I just started playing Gran Turismo 4 again as I've never actually completed 100% of the game before and I've decided I'd like to do that, even if it does take a few months (GT4 is a fucking LONG game).
I just remembered why I never did 100% the game before though, GT4 is the only Gran Turismo game (to my knowledge) that has "Driving Missions". A collection of 34 races that have arbitrary challenges. The first ones are kinda easy as they're basically just "go faster around this corner than the car in front of you", but my god the difficulty ramps up HARD.
But the worst missions are the "1 Lap Magic!" missions. It's basically a collection of 10 missions where you're driving a usually pretty decent and fast car and you have to beat a bunch of older, historical cars from the same manufacturer. The catch is those slower cars start the race MUCH further ahead of you, so you're basically even with them and in order to win you have to complete 1 really well-driven lap while overtaking all five opponents. The thing that sucks though is that for SOME FUCKING REASON, some imbecile at Polyphony Digital decided that the player should be forced to wait at the start line anywhere up to TWO MINUTES before you can actually start the race so that the other cars can get a head start.
Let me remind you that these missions are quite difficult because you have to be pretty precise in your driving, any mistake often means you have to restart the whole race. So every reset means you wait anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes (depending on which mission you're on) before you can even put in another ATTEMPT. These missions are so difficult that even some of the better Gran Turismo players struggle with them.
The worst mission of all is infamously the last mission (naturally) as it's 1 lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife, one of the longest motorsport circuits in the world (at just over 14 miles) and the longest track in the game. It takes about 10 minutes to beat the track in the game, so you can imagine the PAIN that there is if you mess up and have to restart this mission but then you have to wait TWO MINUTES before you can actually start.
To put into context how difficult Mission 34 is, there's a GameFAQ's guide that goes into detail on how to beat each mission, and the section for Mission 34 is EIGHT PAGES LONG. As I said before, even the best Gran Turismo players struggle to beat this mission consistently.
Why couldn't they make it like every other mission in the game? There are missions like the 3-lap races and the Slipstream Battles where the cars start ahead of you but you're already driving so you don't have to wait at the start line. It literally makes NO sense whatsoever.
I hope that whoever at Polyphony Digital made it this way got fired.
