I can' t believe nobody but me has played this game. Or at least cares to talk about it. I rented it a few weeks back because I wanted to see the Xbox-killing graphics it was supposed to have (it doesn' t kill the Xbox, by the way) as well as some of the other new features. While the graphics are improved, they are still jag-city. What' s more is that the game supports HDTV 1080i which helps smooth a few of the jaggies out (only a few, but still...) . 1080i also means 16:9. This is the only way to play the game. Unfortunately when the race is over and it' s time to select from a menu, the game reverts back to 480i. Apparently the PS2 is powerful enough to run millions of polygons per second in psuedo-HDTV, but asking it to show a simple text menu in HD is out of the question. The programmers messed up there. Constant resolution switching is not a great thing for many TVs, but what does Polyphony care? Oh well, it was only a rental.

The music sucks ass. It starts out with the same operatic music that was in the Japanese version and suddenly turns into... Van Halen' s " Panama" which was written in 1756. The good music from the Japanese version has been removed and instead we get licensed crap. Ug! Sony is starting to turn into EA with their horrible music selections. What' s more is that there was crappy, wimpy music in the Japanese version as well (from a different composer) and THEY LEFT THAT STUFF IN!

As for the game itself, it' s pretty slow and prodding. Go to earn a license and take a test. Then go to the next test. Then the next test. Then another test. Yaaaawn.... and it' s another test... then an asinine COFFEE BREAK! I hate coffee. And you don' t even drink any coffee... instead you take another test which must be completed but doesn' t count. This means you are halfway through your tests. Try not to fall asleep.. it is hard not to. The handling is OK but the actual racing action never reaches adrenaline-pumping levels. I imagine gran Turismo fans sit around and talk to each other while playing the game saying things like " Good show old chap. Brilliant!" The control of the cars is not accurate since I have never seen a real car be controlled by a PS2 controller. teh suck. And I ain' t sinkin' money into the tiny little steering wheel they have for it. Anyway if you like being bored, this game is for you!

There are some cool options like photo mode which let you take pictures of your car. the PS2 actually renders this in very, very high resolution (takes it a few seconds to render the frame). This can then be saved to a PS2 memory card, a USB storage device, or printed directly to a USB printer. I couldn' t wait to try this out, so I had to endure earning at least one car. I postioned my car and snapped the pic. SAVING TO USB DRIVE ------- USB DRIVE NOT DETECTED! What the hell? I tried both Compact Flash and Smartmedia and neither was recognized by the PS2. OK. I can still print it right? I connect my printer. PRINTING ----- PRINTER NOT CONNECTED! WTF? The PS2 can' t even recognize an HP printer? HP' s are some of the best printers out there. Then I realized something. My USB storage devices and printer were not made by Sony. How nice of them. Oh well.

In a releated story I rented Project Gotham 2 for the Xbox and it sucks ass.