Pros: Amazing pick-up-and-play bike racing game. An instant classic that puts other bike-racers in the shade.
Cons: If you're not into motorcycle racing, this doesn't have the same universal appeal as GranTurismo4.
The bottom line: Well thought out addition to the Gran Turismo line of games but this time with motorbikes. Totally different racing style, but every bit as anjoyable as GT4.
This game took me completely by surprise - I had no idea it was being worked on and no idea that it had come out until I saw it advertised on Speed TV last week. That's one in the eye for Sony - better advertising would have helped.
I'm a huge GT4 fan, and all I needed to see in the advert was that (a) it involved motorbikes and (b) it was written by Polyphony Digital.
The title of my review says it all - this is quite literally Gran Turismo 4 but with motorbikes. The tracks are the same, the menus are nearly identical, the gameplay is identical apart from the fact that you're on a bike. And I say this not in a negative way. If you've played GT4, Tourist Trophy is a pick-up-and-play game with little or no learning curve.
There are two basic modes - same as GT4 - Arcade mode which is a softened-up version of the game where you pick a bike and race, and the far more engrossing Tourist Trophy mode - basically the career mode.

Gameplay
You start by earning licenses by doing license tests - same again as GT4. The more licenses you earn, the more career mode is available to you. This is where TT diverges noticably from GT4 though. In GT4 you have to earn money by winning races to get the cars you want. In TT, there is a "challenge" mode. Basically, you pick the bike you'd like to have in your garage, and the game sets you a challenge. Pass the challenge and you get the bike. This simple change makes the game very playable. Once you've acquired the bike you want or need, you can enter the various races and championships. Winning these gives you more bikes for your garage, or riding gear for your wardrobe.
The bikes have nowhere near the number of tuning options as the cars in GT4, but they don't need them. You have basic suspension setup, gearing, brake setup and exhaust type, and thats it.
The riding gear is a basic choice of helmet, bodysuit, gloves and boots - it's more of an aesthetic thing and has nothing to do with gameplay.
There are a few rider options that you can stuff into predermined saved rider styles. These allow you to change things like how much you roll your head and body, how far off the bike you slide in corners to get your knee down and so on. There's also a Supermotard style where you basically stay sitting up and use your feet out on the road as a stability assist. Obviously Supermoto mode is only really useful when you're riding the Supermoto bikes included in the game.
Sadly, one thing that is carried through from GT4 that wasn't welcome is the moronic AI of your opponents. It really doesn't matter where you are, they will circle the tracks as if on rails, to the point of pushing you out of the way if you're in the wrong place. It's a shame, and one of the downsides of this game.
Apart from that, most of the tracks from GT4 are present, so the learning curve is shallow if you've played that game. There's a couple of new ones, plus some nice little surprises. In GT4, on one of the Japanese circuits, there's a spurious chicane that you never use. Turns out that it's used in TT - they cone off the straight track and force you into the chicane instead. Clever.

Controls
The controls for TT have two settings; basic and advanced. In basic mode, one button controls both the front and rear brake. In advanced mode, they're split into two buttons. Apart from that, the other controls remain largely the same. And unadvertised feature is moving the left control stick (steering) up and down. This shifts your body weight on the bike and allows you to perform wheelies and stoppies, as well as allowing you to totally screw up a corner and slide off because your weight was in the wrong place.
Apart from that, you're basically looking at a throttle button (or use the right stick for throttle / brake) and a "look back" button. Simple. Epinions doesn't like hotlinks but if you copy / past this into your browser, this is a URL of a monster stoppie performed for the camera at the Seattle circuit : http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4428/95/1600/IMG_0001.jpg

Graphics.
As with GT4, the graphics really shine in TT. With the PS2 in its last days, you'd be hard pressed to look at TT running and not think it was running on PS3 hardware. Except that at the time of writing, the PS3 is still 6 months away. The bike models are amazingly detailed and articulated in all the right places. The rider models are great and move just like you'd expect. When you use the 'look back' button during a race, in the race replay you see the rider tuck under and look back at his opponents - a neat touch. The tail lights light up under braking, the headlights have that nice manga-esque star effect when they're head-on to the camera, and during replays, Polyphony have stuck to the same three basic replay modes as GT4. On-bike, TV coverage and "dive replay" which is the MTV version of the TV coverage with impossible camera angles and a multitude of video effects.
When racing, you have three camera views. The always useless above-and-behind as well as ridercam and nosecam. Ridercam is your view of the bike complete with windscreen, steering yoke, dials and gauges etc. Nosecam is like a camera stuck on the nose of the bike and gives you a full, uninterrupted view of the track ahead with just a speedo bottom and centre to see your speed. Given the attention to detail of the bike models, it's a little odd that the ridercam has some very notchy graphics around the bike mirrors. It doesn't distract you or detract from the game, but it just looks so out of place compared to the polished feel of the rest of the game.

As with GT4, there's a photo mode which allows you to pick a bike and ride it around any track with a view to replaying the ride for the purpose of taking photos. Pause the replay and you'll get a choice of 64 preset cameras for your chosen pause point. You can manually adjust any one of them in heading, pitch, roll, zoom, aperture, shutter speed, exposure and white balance. When you've got the picture just how you'd like it, you can save it either to the PS2 memory card, or direct to a USB drive plugged into the front of your PS2. The second option is the most useful as it gives you a method of getting the pictures "out into the world" and off your PS2.
The game runs by default in 480i mode - standard TV - but will also run in 480p and 1080i modes for those of you with HDTVs. It also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios.

Sound
Gone is the trashy, grunge-rock soundtrack from GT4. In comes a more electronic house, trance type style, reminiscent of the soundtracks from the various Wipeout games. For my money, this is far better music to race to but that's my personal opinion. As with GT4, all the sound effects are tuneable in volume, but unlike GT4, the motorbikes do actually seem to have their own engine sounds. A constant gripe of mine with the GT games was that despite the hideously detailed modelling and physics-based handling, all the cars sounded more or less the same. In Tourist Trophy, each bike does have a unique sound to it. Nice.

Appeal
So who is this game going to appeal to? Well anyone who's a fan of Rossi or any of the WSB riders will have a field day with this game. It single-handedly makes all previous attempts at bike racers look shameful in comparison. It might appeal to gamers who like racing games, who bought GT4, but I'm not sure. There's enough difference to make it worthwhile, but the control system and method of riding (as oppose to driving) is different enough it might put some people off. If you think you're one of those people, rent it first. I suspect you'll end up buying it because it's such an amazing looking and playing game.

What's missing?
After a couple more days of playing since I wrote my original review, I've discovered one major setback with Tourist Trophy. Unless I've missed it, the most famous motorcycling racing event in the world is missing : they have not included the Isle Of Man TT track. Sure there's a couple of World Superbike tracks which are new, and the long Nurburgring makes a reappearance from GT4, but you can't release a top-notch motorcycling game called Tourist Trophy and forget to include the Isle of Man. For that, I have removed one star from my rating.