Tuesday 28 May 2013

Gran Turismo 6: Racing Around Silverstone

There’s really no such thing as a bad Gran Turismo game, just peaks and troughs within the series. However, with the rise of serious competition in recent years – chiefly the core Forza games, plus additional threats from the likes of free-to-play Auto Club Revolution – Polyphony Digital’s baby has had to fight to maintain its self-ascribed title as the “real racing simulator”.

2010’s Gran Turismo 5, was received favourably enough – IGN’s own review pegged it at a worthy 8.5 – though even then, its online aspirations felt out of synch with the rest of the industry. It leaves Gran Turismo 6 in the somewhat unenviable position of having to justify its relevance in a modern context. Luckily for fans of the series, producer Kazunori Yamauchi is keener than ever to push the series until it truly matches the real-world experience of race driving.

Large parts of that will hopefully come from a new game engine, one that Yamauchi promises will put the PlayStation 3 hardware through its paces. While the list of planned features swiftly dives into jargon territory and won’t mean much to all but the most obsessive fans – Yamauchi proudly bragged of refactoring, flexible expandability, adaptive tessellation, a dynamic range “50 times greater” and more during Gran Turismo 6’s reveal ceremony at Silverstone – there are several more immediately noticeable improvements.

Visually, the game’s on another level.

Visually, the game’s on another level. That’s easy to say and often harder to quantify, but even from the early build shown, the difference is clear. The lighting and texturing alone already look better than anything seen in GT5, and wire-frame models of individual components like light fixtures or interior dashboards reveal a level of detail and intricacy that invites madness if you stare at it for too long. More obvious is the improved physics, with cars leaning near-perfectly into corners. Yamauchi credits much of this to new partnerships with the likes of Japan’s Yokohama Rubber, advising on tire resistance, and Germany’s KW Automotive, lending expertise on suspension. These join the likes of Nissan on the list of high-spec motor industry companies that have contributed to making the series ever more authentic.

But how does it handle? Jumping behind the wheel of a virtual Nismo 350Z and taking it around the newly included International Circuit at Silverstone reveals that the greatest improvement so far is a quantum leap in responsiveness. In fact, handling was so significantly improved – particularly when using the immersive force-feedback steering wheel and floor pedals – that it took a few laps to get to grips with it, as the initial tendency was to put more effort into steering than proved necessary. Figuring out when to change gears proved key, with a first-lap schoolboy error on approach to a particularly sharp corner leaving me struggling to regain power and acceleration on the straight.

The car demanded to be treated as a real vehicle would be.

My immediate reaction was frustration, quickly replaced by determination as I realised the game was doing exactly what it set out to do – provide an incredibly close approximation of how the car in question would actually respond under the same conditions. Instead of powering around like it was just a game, the car demanded to be treated as a real vehicle would be – it felt like I was actually driving, which is perhaps the highest accolade a driving game can be given.

What remains to be seen is how GT6 improves as a whole. The fifth instalment became grind-heavy fast, and overall progression felt as if it were determined more by the number of vehicles unlocked than actual racing – hopefully, there will be much less of that this time. The online side also needs to be vastly improved, and not just in terms of the amount of DLC offered – an end to obfuscatory menus at the very least would be massively appreciated.

While roaring around Silverstone for a few laps can’t reveal anything on those fronts, it does provide a promising first glimpse. Polyphony appears to have squeezed everything it can into the game, and the past three years seem to have been well spent fine tuning every aspect in one way or another. I’ll be eager to see how the rest of Gran Turismo 6 shapes up as we race towards its holiday launch.

Matt Kamen is a UK-based freelancer. Follow him on Twitter or IGN.


Source : ign[dot]com

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