Gran Turismo 4 (Prima Official Game Guide)

Two gripes I have with this book:

1. In the section about racing technique they explain the fundamentals of cornering. Well, there's nothing more fundamental than the Late Apex. They explain what it is, then they show an illustrative diagram that has the late apex and early apex reversed! (They show the late apex but label it an early apex, and they show the early apex but call it a late apex.)

2. They claim to give "the best racing lines for all tracks" -- which was my main reason for buying the book -- but they don't. Rather, they make lots of generalities about about various turns, like "Stay out of the dirt when possible," and "Don't let them pass you." I expected to at least see illustrations of critical turns with suggested racing lines drawn through them.

My expectations were high after my first experience with their work, which was their Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth guide. It was helpful. The GT4 guide, however, is rather...Read more

If what you want is a handy reference for some cars, an index of all cars that can be unlocked, and something very light to thumb through at your leisure, buy this book.

If what you want is what is advertised on the book -- "The best racing lines for all tracks" "Expert racing lessons to help you dust your competition" -- you'll be sorely disappointed.

The closest they come to including "racing lines" is brief mentions of a fraction of the turns on each track. Particularly bad is the Nurburgring Nordschleife coverage. Here's an example of how they describe one vast section of the course: "The third section of the course is also highly technical, with many difficult chicanes and hairpins connected to one another." That's all they say for what is approximately 3 to 4 miles of track.

The "expert lessons" appear to be completely missing. They do mention the license exams, but the text they include for each one might almost be as useful as the in-game...Read more

For something that advertises itself as the complete guide, it's completely lacking. Almost no information on tuning, way too general overview of cars w/ no discussion of various differences between the cars, pretty much nothing in the book that you can't figure out on your own.

When I reserved my copy soon after the game was released it was advertised to me by the dude at the game store as being delayed because they were spending lots of time adding lots of information to the book, so it was going to be a truly complete, extremely informative book... instead, I find out later that it was only delayed due to licensing problems and has actually been finished for months, before the game was even officially released.

It's not too poorly priced, but I wouldn't buy it if I had it to do over again. Last time I reserve a strategy guide ;)