The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

I suck

In between good solid bouts of Kingdom Hearts and constantly forgetting my umbrella everywhere I go, I've kinda lost the time and will to play Gran Turismo 3 anymore.

I knew that I wouldn't get very far, but I thought at least winning a championship on Beginner Level to get to see the credits would still be feasible, but alas, no cube-shaped gambling instruments.

I know that my skills at racing games that require actual driving behavior are not nearly as good as, say, my skills at racing games that require Red Shells to be tossed at an opponent, but man, difficulty is steep in this game.
And this is beginner level. I thought the game got really hard really fast and it really forces you to upgrade your car(s) and improve your skills as soon as possible or you stand no chance at all.

And this is immediately my major gripe with this game, it is extremely inaccessible for novices, laymen, beginners and losers like me. You get a couple of driver's license tests and when you finish them you're more or less expected to drive like a pro. But more often than not, the problem is not so much your driving skill as it is the fact that your car is just underperforming when compared to the competition.
So you need to earn lots of credits to tune your car into a racing monster, and then, once you win a car that has better capabilities, you need to do it ALL over again and make it as strong as possible, win that cup that was previously out of reach, win yet another new car, and start from scratch again.

It is EXTREMELY High Maintenance, I'm talking Paris Hilton level here, only without the saucy videos. You do get better quality graphics though.
Upgrading your car costs a LOT of money, which is not simply gathered by winning a tournament once and moving onto the next. No. You need to do the same races, over and over and over and over and OVER. And then one or two more times.

Whether you are up to this task is completely up to you, and it all depends on how much you are into games like this. There is not a single fraction of doubt that this is one of the finest Racing Games ever made, a fact proved by how I, as a total racing ignoramus, incredibly enjoyed myself for as long as my patience lasted.
I never got angry or frustrated with this game, only with my own lack of skill (there's a lesson to be learned here, mr. Bush!) and I simply could not muster the strength or willpower to keep on trying and racing to get ahead.

There's not much negative that I can fairly say about this game, other than that it really is a LOT of work. It totally excells at what it does and you'd be hard pressed to find any other game that pulls it off with as much grandeur and finesse as Gran Turismo 3, it's just not quite beginner-friendly enough to make it fun for the entire family.
Speaking of which, my mom can totally kick my ass at this.

Oh, no, wait! You know what? The soundtrack is HORRIBLE. It'll make you want to kill yourself. I've been told there's a huge difference between the Western version and the Japanese one, but the Japanese one has a really terrible terrible choice of music. I tell you, the music is so bad that even if the American version is a huge steaming pile of dung, it's STILL a huge difference with the Japanese version.
Think about that. No, THINK about that, damn you.

It's all licensed and it's all total and utter crap. The short jazzy jingles and intro's that were created especially for the game are pure Mozart compared to the drivel that drones out of the boxes during racing. Fortunately, you can turn the BGM off, and even when you don't it'll be largely drowned out by the roaring of the engines, so it's almost as if the makers knew that they were providing a shitty soundtrack.

That's only the music though. Otherwise it's all good. I've been told by people who have their driver's license that it's not exactly the most accurate depiction of racing, not as much as the game claims it to be in any case, so I guess you'll still have to play Wipeout if you want pure realism.

If you ARE good at racing games and are a fanatic, there's so much this game has to offer, and you can while away those little hours deep into the night playing this and nothing but this and still not get bored.
I'm going to give this a 9.4.

Now release a Helpless Moron Version already!

posted by Ingen! @ 9:46 PM