Shotgunning two Gran Turismos in a row = car orgasam

Almost immediately after finishing Gran Turismo 5, I dove straight into Gran Turismo 6 to keep the racing simulation momentum going. Lots of racing being done lately….
This release was oddly quiet and snuck up on a lot of people which would explain it’s poor sales compared to it’s predecessor. Many would have expected this game to go to PlayStation 4 rather than PlayStation 3 because of it’s release so close to the arrival of the next-gen consoles. But the developers of the series maintained that so far, they have done 2 main Gran Turismo games on each console and so wanted to stick to that formula. Meaning that sometime in the next 3-5 years we should get Gran Turismo 7 on PlayStation 4.
Because I played this and Gran Turismo 5 so close together, there felt like there was a great deal of overlap and similarity. And there was. But there were also some large noticeable differences. Some good and some bad.

The enormous load times from the game before it seemed to be even worse than before. While the menus had been improved and sped up greatly, the loading of the actual races seemed to suffer and sometimes it could take upwards of two minutes to load a race. Thankfully though, the stupid level system of the previous game had gone and you had more freedom in picking your way through events. But still not as much as you did in previous games because events were still divided up into license classes and you had to get to and complete the final event in each class before moving on to the next.

One other negative thing that was very noticeable was the very low number of prize cars given compared to previous games. With this game, I again decided just to hit the end credits and call it a win as I did with Gran Turismo 5. But in doing that in the previous game, inhad at least a dozen cars in my garage. Only a couple of them having been bought and most being awarded. This time I had 3 cars in my garage. 2 of which I had bought myself. As a result of this, I had to stretch the first good car I won (a Renault Clio this time) even further. Pitting it against proper performance cars and scraping wins by the skin of my teeth. And instead of winning a car capable of winning the last few events, I had to save up and buy a monstrous racing Nissan Skyline. This felt a bit disconcerting because it's Gran Turismo tradition to win most of the cars you need and usually only to have to buy cars for specific model events. After finishing it and consulting some prize car lists it seems that most of the prize cars came from getting all golds or all available points in a division. Quite a departure from the procedures of the previous games again resulting in reduced freedom to move through the career. I think more prize cars will be given out over time for free in the Gran Turismo showcase and Vision Gran Turismo events, but I was playing this too soon to avail of those sadly.

Left: The Renault Clio Sport that got way too big for it's britches taking me through the majority of the career

Right: The Nissan GT-R touring car that took me to the finale

There are a number of very interesting side missions to do while you make your way through the career like visiting the Goodwood Festival of Speed, doing driving missions where you have to knock down cones, one make races and even lunar missions where you get to drive the actual lunar rover around the same routes the Apollo 11 team took. Those missions are an interesting novelty, but not terribly exciting seeing as the rover tops out at 15 Mph and topples over if you hit a pebble the wrong way.

But these are all minor quibbles and few things can take away from the pure joy that is Gran Turismo driving. Making your way through the career and gawping at cars that you want on the way and then eventually unlocking or buying them and loving every minute of it. Like Gran Turismo 5, this is another game I will return to at a later date to play more of because I very very much enjoyed what I did to get to the finale.

I just wish they had given me some more prize cars along the way....

A long delayed but much enjoyed return to the legendary Gran Turismo series

I have been a very long running fan of the Gran Turismo series.  I can quite clearly remember getting the first one upon release on PSX back in 1998.  Which recent advertising for Gran Turismo’s 15^th anniversary has reminded me that it was released 15 years ago and made me feel quite old.  I have got and played every instalment since then including most of the weird single make demos and Prologues and such.  But for some reason, I didn’t get into this one very much when I first got it.  Most likely because I was swamped under by many other games at the time and I knew it would be a huge undertaking.

But with the impending release of Gran Turismo 6, I decided that it was finally time to get this one done.  But decided to just “Beat” it for now (i.e. get to the credits roll) rather than 100% it which I had done with all the previous entries in the series.  This would at least allow me to go into Gran Turismo 6 having experienced the majority of 5 beforehand.

The most obvious upgrade in this newest instalment in the series is the enhanced visuals thanks to the power of the PlayStation 3.  But due to there still being some technical limitations, some cars do look nicer than others.  Certain important or expensive cars are classed as “Premium” and will be rendered in exquisite detail with full lighting and shadowing and such.  Whereas all the other cars will simply be rendered normally and while these still look better than PlayStation 2 cars, there is a very noticeable divide in their visual representations.  There is now also car damage both visual and mechanical which was forbidden by Honda for a long time but they have finally allowed now.  As well as a lot of manufacturers not previously available such as Ferrari and Lamborghini. 

One new addition that I did not approve of is enormous loading times.  Everywhere.  Both in menus and getting ready to race, you seem to spend more time watching loading screens than you do playing.  Despite it installing the game to the hard disk gradually as you go to reduce loading times, they never really seemed to get any better.  One other new addition I did not like is the introduction of an RPG-like level system.  You gain experience by doing events and level up, but the levels are only really there to provide entry barriers to later events stopping you from moving through the career at a pace faster than the developers wanted you to. 

A-Spec and B-Spec are now also separate careers altogether.  Rather than having one set of races that you can complete in A-Spec mode, B-Spec mode or both, now there are 2 entirely separate careers with separate sets of races and separate drivers with separate levels meaning you have to do a lot of things twice over.  I did not particularly care for this change either and preferred the old system of being able to choose which mode I wanted.

The racing itself is the usual excellent simulation handling that we have all come to expect from Gran Turismo.  There were many tweaks put into the engine this time around to make it even more realistic and you can notice them over time and trying out a number of cars.

This is the first game in the series to have an online mode, but I did not touch that for obvious reasons.

Most of my time was spent racing through various events (when I had reached high enough levels), winning cars, doing license tests (when I had reached high enough levels).  I did the usual Gran Turismo thing of using one of the better cars that I won earlier on (A Toyota Scion FR-s) and continuously tuning it up to its limit so that it was in races against cars that far outclassed it but still won.  I did this for as long as possible, then did some single make races and was lucky enough to win a Mazda Concept Le Mans car that I could use in the World Championship.

Left: The Toyoya FR-S that took me most of the way to victory. 

Right: The Mazda Furai Concept that won me the world championship.

As mentioned before, I only went as far in this game as to hit the end credits and consider it a win, but I did have a lot of fun with it and it is another game that I want to return to after the backlog is defeated and do more of because it brought back a lot of good racing memories.  That were only slightly hampered by some annoying new features.

On to Gran Turismo 6!

the really REALLY real driving simulator #granturismohdconcept

the real driving simulator is back. about time too