A throwback to PS2 and Gran Turismo 4

I’ve been playing GT4 for about a year now, maybe two. Recently, I’ve discovered some ways to ‘cheat’ the game. Since I’ve never come across these particular techniques before, I thought I would outline them here. I’ll add to this as time goes by but I’ll give you a few now. I’ve just been able to purchase the Black Cars in the used car lots on day 1394, I missed them the first time. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them since they can be beaten quite easily.

Tip 1. If you want to test out a car in a race but don’t want to upset your win/loss percentage, simply turn the game off before you back out to the main screen. Let’s say you are in the Japanese manufacturer’s area and you trick out some kind of Nissan. Race all you want, change your settings, add more stuff to the car but DON’T back out to the main screen! As long as you stay in the Japan world, or any other for that matter, nothing you do in there is saved until you back out to the main screen. Nothing is the key word. If you win a race and turn the game off, the win isn’t saved. If you trick out a car and get all the settings right and turn off the game, nothing is saved. This can save your bacon or ruin a good race! In the Missions area, or any other area for that matter, make sure you back out to the main screen in order to save your efforts.

Tip 2. May the force be with you! In the last couple of weeks I’ve been in some one make races where I just can’t seem to tune the car to get the win. I’ve come close but haven’t been able to grab the checkered flag. What I’ve discovered is that a good old demolition derby technique works just fine. Ram the leader! If you can get close enough to the leader, usually on a corner, ram him hard. Drive him off the track and scoot on by to win the race. This definitely isn’t kosher, or racing, or even nice, but it works. You can also do this in the SpecialConditions area when you are just a bit underpowered. Yes, you will get hit with a 5 second penalty but if you are hogging the lane, the guy isn’t going to get by you anyway.

Tip 3. If you have cars  just a bit ahead of you, you can drive much deeper into a corner by ramming the cars ahead of you. You can also use other cars to prevent a slide out on a tight corner, just get beside them and use their car as a bumper to make the corner. If you drive them off the road, even better!

Tip 4. If you get a car that you can’t handle too well, use the B Spec driver to win the race. I was racing the Lotus series this week and, for the life of me, I couldn’t control the Elise. Maybe I had it set up wrong but it was out of reach for me. Enter the B Spec AI and all of a sudden I had a winner. The AI could handle the car much better than I could and won the series.

Tip 5. If you need cash, enter the second Special Conditions race, the Malfi one, with a decent car such as the Cadillac that you win in the first Special Conditions race. The car you win, the Toyota rally car, can be sold for about $250,000 dollars and you can win it as many times as you want. Total time is about 20 minutes for that money, depending on the car you enter. Clear the winning record and race again. Then sell the car you win to build up your cash reserves. This is also a great way to practice with different cars. Yesterday I won it in the Land Rover and, believe it or not, the LR handled quite well.

I hope this helps someone out there in the ether. Let me know if you got something from all of this.