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Because of the increased amount of car manufacturers you will find yourself faced with an interesting variation of automobile controls available to race. There is definitely a major difference from driving a Japanese car from one manufactured in Britian or America. The developers have remembered us older guys and tossed in our beloved cars from the 1980s as well as including the best of the modern turbo-class vehicles. If you play through enough races there are also plenty of secret cars to unlock, including some great old Formula One cars. So what is the point of having F1 cars without a F1 championship you ask? Well if you can beat all races not including the hard difficulty levels then a new Formula One mode will be all yours.
So why oh why did I not give this game the score of 5 that many of you believe it deserves? Quite simply there is no improvement in the AI of your opponents. In the original Gran Turismo it took days to perfect the racing styles required to become a master, but master the game I did. Many people even commented that playing Gran Turismo helped them develop better real-life driving skills. The problem with GT3 is that using these exact same techniques and race tactics I have been flying through many of the races with relative ease. There's no doubt that it will take a very long time before I unlock everything in the game, but considering I cannot claim to be the king of racing games I'm sure there are players out there who will "beat" the game far faster than I ever will (at the time of this review I have gained a 74% completion rating).
The opponent cars also lack true skill through the higher difficulty levels. Their AI consists of pulling in behind you and slip streaming, which can be easily blocked, but when you pull the same trick on your opponents they do not react to stop you in any way. If you do happen to stop one of them from passing, they blindly drive straight into the back of your car instead of slamming on the brakes. After awhile I found it necessary to get in front of the pack, but once I got there the rest of the race was mine (this can even be accomplished by a lower spec car, because as long as you can accelerate to 1st place at the start of the race it's possible to hold off everyone until the finish if you know the right tactics).
Other than the AI (which isn't bad, it just hasn't advanced since the previous games in the series) Gran Turismo 3 is the complete package as far as racing/driving games are concerned. It will become the pinnacle of the racing circuit in which all other future racing games will be compared with, in both terms of graphical content and realism. The fact that the game isn't perfect is actually an exciting prospect, as it means Sony can only improve on what is already a masterpiece. I only hope the next game in the GT series will finally feature at least one HSV Holden (hint, hint).
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