Seven hundred cars, nights spent tuning a suspension to shave off two tenths, and the sense that the PS2 was spitting out the real thing.

With a far more solid pile of votes, Gran Turismo 4's profile reads more clearly. Its strength is a human one: attachment, where it pulls ahead of more than two thirds of all games, with the desert island right behind. You keep it, you see yourself in it. But here's the surprising gap: how it feels in hand and the soundtrack both drop fairly low, ahead of barely a tenth of all games. For a title whose reputation rests precisely on its driving, that's a blunt verdict. Art direction, meanwhile, stays around the average. It reads like a game you cherish for what it represented, more than for what you feel with a controller today.

In racing simulation, it's a monument of its era, the peak of the PS2, the rival of the Forzas to come. But its very technical, demanding feel, pad rather than wheel, ages less gracefully than its aura.

So, who's it for? For you if you love car culture, the collecting, the memory of a sim that pushed its console. Much less if you want instant driving pleasure or a soundtrack that sticks in your head.