I bought this game last week after renting Grid because this game was almost the same price as my rental (since when were rentals so expensive?) and I had heard a lot of good things about it. I haven’t really been “in to” racing games ever in my life, but more accurately I don’t think I’ve played one outside of an arcade since Need For Speed 2 on the PS1. So it’s safe to say that I don’t have much to compare them to and I’m not very good at them by default, but I wanted to drive some fancy cars so I went for it.

PGR4 does NOT feel realistic to me. It has a ton of cars, but they all basically feel like driving bricks. Also, being new to racing games I have my cars set in manual mode and the drivers feel a bit like their brains are made of bricks. Instead of shifting when the revs are in the red, they let them sit there for about 2 seconds and then shift.

The game does not feel fast. I suppose I’m still early on in my career and haven’t got any top end cars, but I always feel like I’m going about 60mph instead of 100+ and when I turn I feel like I have to slow down to about 5mph so that my car can just barely make that curve. Yes, I know I can’t make the turn at 80 or whatever, but seriously, going wide, hitting the breaks, turning hard and even before I start to get on the gas again I’m almost in the far wall with most of the cars. On top of that, most of the time when I hit the gas my cars start to drift and it starts to award me points, but I DON’T want to be drifting! Of course the opposite is true with really grippy cars, it’s impossible to drift! And some events want you to drift right after one that wants you to race awesome and so I normally go for a grippy car for the race and basically sacrifice the star based event.

Woah, big paragraph! Really though, I should have bought Grid is what it comes down to. I thought Grid was a bit to intense as I felt frustrated at it almost every time I played it because getting first place was down right hard no matter what course, what car. But the cars felt like (I imagine) they were supposed to feel. When I was racing a Zonda or the Marcielago I felt awesome because they were so fast and smooth. Then when I went to a Derby race I felt like I was in a derby.

PGR4 moves me to a different location every time, but I still feel like I’m racing bricks. I have to give them credit for the tons and tons of content they put in, but in the week that I had Grid I didn’t buy any more than about 4 cars, but I actually got to know them and learn how to use them. PGR I just wing it with each one because it’s different every race. It is a much more forgiving game.

I don’t think that I’ve stuck with it long enough yet to really say how it is. But I’m positive that it doesn’t feel like a realistic simulation, it’s more on Cruis’n level to me. Fun to win, but you don’t feel like what you’re driving really matters much. Grid had such a realistic feel that it was hard to learn and very hard to master, but so much more rewarding and lifelike that it was probably worth all that anger I yelled at it. Now, I want to try Forza 2 since it’s the other “good” racing game out there right now.