard the game is because evry time they CRASH they get a penalty.
PD made compromises for the wrong kind of people, why? no clue, that's why they included B-Spec in the first place, because this time around the driving is going to be too challenging for the avarage joe.
aside from the BASIC online support (it's not like people were even asking for simulation mode to be available on multiplayer!, heck there's not even a garage for 2 player battles!). i have no other BIG complaints.
they could've included the basic multiplayer support (pretty much the same features that are available in LAN mode) and then if they really wanted an in depth online game they could go ahead and release the online version with full simulation mode on multiplayer, car trading, part trading, selling etc. tourneys and what not. but to me, and many other people GT4 is missing the most fun feature of them all... being able to play with more people on demand.
and for all the people that go "but GT has never had multiplayer! why do you want it!?"
i'll say this.. we've ALWAYS wanted multiplayer, but in evry other previous GT game it just wasn't possible, because of the following:
-GT1 was a PS game, not even a modem available for it.
-GT2 same deal.
-GT3 Sony made an extremley poor desicion (wich they kind of "rectified" with the PStwo) and opted not to include a built in network adapter (when even older consoles had it.. namely the Dreamcast).
-GT4... the Network adapter is for sale, and the new PSTwo has it included... and GT4 is pretty much the title evryone identifies the playstation with, and it's not included??? why not? people that don't care for it can just skip the option on the menu, and people that can't play it because of their laggy network could always even have the option disabled by software. but what about the rest of the people that have been waiting forever to play GT versus the rest of the world to see how their skills compare to them?
the answer is.. PD gave in, and screwd the competitive GT fan, all because they didn't want to confuse joe six pack....
This is a shame, because this is what out a doubt, the best sim PD has ever made, and even with this huge drawback i still can't wait to play it. (and look froward to having LAN battles... but those will be too few.. too far appart.)
there's always other stuff to put down GT4, but for the most part it's on a class of it's own. in most areas other games can only dream of matching it.
