A good fix for the GT junkie.
Ok, I'm not getting to much into the demo debate. It is what it is, it's priced how it's priced. It's either worth paying to you, or it's not. Dry your eye, and drink your juice.
I for one have some really mixed feelings about this. The game is beautiful, not questioning that. As someone who always used the in-car view since GT1, I am so stoked about the in-CAR in-car view they've added.
I can't tell if it's just the fact that you can watch how much lock you are dialling in, or if they've just spent some time calibrating the steering sensitivity to cater for a joypad just as much as a wheel, but it's a lot easier to be smooth in the corners. It's all good really.
And the on-line gives the series a lift in terms of the unpredictable nature of real 'drivers'. I was so entertained on my first spin around High Speed Ring, Where I couldn't even see the track at corner two for all the tyre smoke, then a car suddenly rolls backwards across the track, and I narrowly missed it on the right hand side before swinging left hard on the breaks to get around the corner - ace! You'll never get that from the in game AI.
Downsides?
Really, my only complaint wih the game is the way the online racing works.
First (and biggest mistake), you can not choose who you race against. Friend lists be damned, you choose a track to race on. Click the button and it will allocate you to a random grid of strangers before kicking you back out to the track select screen. No rematches guaranteed if you narrowly lost out, or someone spun you off the track. No owning your mates with your mad-racin'-skillz, nowt. Aside from the bad driving I've seen on there, you may as well be racing against the computer again. This is poor, and something I genuinely hope gets addressed - either by download update or in the final product. In fact because of that deficiency in the social on line game this keeps losing out to CoD4 for my evening gaming, even though I'd probably prefer a driving game to an FPS.
Second gripe. It's also about the online, and it's the crazy physics that come in to play, attempting to give everyone a better racing experience. This consists of two things:
A) 'power loss' penalties if you either, unfairly hit an opponent, or if you hit the barriers hard.
B) temporary removal of collision physics, for cars the system deem to be driving erratically - so for example if you spin mid corner while surrounded by other people, you can 'ghost' right through them, rather than wipe out half of the field and be hated for ever (well, the next two minutes, until the race finishes and you never see any of these people again).
Now surely this is all very good right? Can't go barging people off the track and sleep at night can you? Don't want your driving mistakes to cost someone else?
Wrong!
Don't take this the wrong way, I can see what they are trying to do, and appreciate why they are trying to do it. It's just the the excecution is sheer, unmitigated crap.
My reasons for this opinion are at least threefold:
Scenario 1: Coming into a sharp corner, the person behind me misses their braking point, locks up and skids. On goes the ghost physics, so they overtake me by driving right through my car. They skid right across the track, and manage to scuff the barrier with less force than it takes to invoke the power loss penalty, and then the barrier scoops them round and on to the straight with more speed than if they'd just driven the corner properly. That might be fun if you are 12, but it's not racing.
Scenario 2: Along the straight on high speed ring again. person gets just on my right rear 3/4s and then tries to come across to the left - may have been a mistake, may have been intended but they give me a nudge. I'm in and FR car, and they've just sent me into a full tilt slide. i try to correct it. Almost catch it, but ultimately fishtail it down the straight for a bit before it snaps me into the barrier - which invokes the power loss penalty, and then also imposes the no physics thing, so the person who caused my crash goes on unimpeded. By driving right through my car.
Scenario 3 Cornering, miss my breaking point, just tap the person in from of me enough to make them lose their line. The collision is not hard enough to slap the power loss penalty on me, but i've just put someone who was running in 1st place into the barrier on the second lap of a two lap race - no headset chat so I can't apologise. I felt bad, all the way to the finish line. Then pocketed their first place cash. Ho hum.
Oh, another one:
Scenario 4. You are aproaching a part of the track where the people ahead have just spun. there can be cars flying all over the place, and because of that they've all got the 'no physics' flicker going on. So you just drive ahead on your existing line, right? NO! The no physics thin switches off just in time for you to T bone someone, and loose all your speed while firing them off down the track without having to accelerate.
You know what, I need to:
Shut my whinge.
Stop playing so much CoD.
Complete the A driving event, and get racing on the pro events:
I'mn hoping that will feature more people who just want a clean race.
In Summary:
This game is valid as a sort of proof of concept excercise, but it still needs a lot of work to deliver on the expectations the series has set for itself. Actually my worry is that from what we are seeing throught the updates, Polyphony's Focus is squarely on building the franchise of downloadable motoring content. Do we really need ANOTHER dedicated sports channel?
I just want to be able to go on line and thrash my friends who live in other parts of the country around a track. I want to be able to have the option to race against the same people again so i can get it out of my system if things were close, or if accidents skewed the result. That is where I'd like to be seeing the developments occurring.
I am so dissapointed by this it's colouring the review, so I'll have to end with what it does do well:
It is god, damn beautiful for a start. Then there's the fact that this is, by a country mile, the best handling Gran Turismo so far. 3 failed to genuinely improve on 2, although 4 was more responsive but somehow a bit dry and lifeless.
And fundamentally, at the price point you are getting plenty of entertainment for your buck, not to mention something that will wow the crowds. I'm just holding out for a proper online multiplayer arrangement in the full version.
Yes it's a technical marvel, yes it looks good, but in structure it feels like a missed opportunity - I mean can you imagine what could be done with a properly organised on line mode? You could have genuine 24hr endurance events for students - "dude, I gotta pitstop, like now!". Or knockout sprint races, top three in x parallel races then meet up, as do those that didn't make the cut? League tables, make your own online race team. Run a season. It feels like they should be able to do things like this in some form or another.