I have finished all four Gran Turismo's, all gold licenses on each despite being only an average driver and tuner. My chief weapon has been time. I try over and over until I get it. This was what made mission 34 so hard for me - that 2 minute wait sucks real bad when you have to run the test over a hundred times. If anyone wants suggestions on what to do during that wait, I've got a number of them :-)
After two weeks of dedicating my life to mission 34, I had the black formula 1 car and finally I could get down to what Gran Turismo is really all about. At this point, people seem to separate into different camps. There are the listers and cataloguers who help guide the rest of us through the game (most of whom finished GT4 last spring). There are the skill testers trying to beat the hardest races with the most under-spec cars possible or setting lap times for others to aspire to. There are the efficiency seekers trying not to spend money or buy cars; finding the most elegant solutions to Polyphony Digital's challenge. GT4 has brought out the photographers and the point accumulators too. But the camp I like is the collectors. Some collectors like to just get their hands on EVERYTHING. Some only like particular makes or eras or types - like JGTC or LeMans cars. In previous GT's, we had to have multiple memory cards to get all 4 colors of NISMO 400 R's - we needed multiple garages, multiple games - we needed massive patience! I never did win the red Lancia Stratos in GT2 because the Apricot Hill endurance race had several possible prize cars which was almost never the Stratos and you didn't have B-Spec so it was 10 times more devastating to see that you had won a repeat prize car for the 6th time. (On the other hand, you could buy a racing package for your Stratos and voila! the famous Alitalia rally car.)
First I readied my garage: anything I didn't like or didn't want was sold (or gotten "rid of") - everything else was tuned appropriately (IMO) and left washed and ready to go. No clutter. This step also involved wheel choosing that took a big chunk of time - used wheels on a 29 day cycle - very nice touch PD.
During the game I had kept watch on the used car lots through several cycles so I already had what I wanted from there (all of the NSX type S-Zero colors, NSX type R colors, Elise 190 colors etc.) but I had purchased relatively few "new" cars. So I had this lurking need to try out those dealerships. I bought an AC Cobra and a Cusco Impreza for starters, but before I could move on to some others (like the Red Bull Audi's) I somehow got sidetracked and trapped in the American Hall trying to win a good color of Plymouth Super Bird. I really hate those dark greens and the various tans that are so prevalent in the old Dodge cars. I finally won a "Lime Light" green one and thought I was happy. But when I tried it out in the Muscle Car championship, I raced against an orange one and I had to have it!
I was enjoying the muscle cars so I didn't B-spec much and found my favorite car to use was a Dodge Charger Super Bee 426 Hemi '71. I love the replays of these with their stock suspensions diving and rolling all over the place. I liked my "Citron Yella" one but thought maybe a purple one would be pretty sweet too so now I'm B-speccing the New York Endurance race and using any passable color I won to enter the muscle car races where again any passable color Super Bird would be used to run muscle car races again. Then when I ran out of new colors to run in the muscle car races it was back to the New York Enduro and etc. This took longer than you might expect! And in the meantime I developed a small obsession with obtaining the BLACK Super Bee. This was the killer. Once I had all the colors of Super Birds I wanted (8), there was no reason to keep doing the muscle car races and I started ONLY B-speccing the New York Enduro. I should have taken a picture of my garage list at this time. I had 4 pages of Super Bees and no black one. These pages didn't include the thirty or so Bee's I had discarded along the way. Thank you PD for B-spec. If you would have given me 29 colors of Super Bee's to win and only A-spec enduros to do it with, well who know what disaster that might have been. Can you imagine if there were also a couple other possible prize cars for that race in multiple colors each too? Puts alot of the frequently lodged (and often justified) complaints about GT4 into perspective!
Now when the John Elway led Broncos finally won a Super Bowl I was happier than when that Black Super Bee finally showed up, but it wasn't by all that much. It's one of those satisfied feelings where you don't jump around or even necessarily say "hell yeah!" but you're happy for quite awhile and it improves the outlook of life in general.
...but - you can only play around with them so much after you win them so I was off to get a '61 E-Type Jaguar as I had sold my ugly grey one cleaning out the garage. This is also a great car for replays. I was thinking British Racing Green, although Sherwood Green and Opalescent Silver Blue Metallic looked pretty nice too. Here we go again... this time it was Imperial Maroon that I couldn't get my hands on. Five pages of E-types later, I was watching Nurburgring replays of my various Jaguars.
I found the Europe Classic Car League was sorta fun for the Jag though it was way too easy. I was leisurely guiding my Indigo Blue E-type toward the Karussell when I noticed in the corner of my screen I was running second place. Second? Behind who? I started paying attention and the margin between me and him was growing - alot! I finished a full 35 seconds behind an AC Cobra - what the?
I changed my tires from Sports hard to Sports soft and cut his margin to 15 seconds. They put a Carmen Ghia and a Fiat 500F in the same race as an AC Cobra? This was worse than having that damn Buick Special in the Muscle Car races. Totally unfair! But I was using a pretty nice Jag, maybe racing tires would do the trick (not allowed, standard or sports tires required, reset game). Nitrous? Doesn't seem right on such a classic. Stage 1 NA not enough (for me anyway), Stage 3 overkill - Stage 2 NA tune and I stumbled into the best race I've had since I started this game in March! I will give you ONE guess how many points this race was worth.
So now I'm enjoying my Birds, Bees, and Jaguars - wondering if it's time to try out those Red Bull Audi's yet - after all, I've accumulated 72,374,364 credits screwing around with these color collections - I can buy whatever I want. But it just occurred to me that I sold my white '54 Corvette convertible because I really would prefer a blue one (or maybe black) and BTW there's also the Orange Formula One Car, and the Blue one too - I know I need those...
After two weeks of dedicating my life to mission 34, I had the black formula 1 car and finally I could get down to what Gran Turismo is really all about. At this point, people seem to separate into different camps. There are the listers and cataloguers who help guide the rest of us through the game (most of whom finished GT4 last spring). There are the skill testers trying to beat the hardest races with the most under-spec cars possible or setting lap times for others to aspire to. There are the efficiency seekers trying not to spend money or buy cars; finding the most elegant solutions to Polyphony Digital's challenge. GT4 has brought out the photographers and the point accumulators too. But the camp I like is the collectors. Some collectors like to just get their hands on EVERYTHING. Some only like particular makes or eras or types - like JGTC or LeMans cars. In previous GT's, we had to have multiple memory cards to get all 4 colors of NISMO 400 R's - we needed multiple garages, multiple games - we needed massive patience! I never did win the red Lancia Stratos in GT2 because the Apricot Hill endurance race had several possible prize cars which was almost never the Stratos and you didn't have B-Spec so it was 10 times more devastating to see that you had won a repeat prize car for the 6th time. (On the other hand, you could buy a racing package for your Stratos and voila! the famous Alitalia rally car.)
First I readied my garage: anything I didn't like or didn't want was sold (or gotten "rid of") - everything else was tuned appropriately (IMO) and left washed and ready to go. No clutter. This step also involved wheel choosing that took a big chunk of time - used wheels on a 29 day cycle - very nice touch PD.
During the game I had kept watch on the used car lots through several cycles so I already had what I wanted from there (all of the NSX type S-Zero colors, NSX type R colors, Elise 190 colors etc.) but I had purchased relatively few "new" cars. So I had this lurking need to try out those dealerships. I bought an AC Cobra and a Cusco Impreza for starters, but before I could move on to some others (like the Red Bull Audi's) I somehow got sidetracked and trapped in the American Hall trying to win a good color of Plymouth Super Bird. I really hate those dark greens and the various tans that are so prevalent in the old Dodge cars. I finally won a "Lime Light" green one and thought I was happy. But when I tried it out in the Muscle Car championship, I raced against an orange one and I had to have it!
I was enjoying the muscle cars so I didn't B-spec much and found my favorite car to use was a Dodge Charger Super Bee 426 Hemi '71. I love the replays of these with their stock suspensions diving and rolling all over the place. I liked my "Citron Yella" one but thought maybe a purple one would be pretty sweet too so now I'm B-speccing the New York Endurance race and using any passable color I won to enter the muscle car races where again any passable color Super Bird would be used to run muscle car races again. Then when I ran out of new colors to run in the muscle car races it was back to the New York Enduro and etc. This took longer than you might expect! And in the meantime I developed a small obsession with obtaining the BLACK Super Bee. This was the killer. Once I had all the colors of Super Birds I wanted (8), there was no reason to keep doing the muscle car races and I started ONLY B-speccing the New York Enduro. I should have taken a picture of my garage list at this time. I had 4 pages of Super Bees and no black one. These pages didn't include the thirty or so Bee's I had discarded along the way. Thank you PD for B-spec. If you would have given me 29 colors of Super Bee's to win and only A-spec enduros to do it with, well who know what disaster that might have been. Can you imagine if there were also a couple other possible prize cars for that race in multiple colors each too? Puts alot of the frequently lodged (and often justified) complaints about GT4 into perspective!
Now when the John Elway led Broncos finally won a Super Bowl I was happier than when that Black Super Bee finally showed up, but it wasn't by all that much. It's one of those satisfied feelings where you don't jump around or even necessarily say "hell yeah!" but you're happy for quite awhile and it improves the outlook of life in general.
...but - you can only play around with them so much after you win them so I was off to get a '61 E-Type Jaguar as I had sold my ugly grey one cleaning out the garage. This is also a great car for replays. I was thinking British Racing Green, although Sherwood Green and Opalescent Silver Blue Metallic looked pretty nice too. Here we go again... this time it was Imperial Maroon that I couldn't get my hands on. Five pages of E-types later, I was watching Nurburgring replays of my various Jaguars.
I found the Europe Classic Car League was sorta fun for the Jag though it was way too easy. I was leisurely guiding my Indigo Blue E-type toward the Karussell when I noticed in the corner of my screen I was running second place. Second? Behind who? I started paying attention and the margin between me and him was growing - alot! I finished a full 35 seconds behind an AC Cobra - what the?
I changed my tires from Sports hard to Sports soft and cut his margin to 15 seconds. They put a Carmen Ghia and a Fiat 500F in the same race as an AC Cobra? This was worse than having that damn Buick Special in the Muscle Car races. Totally unfair! But I was using a pretty nice Jag, maybe racing tires would do the trick (not allowed, standard or sports tires required, reset game). Nitrous? Doesn't seem right on such a classic. Stage 1 NA not enough (for me anyway), Stage 3 overkill - Stage 2 NA tune and I stumbled into the best race I've had since I started this game in March! I will give you ONE guess how many points this race was worth.
So now I'm enjoying my Birds, Bees, and Jaguars - wondering if it's time to try out those Red Bull Audi's yet - after all, I've accumulated 72,374,364 credits screwing around with these color collections - I can buy whatever I want. But it just occurred to me that I sold my white '54 Corvette convertible because I really would prefer a blue one (or maybe black) and BTW there's also the Orange Formula One Car, and the Blue one too - I know I need those...
), and i am still unsure as whether i have all the colours of the F1s... but a page and a half of them should be sufficient...
:tup:
