Lemme set the scenario.

July 10, 2001: I am on summer vacation. I am standing in a Babbage's and the clerk is showing me the last copy of Gran Turismo 3 in the store. She has informed me that this copy will most likely sell out in the next ten minutes.

Miles away, my friend Rob might or might not have been allowed to pick up my reserved copy along with his. My cel phone is getting zero reception and someone has just come in asking if the clerk has another copy.

What do you do?

What... do... you... do?

	Shoot the hostage. Whoa.
	Whoa! I can´t believe it! He´s gonna shoot the hostage!... whoa!

Long story short, I now have two copies of the game. Since then, I gave my brother the other copy. Now, I know this harrowing tale of one man's trial of getting a video game is so good I could stop here, but there's game reviewing to be done!

Well, quick side story first. And this one's absolutely true! Before I got to play the game, I was dragged to a boardwalk in Point Pleasent, N.J. Bored, I went to a bar.

Oh! I get it! A pun! Bored? Boardwalk? Tee hee!

Shut up, bitch.

So, bored, I went to a place called the ´Tiki Bar´ and was hit on by a 37-year old Italian woman named Denise. She introduced me to her 12 year old son whom she brought to traumatize by getting drunk and hitting on guys twice his age.

She proceeded to tell me about her son growing up and going through puberty and asking her, "Mommy, when am I gonna get hair?" At this point, my mind went blank. And then she told me he was experiencing wet dreams. I kid you not. At that point I took the stirrer out of my Jack Daniels and Coke, and inserted it into my nose in an attempt to scratch out the portion of my brain that heard that.

I didn't work. I only had a seizure.

Okay, that seizure part´s not true. But this part is. I´m not kidding. She then proceeded to tell me about how when girls develop... well, let me dramatize her next words. Inexplicably, I've used the old woman from the Legend of Zelda to portray her.

You know girls, they really go from "mosquito bites" to "watermelons". [Presenting her chest] But, really, I've got more like grapefruit.

After the "my son´having wet dreams" part, I was dumbfounded, but after that, the little speech writer in my brain could only muster, "I like peas!" What can I say? Would you have expected any of this? I think not.

Oh yeah, game review. My bad.

If video games were barbecues, then Gran Turismo 3 would be something akin to receiving oral sex. From four people at once. What does that have to do with anything? I don't know. But GT3 is so good, I can only think of blow jobs and barbecues. And does society need any more?

As a matter of fact, yes. It needs this game. Let me say this.

If you are actually reading this for a review, then stop at the next sentence and following header. The absolutely amazing graphics are enough to make this game more than worth the $40-$60 price tag.

Unless you have an allergic reaction to races, fun, and let´s face it, the American Way, buy it. Buy it. BUY IT!!!

	I don´t know how cool this screenshot looks, since, I haven´t decided what it will be yet. Hopefully, my final decision will show this to be one of the coolest looking games ever. If it doesn´t, you´ll have to take my word on it.
	This is a picture of me racing in real life. Compare to the Gran Turismo pic above and you´ll realize my life has better graphics than yours.

Well, eventually, I recovered from the near visual orgasm I had over the game´s undeniably awesome intro (which at times, actually looked as if you were watching a race on television). So, I decided it was time to earn some licenses and race my asses off! (That's not a typo. I have multiple asses.)

First, I had to get my B-license. The game has a really dumb requirement - for God-knows-what reason - to get your B-license. Gran Turismo in all its incarnations, tests your ability to floor the gas, and slam the brakes. Or, to start and stop.

Twice.

I´m sorry, but is this a skill one needs to be tested on? I mean I´m training to fucking race. Will learning to come to a complete stop in a timely fashion help me to outrun other cars? God no! This makes as much sense as telling a complete stranger about your son´s nocturnal emissions before comparing your breasts to produce!

So I started, I stopped, had some laughs, and got my B-license.

But, strangely, I was only allowed into about 16 races. Hello? Game designers? I mastered starting and stopping here! I mean, that pretty much makes me both Fast and Furious! Anyhow, a vast improvement over Gran Turismo 1 and 2 are that getting your B-license is really easy in this one. In the other games, it was about as easy as convincing car-loving teenagers that The Fast and The Furious pretty much sucked ass.

I live my life by the quarter mile. Oh my God, did I just say that? Fuck, my lines suck! And my movie has like 5 minutes of action in it, tops!

Okay, so, time to spend my 18,000 game credits. Okay, this part really sucks. In this game, they took out the option of buying used cars, so you actually only have about 8 cars to choose from. My one friend bought a Subaru Alto Werks - with a whopping 63 horsepower. If you don't know anything about horsepower, then let me say this. If horsepower were lesbianism, then the Subaru Alto Werks has the horsepower of a woman reading a book with a female character mentioned in the footnotes.

My one friend bought a Mazda Miata - probably the smartest choice. I wanted to be different, so I bought a Chrysler PT Cruiser. This is Chrysler's only buyable car. It's got good HP, but it´s also really heavy, so it´s not a great first buy. Which means Chrysler´s entire lineup sucks ass. Good advertising, morons. Whatever. I entered the Sunday Cup and raced the first two races.

This picture doesn´t show my PT Cruiser. But it does show a fast car, which a PT Cruiser is something like. In the sense that watching Quantum Leap is something like actually traveling back in time.

One thing that Polyphony Digital advertised in this new game was the kickass AI. In GT1 and GT2, cars were barely capable of keeping a straight racing line, much less reacting to you slamming into them at 100 MPH. But in GT3!!!... uh... I have no idea. I blew by all the other cars, so I had no idea if the AI was improved. I really didn´t notice. Oh well.

By the way, this web page has awesome AI that I programmed myself. Just trust me.

The way I had always seen it, Gran Turismo was like a hybrid of a racing game and a Role-Playing Game, in the sense that you built up your garage and cars in the same way that you build up your weapons and armor in an RPG. More accurately, it´s a hybrid in the same sense that the Golden Girls are a mix of senior citizens and 24-karat gold. 24-karat comedy gold that is!

	Christ, Blanche, you're such a fucking slut!
	Back in St. Olaf, when we played Gran Turismo, I was almost as good a racer as Herbert, the donkey raping shit eater!

So, like I was saying, Gran Turismo is kind of like a racing/RPG hybrid. But it´s not the first. That honor (?) belongs to Final Lap Twin for the Turbo Grafx 16.

For Final Lap Twin, the researchers looked up games like Dragon Warrior and uh... Dragon Warrior 2. In those games, you were just walking along, and BAM!!!, a monster would pop into view, like in real life. You could try to run, but chances were, you´d have to fight it, kill it, steal its wallet, and use the money to buy more armor and shit. See, Final Lap Twin had a similar concept.

You´d be walking along, without your car, and all of a sudden...

Bam!

A racer would pop into view and say:

Say no to the race and...

Win the race and he gives you money. Lose it, and...

The game got even more ridiculous as you did stuff like find better tires in treasure chests. I swear I´m not making this up.

Sorry, I keep going off track here.

Another pun! Teehee! I love you Slow Beef!

Let me end this wreck of a game review.

Wreck? Like car wreck! Tee-hee!

You pixie cunt, don't do that again.

Anyhow, it´s definitely one of PS2´s must-buy games. I really can´t say anything bad, except perhaps that some might be put off by the game´s realistic (read: difficult) control scheme. And on the down side, if you do an iLink battle (via USB - internet or multiple PS2 multiplayer game) you can´t use cars from your garage, which is incredibly fucking dumb.

Also, some of your friends get really silly. One of my unemployed chums managed to get 900,000 credits in his first week of owning the game. But when you face him in your PT Cruiser and he has a Dodge Viper, rather than admitting that it´s a mismatched race, he says:

It´s not the car, it´s the driver.

Right. Commentary like that is so unfast and unfurious that I can´t even stand it. So next time you race a tricked out Shelby Cobra against a golf cart and the golf cart loses, it´s entirely your fault.

Okay, one more screenshot for the road.

	On the road? Ahahahaha!
	Urk!