don't forget to wipe when you're done
Btw if you were in a bad habbit of making your cars better then the AI, how would you get rid of the habbit
This:
Spend some time on licence tests, try to at least silver them, if not gold them rather than bronzing them, the additional time spent learning how to shave seconds and 1/10ths will teach you invaluable lessons about reducing you overall laptimes, and thus make you quicker without relying on a NOS bottle and stage 4 turbo to conquer all. (You'll also collect a few nice extra prizecars too!)
Most people come into GT4 looking for instant gratification of a race win and some cash to modify the car to win the next race and some more cash to modify the car to win the next race and some more cash to modify the car... and so on.
This doesn't really encourage learning the necessary driving skills to be a quick racer. Sure you can beat the AI in an overpowered car, but what happens if you race A) a human opponent with better skills e.g. in an online racing series or better still head-to-head on a LAN setup, or B) the AI (which improve a little, though not a lot, as the game goes on!) are in the same car or more modified car than you?
Only practice makes perfect, and you can go about this 2 ways, hotlap a track until you can run 10 laps, without a single mistake, wall-touch or off-track incident and set yourself lower & lower targets, or, use the licence tests, which're designed to teach you the racing skills you'll need, and have ever decreasing targets to achieve (and have some pretty nice rewards too!) Ignore bronzes. The bar is set so low for those a monkey could do them, they're just there to force you to do something to earn your licence. Aim for silvers & golds and now you're really into the realm of chipping away at 1/10ths of seconds for getting a single bend correct. Learn to string lots of bends together correctly and you'll be a quicker racer than someone who crashes every other bend but relies on massive power from stage 4 turbo and NOS bottle to make up the lost time on the straights.
GT4 also has a great indicator of challenge per race in the A-spec points system, if you're used to racing for less than 60 points per race (which is the benchmark for your car being rated as identical to the AI) then you're not challenging yourself at all (there are some notable exceptions to this) and you should try racing for higher values, try 80 or 100 to start with until you're comfortable winning races like that and then move to higher & higher points to help you improve. In most cases to win for high points without NOS, you'll have to rely on being faster than the AI through the bends, and racing without mistakes, which means knowing each track inside-out and back-to-front. It's all so well and good having a 600HP Viper, but if you're coming up to a bend at 150mph and you don't know which way the road goes, you're pretty much stuffed.
Some key pointers I'd go for:
1)
Licences. (It's big 'cos it's important!)
Gold or Silver 👍 (sod Bronze 👎) - Personally I didn't allow myself to do a single race in GT4 until I'd golded every single licence and the completed all 34 missions. It was frustrating and with no experience of the game at the first time of asking it took the better part of a month to do, however, it gave me a great grounding in the basics of the game and meant there was no need to rely on bludgeoning my way through races when I came to them.
2)
Missions - Mission 34 is hard (So you may want to leave this until you know your way around Nurburgring properly), but most others are pretty straightforward as long as you've grasped the licence basics. They teach you about overtaking, doing more than 1 lap of some tracks in anger and racing techniques such as where to pass and out-braking manoeuvers.
3)
Learn the tracks - Knowing where you're going is far more important than whether you've got 500HP and can do 200mph. 💡 You will not learn a track (especially Nurburgring) in 1 lap though, so take it 1 corner at a time until you can remember which way the track goes next. If you keep 🤬 up at a particular area on a track, take note of some landmarks, shadows, trees, distance markers, whatever, that will alert you to what's coming up so that you'll remember it next time round.
4)
Grip > Power - You're better off with same power and more grip if you're struggling. Adding more power isn't necessarily going to make life easier, except in a straight line. Racing is generally about getting round a track which has bends, thus bends and being fast through bends are important. Try upgrading your tyres first before you go bolting on a power
modification.
5)
Lose the driving aids - They're just going to slow you down and nanny you when you make mistakes. Learn to drive with them off and without making the mistakes in the first place and wahey! you're, perhaps not surprisingly, going to be faster.
6)
A-spec points - they're a great indicator of how much of a challenge it's going to be. Try to keep as high as possible and avoid B-speccing your way out of trouble, come on, you bought this game to play at being a racing driver, right? Not to have your console play the game for you? There's no necessity to collect A-spec points, but do bear in mind if you're racing for 1 point it's an indicator of massive overkill, and you're not going to win any bragging rights for that around here.
7)
No NOS - Leave it at the drag strip or in
Fast And Furious movies where it belongs.
It's got no place on the racetrack and the AI can't use it either, so it's an unfair advantage all round.
and have fun settling in. 👍
