Gran Turismo 6

I've held off reviewing this game for as long as I did because I wanted to spend time with both GT and other, proper sims, to build what I think is a comprehensive list of things to compare between the "sim" that GT is, and proper sims like rFactor and Assetto Corsa.

Starting with UI, I think they've made an improvement over prior GT titles. Things are organized a bit better, menus are relatively straight-forward and you don't have to do much digging to get to things. In races, it's a bit of a different story. The first thing that strikes me the most is a complete lack of a decent split time counter, estimated lap time delta, and the lap times and gaps to the other cars in the race. The only time you're notified of any sort of gap is when crossing over to another sector of the track, in which case they give you a gap time to only the leader of the race. This is okay if you're in second and chasing the leader, but if you're in 5th, for example, and a couple of seconds behind the car in front, the gap to the leader isn't helpful at all.

Visually, the game looks alright. The cars are modeled well, and the limited selection that do have interior views modeled look okay. There are some textures here and there that don't look great, but that's to be expected from a game running on previous generation hardware. The game also offers a pretty impressive car selection, although PD's nationalism kind of shows when you see how many Japanese cars there are to choose from in comparison to American or European ones.

The AI is miserable. They stupidly, and slowly, follow their line, most of the time parking their car on the apex and weaving around the straights at random. They also have no sense of spatial recognition, and when you do lightly bounce off one and spin off the track, the other one following closely behind will then smash into you as you attempt to slowly rejoin the track. They're glued to their line, and if you try to make a move into a corner or anywhere else they happen to be turning, they will keep going as if you're not there, pit you out, and continue driving on with no momentum lost. The lack of AI also makes endurance races like Le Mans quite boring. 15 cars + yourself and that's it.

The campaign is the same story all the way through, and it's the same as it's always been. Start in last, painstakingly move your way up past the dumb AI in 2 laps, then do 3 more until the race is over. Rinse and repeat for each "series" until you can take the next license test. Unlock another group of races and do it all over again. All the while probably having to restart a race because the bad tire model caught you out, or you bounced off an AI driver who moved over into you while you were trying to pass him on the last lap.

The tire model is awful. All the cars, even the ones with all the aero in the world, slosh around and feel like they're barely gripping the track. With a wheel, the car is constantly trying to commit to an infinite lock-to-lock tank slapper which will seemingly overpower your inputs at random. Braking in a straight line? Powering out of a corner at 1/4 throttle? Just driving in a straight line? It can, and will, happen at any moment. Grass and dirt, according to Polyphony Digital, have a large layer of snow, ice, oil, banana peels, and KY lubricant on the surface. Do so much as get 1 cm of your tires on the grass on a straightaway, at any speed, and the car is instantly sucked onto the grass and sent into an irrecoverable spin. As a result, pushing the car like Hell is nearly impossible. In any other sim, rFactor in particular, the force feedback and the tire model accurately give you feedback on where the car's going, and if the back is stepping out. You have full confidence in the car, how it's setup, and your own ability to drive like mad. In Gran Turismo, it's anyones guess as to what the car will do next. Many times, the only time you're aware of the back spinning round is when you can see the car starting to rotate. By then, it's too late, and the infinite tank-slapper that will result nullifies any correctional input.

The game seems to feature a decent selection of wheels, however with the Logitech G27 the amount of configurability they give you is pretty dismal. The most you can change is an arbitrary FFB torque and sensitivity setting, and you can also remap the controls on the wheel. That's about it. The way it handles the H-Shifter and clutch is awful. It does not treat the gear selector being in neutral as neutral. You can actually change gears without the clutch at all, and if you try to heel-toe or rev match with the clutch and throttle, a slight mistiming of inputs (Which other games handle properly) will just result in the car going into neutral, which you'll then have to spam the clutch and move the gear selector in and out of gear several times before it goes back into gear. Just stick with the paddle shifters, trust me. Improper clutch simulation also doesn't allow you to clutch in, gun the throttle and dump the clutch to spin the car around in a hurry. This means if you spin off and are facing the wrong way, you have to give it full lock and slowly turn around on the track, which then makes you susceptible to any AI who are barreling down the straight and won't slow down, or move out of the way to avoid you, for whatever reason.

The sound is another thing that Polyphony Digital have always struggled with in every single GT game. Many of the cars sound like vacuum cleaners (For comparison, here is the BMW Z4 GT3 in GT, and here it sounds in actuality). Cars become almost silent during downshifts, and in race-spec cars, the transmission whine, throttle overrun, and even squealing brakes aren't audible at all. On some cars, like the P1 Hybrids that race in the WEC, there is no sound of the flywheel hybrid system at all under braking, or power application. Cars with turbo chargers have an obnoxiously loud waste-gate that isn't actually that audible in most of the cars they represent (The Audi R18 TDI is a great example of this). Because of this, the immersion is completely ruined. Many times I've opted to turn the game volume down and listen to a podcast while I race instead. Because once you pass the slow AI, you're basically setting hot laps until the race is over. Your eyes will glaze over instantly.

If you're on a PS3, sadly Gran Turismo is your only option at this point. It's not a bad game, if you can get used to the tire model and the driving physics, perhaps you'll have a decent time with it. But for me, coming from a sim like rFactor on the PC, I find it really hard to enjoy, and it instead ends up becoming frustrating.