Gran Turismo Sport - A wishlist

Image is my own from Gran Turismo Sport (Polyphony Digital)

Hello you, my name is Luca but you can call me Luca. I am well aware that I have been absent for a while now, and I left on a very sour note, I can only apologise but it was how I was feeling. But today, I wish to jump back on this train in order to write about something I know I can talk about. So in my downtime, I have been playing a lot of Gran Turismo Sport, and if you read my last blog post about racing then you'd know I have some grievances with it. Well this is an expansion of that plus a few more additions that I think would really help the game.

Okay so first up, one of the best things about GT Sport is the livery editor and its social features. As you can see above, that is a Red Bull livery Aston Martin Vantage GT3 car that I have personally created, and that is just one out of the amazing many types of liveries you can have. I have downloaded liveries that range from a Mercedes SLS GT3 car with the 2009 F1 championship winning Brawn team colour scheme, to a military tank lookalike BMW i3 only just now. I have utilised this editor to create my own personal racing car that you may have seen already, a red/yellow McLaren 650S, as well as my friends Charlie and James who have a blue Audi R8 and a black/green Lamborghini Huracán. You get the picture.

You get the picture. You can create and upload your liveries to be shared with all fellow GT Sport players, and also upload decals that players can download and put on their own cars, like how I have the Pokémon Eevee on my McLaren. It's such a great feature, and if this wasn't in the game, I strongly believe that if this feature wasn't in the game, GT Sport would have died out. Or at least be not as popular as it is at the moment.

The one area that I feel Polyphony really missed the mark, is in helmets and suit designs. Like with cars, you can personalise your racing suit and helmet by giving them certain colours, but if you go to search on the Gran Turismo website for suits and helmet designs, it's tragic. Just all the same pre-set designs with different colours, it honestly is heart wrenching to know what this amazing community could have done!

We could have been able to download a Valentino Rossi replica helmet and overalls made to look exactly like Ferrari's F1 overalls with their Shell, Santander and UPS sponsorship etc., what was stopping them? I would love to be able to go on tomorrow, and make my helmet look like Dino Zamparelli's with my DHL sponsored red and yellow overalls. I really hope this is added in, come on Polyphony.

Next up is a certain car that I know would fill a void in the game, the Formula Gran Turismo.

Image courtesy of KudosPrime.com

This car has been in the GT series since Gran Turismo 4, and has been a car with great potential and concept but a tad underwhelming in execution, and as a result has unfortunately been overshadowed by other similar Formula style cars in the subsequent games, such as the 2007 championship winning Ferrari F2007, the 2010 Ferrari F10 and Red Bull's own Gran Turismo partnership producing X-cars.

However with Ferrari F1 licences running out and Red Bull's X-cars being way too quick to constitute competitive top level racing, I feel especially considering the FIA's involvement in GT Sport, the Formula Gran Turismo needs to return and be done right. Heavily based in design on the 2004 era of F1 cars when they were at their peak in terms of speed, and powered by a 3.5-litre V12 that exceeds 18,000rpm and produces over 900 horsepower whilst only weighing 550kg.

Whilst doing research for this article, I found that there has been other GT original single seaters but I won't discuss more about them, considering the idea of only the one single seater would avert some confusion. There are some things I would want to change to make the Formula Gran Turismo even better.

The sound of the FGT is incredibly below par, it sounds more like a V6 or V8 turbo at best, not a naturally aspirated V12 screamer so one change I'd make is look to the V12 powered Ferrari F1 cars of the 1990s, such as the 1990 Ferrari 641 driven by Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell, or the 1995 Ferrari 412 T2 driven by Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger. Have a noise worthy of it being called a V12 like those F1 cars, and whilst you're at it, up the power to about 1,050 horsepower.

Secondly, GT Sport has colour coded tyre compounds which are reminiscent of those that Pirelli provide in Formula One. These colours being green for the Hard compound, yellow for Medium, red for Soft, Purple for Super Soft, white for Intermediate and blue for the Wet tyres, and I'd love to see colours used on the Formula Gran Turismo's own Bridgestone tyres. I would hope Bridgestone would allow this since Pirelli were the one to use colour assigned racing tyre compounds, just a small detail that would make it feel all the more authentic.

Cars like the Formula GT would not exist nowadays due to the increasing concern in regards to fuel and the environment, but in the gaming world we can achieve these incredible speeds and with the potential that the GT Sport game has already proven to have in terms of balanced and competitive racing in Group 3 and 4 racing, a single spec racing just like the Karts in the game but at the top level of racing, would be such a welcome addition.

I know fine well that the inclusion of a single seater in GT Sport would be great for the livery creators, I have already seen a Ferrari F1 livery on an Audi R18 LMP1 car and a McLaren F1 livery on Porsche's LMP1 car, the 919 Hybrid. I'll be creating my own and my friend's cars, fitted with our names on the rear wing like the old MSV F2 cars, and I know I'll be racing my red/yellow DHL sponsored number 56 entry.

Okay next up and this is the one that really is necessary, I spoke about it in my racing game article, the lack of race tracks in GT Sport is abysmal. We have some great tracks in the game, some great original circuits such as Maggiore, Kyoto, Tokyo and Dragon Trail and some great real world circuits like Suzuka, Bathurst, Nürburgring, Interlagos and Brands Hatch. We also have some crappy circuits like the horrendous Willow Springs, and just way too little anyway, we need more!

Image courtesy of gtplanet.net

I am honestly surprised that after GT5 and GT6, the FIA supported game doesn't at least have some top line FIA Grade 1 circuits. In the picture above, that is Gran Turismo 6 at Silverstone, why didn't we already have these types of circuits? We are starved of circuits on GT Sport right now, and with GT5 and GT6 having these top level circuits and the FIA supporting GT Sport, this is just such a huge missed opportunity.

Other than that, another means to put forward just how little tracks we honestly have, we don't even have many Japanese tracks! Normally you'd expect racing games to be full of circuits that are based in the developer's home country, like Forza with American tracks, Assetto Corsa with Italian circuits, Project CARS with British circuits, and past GT games with Japanese tracks, but we only have Suzuka in terms of real tracks in Japan.

So let me make a list of a load of tracks that are from the real world that really do need to be in GT Sport, and in brackets in which games they first appeared in from the Gran Turismo series. A lot of these I can do without but for the most part, the first few are needed for this game.

Silverstone, Britain (GT6)
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium (GT5)
Circuit de la Sarthe/Le Mans, France (GT4)
Red Bull Ring, Austria (GT6)
Côte d'Azur/Circuit de Monaco, Monaco (GT3)
Laguna Seca, USA (GT2)
Fuji Speedway, Japan (GT4)
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, USA (GT5)
Twin Ring Motegi, Japan (GT4)
Infineon Speedway/Sonoma, USA (GT4)
Daytona International Speedway, USA (GT5)
Tsukuba Circuit, Japan (GT4)
Ascari Circuit, Spain (GT6)
Goodwood Hillclimb, Britain (GT6)
Pikes Peak, USA (GT2)

I originally had Monza on this list but since writing this, Monza was added to GT Sport on January 26th, getting there ever so slowly. Alongside this, I do think we also need a lot of GT original circuits that for whatever reason, are not already in the game already. Here is another list containing some original GT circuits that we need in Gran Turismo Sport. Again, brackets saying which GT game they made their debut in.

Trial Mountain Circuit (GT1)
Deep Forest Raceway (GT1)
Grand Valley Speedway (GT1)
Apricot Hill Raceway (GT2)
Midfield Raceway (GT2)
Autumn Ring (GT1)
Tokyo R246 (GT3)
GT Arena (GT6)
Kart Space (GT5)
Matterhorn (GT6)

There are many examples of circuits that have not been in Gran Turismo before that I feel should be, like Sebring and the London F1 circuit that McLaren, Sky and Santander made in 2012. But honestly the circuits we had here that have been in past GT games, these should be in GT Sport so if no more are ever added, I wouldn't mind.

Last thing I'd like to see added, I complained about it on GT5 due to the oversaturation of them but Super GT cars.

Image courtesy of www.touringcartimes.com

The Super GT series is a Japanese based endurance championship, and is the series that Jenson Button is racing in this year, and consists of two categories of racing, the GT300 category which mainly contains traditional GT3 racing and the category that I am interested in, the bespoke GT500 category.

Since the last Gran Turismo games, Super GT adopted regulations similar to that of DTM and like how DTM in recent years has the big three German manufacturers with Audi, BMW and Mercedes competing, Super GT is made up of Nissan, Honda and Toyota (although competing under the Lexus brand) in its top category.

The way that the DTM and Super GT cars are designed make them almost similar in cornering capabilities to lower tier single seaters, which is why I believe having the Nissan GT-R, Honda NSX GT and Lexus LC 500 Super GT cars would be a very welcome addition. Although with it, I'd hope we could have more Japanese circuits.

Back on GT5 when there was nothing like the Group 3 and 4 categories like in GT Sport, Super GT was the only type of racing we had and it was always something I wasn't at peace with. I have this major need for authenticity, and that's why I'd never want to race Super GT cars on anything other than Japanese circuits.

Not to say it's impossible to imagine a Super GT race on any track of course but I would much prefer having a wide selection of circuits in Japan to race these on, at least as far as non GT original circuits are concerned. I have mentioned circuits from previous GT games like Fuji and Motegi but I'd also hope the heavily underrated Okayama circuit would make its Gran Turismo debut.

Well anyway, these are just some of the things I believe we need in GT Sport to make it that much better. I do enjoy the game and as far as GT games go for the future, the ideas and execution for a lot of balanced racing such as BoP and the categories make this the best GT game of the bunch, it just really lacks content. It'll get there eventually, but this game as I have said before, feels less like a game with add on content but more an incomplete puzzle with pieces being given back over time. Could be worse though, I am glad the content being added back is not monetised, that would have been taking the piss.

Alright! Those are my thoughts. What are yours? That will be all from me for today, and if you'd like to tune in for more of my nonsensical rambling then either follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat or put your email in the 'Follow By Email' option on the right if you're on a computer, to have my articles sent straight to your inbox.

So until we meet again,
Luca.