All the finger crossing worked -- my copy of Gran Turismo 4 (GT4) loaded up just fine. It almost hung at one point, and the DVD drive made some nasty noises before one of the replays, but the game kept rolling. I do see the screen jitter problem, but fortunately, it's only during replays or intro sequences.
I went ahead and imported my GT3 credentials into the game, which bumps your starting cash reserves from 10k to 110k. It sorta felt like cheating, but oh well -- it's built-in functionality and it meant that I could start with the car I wanted. Which was? A brand new Impreza STi Spec C of course! And what a lovely car it is. I used it to win all the Beginner and Professional races I could enter, then went shopping for the next car in my "must have" lineup: a Sileighty. Unfortunately I couldn't find one new or used, so I settled on a slightly used Silvia S15. The Silvia was used to win the Beginner FR races, which raised enough money to purchase the final piece of my killer trio: a Caterham. My assumption was that with its' amazing power-to-weight ratio and nimble size, the Caterham would own the convertible class races. But about two minutes after blowing 60k on a Caterham (the Spec C was 30k, the Silvia 10k) my joys of hitting an open track in the beautiful former Lotus were crushed by the games' evil "sorry, this is a special car" error message. What? A "special car"? What's that mean? So I tried entering another race... then another... and another.. and.. wait a minute, I can't actually drive this 60k car?
Frustrated and defeated, I hit the discussion boards, and what I found made the frustration even worse. The theory is that the good folks who decided to add new fancy features to the game decided that it would be really cool if, during the replays, you could actually see a driver in the car working the wheel and gear-box. However, a car like the Caterham shows too much of the driver, and rendering the car, the race, the crowd, the competition, and the driver equals too many polygons. So they decided the let you purchase the car and keep it in your garage -- but you can't race it. Sure, you can take it to an empty parking lot and drive around. But that's it. You can imagine my frustration. I don't care if the car has a driver! I wouldn't even complain if the driver was 3D yellow cube! I want to drive a Caterham on a race track!
Ok, so it's not that bad. The good feature planning folks decided that since you can't compete an any car that has an open top, they enabled an Arcade play mode where those cars can be driven (stock) against a single competitor outside of career mode. Woo hoo. Might as well have left the car out of the game. Seriously. Seriously! If I can't race the car I purchased in a racing simulator -- leave it out of the game! I guess I can use the photo-taking mode to take pictures of my shinny, zero-mileage Caterham.
Back to the game though, it is a fantastic piece of work. I ran through the "International B" driving test last night, then finished the first ten Driving Challenges, which were pretty nice passing maneuver scenarios. While running another race though, I realized something. I don't recall GT3 being this easy. I seem to remember that it took a little while to really get in the groove of how GT3 wanted you to drive the cars. But then I had another thought -- maybe GT4 seems easy because the physics are better? Or maybe I'm just a better driver now. GT3 came out a long time ago, and at the time, I had never actually driven a real car on a real race track. I had run some Auto-X events, but not real wheel-to-wheel, high-speed track time. Since then, I've driven in numerous track and high-speed driving events. I've spent time actually tweaking fully adjustable suspension rigs and hitting the track to feel what the change does. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the game really does reward an understanding of car setup and handling. Which, of course, is what makes it such a wonderful experience!