Dear Polyphony - Gran Turismo

Image courtesy of www.funzen.net

Hello you, the name is Luca but you can call me Luca. So as you know, I am a huge racing gamer, and it all began with Gran Turismo 3. It all began when my mum took me to the house of someone whose sons played cricket with my older brother, and I was an unfiltered little shit so I expressed my complete boredom and I saw one of the guy's PS2's with GT3, and he actually let me have it. That began a life long love for motorsport games for me.

Growing up, I went from being someone who just wanted to drive all these amazing cars to now someone who will play the game properly and do what is asked of me. I have played many other different types of racing games with varying levels of enjoyment to them, and you will see in a post I made on a game idea I had that I named Giro d'Strada (Link here - https://redsone-shot.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/an-idea-giro-dstrada.html), I have certainly peeked into every corner of this genre. Gran Turismo though is where it all began and as a fan of something, it is all well and good to be highly critical.

There are two kinds of people in this world, fans and fanboys. The fanboys will blindly follow something and call someone a hater for giving it the tiniest bit of criticism, and this attitude absolutely sickens me, because nobody can actually reach their full potential without criticism. So if you don't mind, I'd like to dish some out, hopefully you fanboys flex your fingers ready to angrily type out some pretty badly spelt out racial slurs and claims that you have fucked my mother in the comments below and be on your merry way. Now, on with my blasphemous hate speech.

Now for the intelligent lot, allow me to provide you with some context other than the parts that I already have, concerning my history with the Gran Turismo series. Having played Gran Turismo 3 and Gran Turismo 4 on PS2, everything began to take off for me when Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was released on PS3 and I began to appreciate the game on a whole new level. Following on from that, we had the full Gran Turismo 5 game and Gran Turismo 6 as well, and I had some incredible memories on there.

If you read my Giro d'Strada post, you will know that my PS3 decided to not update GT6 and therefore, I haven't played it since around the back end of 2014. I have my fix with driving games back, with games like Assetto Corsa and Project CARS on my PS4 and a steering wheel for my console that also contributed to these many memories of playing on my PS3. So joy of joys, the first PS4 Gran Turismo game is going to be released very soon, a standalone game called Gran Turismo Sport. (NOTE: It was meant to launch November 18th 2016 but it got pushed back, always for the best. You'll never hear me complain about a game being pushed back, I don't know who said it but a delayed game is eventually good and a rushed game is forever bad.

GT Sport is set to be apparently, a version of the series that centres only on the motorsport aspect and with little in the way of many road cars, at least from what I am aware. I was thrilled to hear this because the FIA are looking to bring racing competition into the limelight utilising this game, and I could do without the road cars since I have Assetto Corsa, Project CARS and its sequel also releasing this year.

Where the game let down though, the track selection. This is an issue that has plagued the GT series, and just to demonstrate my point, here is a list of confirmed circuits that will be in GT Sport; Tokyo Expressway, an oval track named Northern Isle Speedway, Dirt Course (No prizes for guessing what that will consist of), Brands Hatch, Nürburgring Nordschleife and the quite frankly, abysmal Willow Springs Raceway.

For a game that is apparently going to host the FIA Online World Championship and also have live E-Sports events, that is such a shit line-up. Nürburgring and Brands Hatch are great, Tokyo Expressway looks good but I feel will be underwhelming, ovals aren't used for GT racing and only really for American motorsport, Dirt Course is the only non tarmac circuit and Willow Springs, I'm fed up of it. If I had the backing of the FIA, I'd focus on many FIA certified circuits and at the very least Polyphony.. Silverstone, Monza, Spa-Francorchamps, Suzuka, Monaco, even Le Mans! At the very least, have those in the game.

This is an issue that I am going to have with GT Sport. Because, GT5 had many great tracks at release and they added in amazing ones like Motegi, Spa and others and they felt like additions, whereas with GT Sport, I assume there will be more added in but instead of feeling like additions, it's a matter of completing the game through paid DLC with so many better tracks. If you could think of an metaphor, it's like selling the Mona Lisa in parts!

Another issue I do have with the GT series, this is perhaps just a personal thing but the amount of Skyline models that have been tuned by an independent bunch of engineers outside of Nissan's own commissioning. But I am tired of all of the many models of the same car, and I want to see now with the FIA's backing, more sports cars, more GT racers, single seaters, touring cars, and aside from all of that, road cars that dreamers of cars do actually want.

We buy these games to live out the dreams of cars we want to drive, we simply don't have a lot to choose from unfortunately. In a way, Gran Turismo isn't in the market to tickle our pickles with a Bugatti Chiron and a Lamborghini Veneno, it is here to create the best driving experience but we need things to drive and places to drive them.

The Gran Turismo series needed a boost, even after GT6 which was great by all means, I miss driving the DeltaWing on that game, one of my favourite cars. I have been holding out false hope and was previously, very intrigued for the FIA Online championship and E-Sports events considering Gran Turismo's ventures from virtual to real world racing beforehand, now bringing gaming racing into hopeful popularisation. But with such a pitiful list of circuits, I have lost hope not only for big scope online structured championships, but for the GT series as a whole.

I know Sport is meant to be a standalone game but it carries so many issues from past GT games. Not attempting to generalise here, but the game is Japanese and giving credit where credit is due, the technology utilised for this series is incredible but it shows no eliciting of any sort of, what's the word? Well, it's subtle; the in-game car sounds for example don't tickle your ear drums, infact they're quite monotone and annoying, the throttle response is gentle and the gear changes feel a little too perfect.

Yes, you can feel the tyres on this game through every bit of the road, but the overall experience of driving cars on Gran Turismo feels, digital. Which it should really considering it is a game, but when you drive a car, you need to experience many sensations.

Yesterday, I was driving the Ferrari FXX K on Assetto Corsa, the car on the cover of that game. Say what you like about Assetto Corsa's console port but you put the foot down in anything from a 1,000 horsepower plus hypercar to an Abarth 500 with just 160 horsepower, it feels mechanical. You feel the rough edges of an analog performance, the horsepower being transferred to the road with a bass breaking thunderous noise coming from either the TV, surround sound speakers or your headphones. It's about the experience!

Please Polyphony, make us players drive these cars with a more of an experience that makes you feel like you are in a car. Add more desirable cars, hopefully the PS4 can allow you to take advantage of more hardware. Great tracks, the sub par ones like Willow Springs and that awful London track that goes around Picadilly Circus and instead go for a more complete version like the Grand Prix track that McLaren, Sky and Santander came up with instead.

I want nothing more than to see this franchise succeed. I mean, I saw the track line up and immediately turned my attention to Project CARS 2, which I am indifferent on because I have heard of how much of an arsehole the lead developer Ian Bell is to the people who funded the game! Assetto Corsa is doing me very well right now but that whole Giro d'Strada idea I had, maybe it won't happen since the AC team is apparently a single digit amount.

You know what, this goes out to all video game developers who are working on huge games, listen to us fans. Studio Liverpool have just bought the rides to the Test Drive Unlimited series, and I am praying that they give us an experience, an appeal of giving those who seek a thrill and a lifestyle of driving cars that we wouldn't get to drive normally.

We petrolheads play these games to drive these cars, to enjoy racing on a big scale, and there's nothing to appease the bunch of us who look to live out a lifestyle of driving these out of this world cars that we would never be able to even dream of. Like me! Just get me in a LaFerrari Aperta on my wheel, a mountain road in continental Europe with that howling V12 soundtrack. Also me! Being in the pits at Le Mans at around 3am, my team mate has just got out of our team's Ferrari 488 GTE.

I can't speak for many other car cultures and their gaming equivalents, but those are the main two that really appeal to the Gran Turismo generation and demographic. Again, I am a supporter of the series but I don't know how long I can keep my patience, but I do have GT Sport on pre-order and will get in on day one, and believe me, like how I will be on the day that Kingsman: The Golden Circle is released, I will be saying to myself ready to either watch the film or play the game, "Please be good" and then repeating that phrase many times.

If not that, then GT7 and all the future titles. Polyphony, the ball is in your court.

Thank you all of you for reading this. If you'd like to see some more articles from me in the future, Follow By Email for those on desktop, all of my articles get sent directly to your email, and you can follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat.

Hope to see you all again very soon, so until we meet again.
Luca.