For those who don't know, the great adversary of Gran Turismo has always been the Ridge Racer series from Namco. But it's true too, that differences between these games have always been deep.

Gran Turismo features an extreme realism, while Ridge Racer is a more fanciful game with imaginary cars splendidly drawn by Namco's artists. Ridge Racer V, developed in a few months, has been the first great racing game on Ps2. On my opinion, critics and reviewers treated this game too badly. Overall, the graphics were amazing and the gameplay was simply fun. But it looks like Gran Turismo 3 is destined to become the most extraordinary racing game that players’ eyes have ever seen.

The Game

All the gameplay modes of Gran Turismo 2 will be back in GT3 A-Spec, but they will be brought to a new level of realism. In Gran Turismo 3 there will be a new enhanced Rally Mode, in which the cars will perform realistically on the disconnected roads of the circuits. In other words, they will not keep on going like on a normal asphalt road. The multiplayer mode has been redesigned to take full advantages of the new console. Besides the normal multiplayer split screen mode, players will be able to connect up to 3 Ps2 using three I-Link cables (also known as Firewire among Mac Users). Obviously to realize this small gaming network you’ll need three TVs and three copies of the game. Probably not everyone will have the friends or the money to play frequently this game mode, but additional features of this sort are surely welcome.

In GT3 A-Spec there will be at least 19 tracks; we have a complete list and all the maps of the courses in the U.S. version of the game, which should be the same featured in the European version. Just go at the end of this preview to check them.

The Cars

In Gran Turismo 2 there were about 580 different cars, while in Gran Turismo 3 there will be “only” 160 different models to choose from. Even if this could bewilder some of the fans of the previous instalment of the series, the complete truth is that the three-dimensional car models featured in Gran Turismo 3 are built with a huge number of polygons: 4000 against the 300 used for the cars in Gran Turismo 2. This obviously involves an enormous job on each of the new cars, and it seems that it takes two weeks to design and model a complete playable car in GT3, while in GT2 each car required at most 24 hours of hard job. The result is that GT3 vehicles are absolutely perfect copies of real cars.

The bodies are marvellously defined; the reflections of light and surroundings are, in a word, unbelievable; it’s difficult to distinguish a screenshot of the game from a real photo. Obviously, as it has happened with GT2, the developers have made several road tests of the various cars and they have reproduced their performances in the game. Whether you have chosen a Toyota or a Volkswagen New Beetle this should exactly behave like the original model. I will never get tired repeating that Gran Turismo 2 seems an exact copy of the real world! It will probably be the first game to show life-real views.

Each car will have a special selection screen which will illustrate its characteristics and potentialities. There will be also various movies supplied to Polyphony by the actual car manufacturers (for a complete car list, go at the end of this preview).

Sounds

Also from this point of view the game will probably be exciting. Paying honour to their society name, developers have recorded the engine roar of each car in the game. During the races you’ll be able, in theory, to recognize the adversaries from the noise of their motor. The era of racing games in which the only sound effect was a continuous indistinct humming that had to simulate the sound of a whole autodrome is finished. Thanks to games like Gran Turismo 3 and Ridge Racer V, in which great care is saved to cars noises, not only the graphics but also the sounds of next generation games will make us happy.

The U.S. version of the game will have numerous songs from artists of international fame, even though various songs from the Japanese original version will be present too. The player will be given the possibility to choose a series of songs and to create a personal songlist for its competition.

Graphics

Polyphony has created a nearly perfect graphic engine. Aliasing and pop up issues seem to be completely absent in Gran Turismo 3; the game runs smoothly at 60 frames per second without any sign of slowdown even in graphically complex situations. The cars have shining bodies that reflect all the objects surrounding the road, are they trees, buildings or street lamps.

The environmental effects are entirely recreated in real time. The sunlight is splendid, and a demo recently shown by Polyphony, that exhibited two cars racing on a wet street, was an example of Ps2 and Gran Turismo greatness. The reflections in the roads are exactly as they should appear in reality; the wet roads never appear perfectly flat, thus showing reflections of cars’ brake lights and headlights in different ways according to the irregularities of the paving.

The backgrounds are well realized. We have seen images from the Rome circuit, surely one of the most complex in the game, and we can easily say that developers have created beautiful warm tones for the sky and for the buildings; the tree-lined streets are gorgeous; also street lamp and other typical elements are exact copies of those seen in the real city.

In Gran Turismo 3 there are night races too; the power of the console become evident in the halos of light around the lampposts, in the beauty of the bright posters along the road and in the reflections of these environmental elements on bodies. Ridge Racer V had some very solidly built car, and many good light effects on the car bodies, but they were “generic” fake reflection, not based on the real environments. Anyhow, Namco’s work was good indeed considering the brief period of development. In the Rally Mode of GT3, racing on the uneven muddy roads you’ll see splendid clouds of smoke and dust rising around your vehicle which will be covered with dirt and slush.

We can think indeed that Polyphony’s Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec will be the game that, once and for all, will drive away all the dark shadows (aliasing issues, pop up problems, vram bottlenecks) which enveloped the new Ps2 since its birth, and that, together with games like Silent Hill 2 or Metal Gear Solid 2, will throw more than a cloud over the future of Microsoft’s X-Box.

Good luck, Bill.