After 15 years, have Polyphony made the ultimate driving sim?
For the past few years, Forza has pretty much taken the crown for the best driving sim on the market and with a new one launching with the Xbox One, I can’t help wondering why Sony didn’t push for Gran Turismo 6 to be a PS4 launch title, but that issue aside is it worth stepping into the driver seat for the 15th anniversary of the series?
Don’t get me wrong, the game handles like a dream but the way it is presented and acts is incredibly dated, you still can’t really do any damage to the vehicles you drive, the backgrounds for the tracks look copied and pasted, but also static and pixilated. To add insult in injury, those hoping to hope straight in for an online race against your friends will have to wait till you earn a specific type of license which will take a while to do.
On top of that, the game doesn’t feel that much of an improvement over Gran Turismo 5, which took 6 years to make. Polyphony have had another 3 years for GT6 and all they seem to have added is some bells and whistles, you can create your own car and there are 1200 of them for you to obtain over what should take you a long period of time unless you use the current glitch to get millions of credits in minutes.
As good as the cars handle, the AI simply doesn’t meet the standards set by other racers. The traditional formula of Gran Turismo is still here with tackling events and gaining money for other cars, as well as tuning them up. Online is a good improvement over GT5, but having to spend quite a while getting your A license before you can hop into a game is just crazy, especially since there’s no such restriction for split-screen races.
With over 1200 cars and 3 locations to choose from, GT6 has a lot to offer in terms of content and that’s what the fans are after, but be prepared for a 1.2GB patch as soon as you pop the disk in. I love how the cars look and handle, but I just don’t see why that same attention hasn’t been paid to the tracks themselves, they in comparison look incredibly dated. I know it’s probably down to some legal reason that they can’t damage the cars, but they could at least make the trees in the background look less like a bunch of static pixels. The audio is also a mixed bag with music that sounds like something from the 70s but makes up for it with the realistic sound of the cars.
The Verdict
Gran Turismo 6 s a good enough racer and a nice send off for the PS3, but after 15 years the same problems persist. It’s dated in its design and presentation, restricting online play to those who have worked for an A license is a ridiculous notion but despite that it handles like a dream and has plenty of cars and tracks to choose from, which is really what it’s all about.
