Gran Turismo Sport

[The Moonster]

I've had it a few weeks now and whilst the difficulty of the challenges/licenses etc. isn't really up to previous games (which is a bit annoying), the actual game play and graphics are probably the best (for a racing game) that I've played. Last night I finally finished off the Mission Challenges, culminating with 4 laps of the Nurburgring which you need to get pretty much perfect to win. Honestly felt I deserved a real life podium and winners ceremony.

For some fun, here's a guy doing the Nurburgring in a completely fictional car in 3 minutes and 14 seconds:

Anyone else been enjoying this?

[Miguel Sanchez]

You know the challenge is supposed to be online, right?

[The Moonster]

15 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

You know the challenge is supposed to be online, right?

Yeah, it's heavily weighted towards online but I find there's far too much waiting around for what is a short race. I'll get more into the online stuff once I've completed the offline stuff.

[Dindeleux]

In my opinion they have completely wrecked the Gran Turismo franchise bringing out far too many half finished games.  Ever since the current gen of Playstation they just don't seem to have been able to release a full in-depth racing sim.

[forameus]

Just remaster Gran Turismo 2.  That was fucking brilliant.

[Miguel Sanchez]

I find it hard to disagree with Dindeleux. Gran Turismo 5 came out four years into a generation after several delays and was a complete joke. 1000 cars, 200 of them being 7th gen worthy and the other 800 being upscaled PS2 models. A single player career you could fire through in about a week, with nine different events for five levels. I still remember being enraged at the endurance events at the end, there's nine races, so three of them are on variations of the Nurburgring and two of them are on Tsukuba which is a mile long. Imagine driving round a mile-long track for an hour. Unfinished graphics for spray and light leading to embarrassing jaggy edges on shadows and in rain.

So much stuff in GT5 seemed like a good idea implemented by people who had no clue what they were doing - let's put the Top Gear track in it! But let's not put in a mode which lets you do single laps, or put in any of the famous cars which have gone round it that people might want to try for themselves.

GT6 wasn't much better, and it had completely taken away any element of difficulty anywhere, with bizarre stuff like being able to drive a moon rover put in. The biggest conclusion I could draw from 5 and 6 was that they weren't racing games any more, they were an exhibition of (some) beautifully recreated cars and tracks you were to look at but not derive any challenge from.

I think lots of things went wrong with Polyphony Digital over the 7th gen, but they did get some things right. Some physics elements were improved over time. 6, on the whole, is a better looking game than 5 and probably is better as a whole, even if it seemed to come at the expense of any difficulty. They also seem quite unique in modern gaming in terms of post-launch content, with several cars and tracks being added for free. GT Sport has had several tracks and a few dozen cars added. I never really knew if this was their original intention or they were shamed so much with the lack of stuff to do in GT5, but the addition of stuff like the Senna pack and the huge time trial thing to GT6 at least showed some imagination in doing different things with the gameplay.

As much as I've enjoyed Sport, before I reached the point where I was too good to be in races I had a chance of winning but nowhere near fast enough to win against the next highest class, the shift from a single player into a multiplayer game ultimately attracts a different sort of player. If you've spent 10+ years playing the first GT games as I had you're accustomed to a specific set-up, a structure to the game you're going to work through. If you change that to include an online function as a more central part, if you don't get it right you're going to lose a lot of players. In GT5 there was an online mode called Shuffle Racing where everyone in the lobby got given different cars at random, you raced, and then your car for the next race changed depending on how you did. If you finished near the front you got a slower car next time and vice versa. I loved this mode, partly because it was carnage, partly because if you weren't online with at least three friends your chances of finding a lobby where you could be fairly matched were non-existent.

Sport, in theory, gets around this by giving you driver ratings but in a system like this you're going to be at the mercy of the player base. If nobody's online you're not going to get a fair race, and sooner or later it'll just be the hardcore who are on who can all drive much faster than you. I was last online a few weeks ago now and even I as an A/B level driver (I think) was ending up paired with E drivers. I've had few feelings from playing a game that compared to winning a race from pole to flag in this game, but it's fundamentally held back by the premise that if you don't have a large consistent user base, it's not going to work long term no matter how many cars and tracks you throw at it, or how pretty it is.

The sense of lingering resentment I have about them favouring an online base for the game is probably heightened by the distinct impression they're doing it because they've given up on being able to program competent AI doesn't help. I don't know if a single-player focused racing sim in at least the style of GT4 is possible the way games are going nowadays, but it is a shame to think of how much and why I loved GT3 and 4 and realise what's happened since.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Oh I forgot to mention, there's a new edition of Assetto Corsa not long released which has all the DLC on it, though I've not played it so I don't know how it compares as a sim.

[Dindeleux]

It was a real slow burner as it came out with a lot of problems but Project Cars is the best sim on Xbox. PC2 is very good as well.