I don't know that I'm ever going to be happy with my attempts to sum up how much this game means to me, but here you go
Gran Turismo Sport (PS4, 2017)
I've known for about two years that I'd write a review of my time playing Gran Turismo Sport one day. What I'm going to say probably hasn't changed much over that time, it might just have got longer. Of all the games I've ever played and written about at length on the internet there's no question that this is the most important one that means the most to me.
The first Gran Turismo I played was 3. I played this for years then I played Gran Turismo 4 for years too. I played 4 so much my PS2 stopped reading all GT4 discs. I followed the development of Gran Turismo 5 religiously and the disappointment when it came was astonishing. Gran Turismo 6 was a bit of a waste of time and the first time I was genuinely unengaged with one of the games. Hundreds of hours each went into 3, 4 and 5, I finished 6 and pretty much stopped there.
Despite my disappointment with 5, those three games are defining for me in a way I forgot about to an extent after 6. It was around that time I was discovering PlayStation Plus and the amount of games available to me I'd previously never considered. This was both good and bad - my tastes expanded massively as I took in games and genres I'd never been aware of, but it's ultimately led me to being the trophy-chasing, backlog-obsessed weirdo most people who devote time and critical thought to video games nowadays are. I'm not sure which of these I'd prefer, churning my way through dozens of games a year or playing a fraction of that and becoming an expert on every aspect of them.
One thing those three games manage perfectly all these years later is feeling. The recent Gran Turismo 7 trailer featured homages to the opening movies for games 1 to 4, and the memories evoked by that alone are different from anything else I've ever experienced with games. I wouldn't want to count how many times I've watched the inside of the engine of a JGTC Castrol Tom's Supra zoom out to the exterior of the car before Just a Day by Feeder starts and the action starts, cars and tracks that look so much better than anything else in a game at the time. Even now I could listen to a compilation of Gran Turismo background music or sound effects and no matter how long it's been, I'd remember all of it.
I didn't get a PS4 until November 2017, and GT Sport was bundled with it. I knew absolutely nothing about the game at the time, and it's honestly been so long I don't remember how I learned about what was in it. I was so disengaged I remember driving round the Nordschleife wondering if the time of day was changing, but not actually being interested enough to look it up.
Compared to Gran Turismos 1 through 4 and to a lesser extent 5 and 6, GT Sport doesn't have an extensive single player mode where you buy/win cars, tuning and upgrading them to win higher tiers of events against faster cars. It doesn't have license tests educating you in the various aspects of controlling a car and going round a circuit. It has "Mission Challenges" which are even easier than past license tests and which occasionally vary into races, or at least 'pass all these cars in this amount of time.' It has the Circuit Experience, where you have set times to beat over the different sectors of a circuit then the same for a single lap at the end. Over time more traditional single player content was added with a range of races featuring different types of cars. I've long since finished all of them but from what I remember these were characterised by 'rabbit chasing' even more than GT5 and 6 were, where no matter the race there will be one or two cars which are impossibly faster than everything else.
The single player content in GT Sport is largely a waste of time. It exists purely to reward the player with credits to buy cars. Circuit Experience isn't a substitute for just going to a track and doing laps, which you can do whenever you like. You don't learn anything from racing against the AI for two reasons. If you're close to the leading positions in a race, they cheat. They cheat in a way which doesn't actually work, because cars can often go faster than it's actually possible for them to go, and end up flying off track. If you're in evenly matched cars it's arguably even worse, with the AI being incomprehensibly slow during corners and turning in on you any time you try and overtake them in a corner. I've seen it argued that the AI is responsible for people not being able to race cleanly online and there's probably something in that. Then again, if you can race the AI in this game and not win by miles then your own lack of place is probably as much a problem as anything else.
I typed a lot of stuff after this but I wasn't really happy with it. Ultimately all I really need to focus on is saying whether or not I like the game. I've played it regularly for over three years. In that time I've watched streams, videos, talked about it on the internet - I've probably spent as much time watching and reading about the game as I've spent driving. I don't quite remember when it happened, but a point came where I stopped thinking about the game as something I played and just something I did. On a Wednesday and Saturday (plus occasionally some other days) it was race day, and I planned accordingly.
Online racing, or Sport Mode, takes two forms in GT Sport, Daily Races and the FIA Championships. In daily races you can practice as much as you want. Your best time in free practice is the qualifying time you enter a race with, with three races to choose from each week. I'm not as much of a fan of this format as I was in the early days. Originally the three races changed on a daily basis. After about ten months they started changing weekly, and this had benefits and drawbacks. You had more time to practice and learn a race, but so did everybody else. Most crucially though, the repetition of car/track combinations is a long-running joke. Considering Sport Mode is the main point of the game, lots of the games cars barely ever get a look online, and it's a real shame.
The vast majority of my time, and why I like the game so much, is in the FIA races. The box tells me I can "Race in online competitions endorsed by motorsport's governing body, FIA." Rather than free practice and races every twenty minutes, each race has its own dedicated qualifying session before the race starts. This gives the occasion a sense of formality and pressure which alone makes it more enjoyable than the daily races. There are two championships. The Nations Cup has different car choices each race and ranks players predominately by country. The Manufacturer Series sees you pick a manufacturer at the start of their season and only drive their cars.
While I've never challenged the top end of these championships, I've competed regularly in both and improved my driver ratings and standings position each time. I've progressed from using a controller and automatic transmission to a wheel, pedals and manual. Doing the races regularly and watching all of those streams and videos, where top level drivers narrate their races and describe what they're doing and why, has all added up. It might sound obvious that spending years immersing yourself in something will make you better at it, but I'm legitimately proud of the progress I've made, and the fact I can see that is probably the biggest reason for that.
The biggest reason I've thought so highly about this game in all the times I've thought about the day I'd write this review is going from high to low on a race by race basis. I've had good races. I've had races battling for a top ten finish which were harder and more satisfying than wins. I've had ragequits from races where I never wanted to think about the game again. Yet, with the scheduling structure there's always been another race, so after a few days I'm fine, I'm back in and I'm committed to improving and learning.
I could genuinely be here for hours recalling great performances but I'll try and sum up a few of them. I've raced against World Tour drivers who travel(led) the world in Gran Turismo's live events, back when that was a possibility. I've raced against professional sim racers. I've raced against real life GT3 drivers. I've raced against streamers who've been able to have amazing opportunities and make a living because of this game's success. I mean, I've been in the same races against them. I've finished an an S-rank driver for finishing top 10 in my chosen manufacturer (technically this should have happened three times, but I'm not counting). After hundreds of races I became an A-rank driver. After thousands of races I reached the highest rank, A+. While it's hard to compare a competitive online game with a narrative-driven single player experience, the sense of satisfaction and emotional investment I've had from GT Sport is more than anything else I've ever played. The fact I do it on a weekly basis just extends that in a way that can't ever really be matched.
I need to mention my two Nissans somewhere. In the Manufacturer Series you pick a manufacturer and just drive their cars. Ever since I started doing FIA races regularly in August 2018 I've driven for Nissan. The Group 3 GT-R is a pig. It's large, it's heavy, it understeers and oversteers at the same time. It's fast in a straight line but not as fast as it used to be as attempts at balancing the car have slowed it down. It's only in certain situations where this car can succeed but when it does, it feel satisfying in a way nothing else does. At low speeds it has no grip but through high speed corners you throw it in and it just sticks and everything just feels right.
The Group 4 GT-R isn't a real car in the way the (2013) GT3 GT-R is. Most of Group 4 isn't, they're the equivalent of the real life GT4 class but just custom-made for the game. The Gr.4 GT-R is a four wheel drive car. As a result, its front tyres die in every race you ever enter. Its brakes are made of cheese. Its gearing is terrible. It's heavy, it's about eight miles long. It's also a complete tank that's impossible to lose control of because of how big and cumbersome it is. If I didn't have such experience with this car I would never have taken to using a wheel as readily as I have. For whatever sense of satisfaction the Gr.3 car gives me there's arguably more in this, having to drive it in a certain way to manage the tyre wear. Now I can.
The game isn't without its strengths and faults elsewhere. For the first time in Gran Turismo's history there's a livery editor, so you can make and share your own liveries for cars. I love this. I judge players on their livery more than their driving, and I take my own very seriously. I'm not very good at it - some of the liveries you see people make are genuinely unbelievable - but the good ones I have I'm quite proud of. GT7 looks like it's improved some of the interface and options for this feature, so it's good to see that Polyphony recognise the success of it.
As anyone who's played an online game will know, you get people who act like dicks and attempt to disrupt what's going on. A matchmaking based racing game with no damage and bouncy collision physics isn't a good combination. The penalty system has historically been the biggest problem with GT Sport. Assigning blame properly for incidents is a complete nightmare, not helped by the system being changed frequently by a developer which has little direct interaction with players, and which offers no explanations for their changes or the regular complaints players have. When you see how other e-sports platforms interact with their players it makes Polyphony's way of working all the more exasperating. I hope they're able to rectify this properly in the future, but I'm not hopeful.
I feel as if I'm somehow letting myself down by not typing, or not being able to type, thousands of words about the time I've spent playing this game. I think I feel as if I need to somehow complement the time I've put into the game with time justifying it. This is the first and really only game where I've properly felt part of the online community for a multiplayer-based game and that's been a massive part of the game's impact on me. Before I started playing it I had no idea that sim-racing existed. Now I do. I play other sims too and enjoy the feeling of different cars on different tracks in different conditions. Now I take part, although my terrible set-up and playing on console isn't anywhere near serious. None of that matters. I'd like to think I still have time to improve and if GT7 continues this successful online format then hopefully I will. I can't really imagine my life without it, so if that doesn't sum up how important Gran Turismo Sport is to me then I don't know what will.
