I took a bit of a break from FF12 by returning to yet another old PS2 game — Gran Turismo 4.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to go back to an era that didn’t have analog triggers, and I found myself lurching all over the place, unsure of where the braking points were, and even the progressive and 1080i modes couldn’t really make the graphics bearable after all the recent HD racing games.

So, instead, I’ve been trying to progress in my alternate career path. I had two save games set up, one for purely A-spec racing (actual driving by me directly), and one for purely B-spec racing (using the director mode to control an AI driver). My goal with the B-spec save is to see just how far into the career mode I can get using only cars won from races, and not buying any. I was up to around 46% completion, but I started to run out of races I can still do. A huge number of the one-make races are out since the cars permitted aren’t available as rewards, and there are a few high-end races where getting a winning car build together is a bit tough.

To get a little farther, I loosened the rules a bit and allowed myself to manually run events that aren’t available in B-spec mode anyway, like license tests and the rally events. That let me do some extra one-make events, and I’m now at about 51%.