This is the first Gran Turismo I've played since GT3 as up until the current gen I've mostly stuck to Forza for my racing "sim". However I've been in for a ride awakening with this, I've always thought myself to be okay at this sort of thing but in GT Sport I'm firmly at the back in pretty much every race I've had against other people, which it seems the purpose of this release is.
That's not to say there isn't any single player stuff, but it's got that normal issue that's always been thrown at Gran Turismo, and that is that the AI just isn't challenging enough.
I've mostly been meeting the "Daily Workout" by running Time Trials to try and get myself competitive in the RLLMUK online races that get run on a Tuesday evening (when I can make them, which has been sporadic), for that we've been running Gr.3 cars for 15 laps of a circuit (or thereabouts) with tyre degradation and refuelling on, and whilst most of those guys are running with steering wheels a few have pads (one of the championship contenders is a pad user), I've been driving the AMG GT3 '16
Mostly because it was the first Gr.3 car I earned and I've stuck with it whilst others have chop and changed depending on the circuit. I was finding though that the cars didn't have much "life" to them, but I've played with the traction control (which you can change on the fly as you drive) and have settled on having it at 1 (default is 3 or 4 I think) which has made the car a little more spritely, I can "feel" the power going down into the tyres now which has made it more fun to drive (if a little difficult exiting slow corners) even if it's not reflected in my performances.
Have to say, Polyphonys support of this has been excellent, they add cars and circuits to it regularly for no extra charge and most of the circuits have been good (I've yet to drive Catalunya in this but it had its moments in Forza 4), they're adding a new Tokyo street circuit which the FIA GT Sport racers have had a go at this week
Admittedly I'm not sold on this one, there's too many straights but I like the sequence after the first long straight where there's 3 right turns (I think) in quick succession, before it cuts left again.
What's the single-player like in this now? When I played it originally it had virtually nothing, just a bunch of licence tests and time trials. I've heard they've added proper GT leagues now but I still kind of miss the old style where you start off with slow cars and gradually unlock faster and faster vehicles: knowing virtually nothing about cars I genuinely can't tell what's good in this and what's not.
They've put in something akin to the old style Gran Turismo, there's license tests and themes races and there's "Circuit Experiences" where you can learn how to correctly do different parts of a circuit before doing a full lap, alot of people find that helpful but I haven't as I don't learn from the disjointed nature of it, but there's alot of variety there as far as serious racing games go. Tbh I bought it after that had all been added so can't compare how it was at launch to how it is now. Most of the car unlocks come from doing the "Daily Workout" which is doing 26.2 miles in any mode, once you do that and go to the main menu you get a roulette and are gifted a random car.
The menu's are fucking atrocious though, but that's a Gran Turismo "thing" apparently!
Been playing more of Sport mode, which is the games main multiplayer mode and have come across a few knobs but it's been mostly okay even though I'm in the lower rankings (apparently you only go up the driver ranks by getting Poles and/or wins). Sunday I kept doing the Interlagos race in my GR.3 Mercedes, then this happened:
I was running down in 11th, the guy in front had spun out and lost a couple of places on the second corner from the end. We clipped each other (which knocked my Sportsmanship Rank down) as he was pushing me to the edge of the circuit (unintentionally I think) and I had no where to go but it didn't effect our race. I knew from then I couldn't get past in what little time I had left so I stuck the car in his slipstream to try and get a bit of a better time, he then slammed on the brakes and the only reason I can think of is that he didn't expect to ghost out and let me go straight through him, he just didn't like me slipstreaming him.
Not sure anyone is watching these, not fussed either way. But here's one of this week's "Daily Races" (apparently they did change daily, now it's weekly but everyone still calls them dailies) where I started 10th and finished 4th. I think the only move I made that wasn't fair was in the battle for 7th/8th/9th. 7th had spun and was ghosting but my interpretation was 8th moved to one side in case he came out of ghost mode but braked earlier than I'd anticipated and I rammed him. I actually tried to give the position back which allowed 7th to keep that spot and I think I could have had both places without incident if 8th had kept his line.
The move for 5th was daring from me but only in that I thought I wouldn't have the drive on corner exit to keep the place, he'd already tried to turn into me once but didn't think he'd do it there too so I didn't think twice about flooring it when be bounced off me.
Loved the move for fourth, especially as I'd been struggling to keep the car facing forwards on that series of corners in qualifying and by that point in the race someone had taken out the double cones that mark the braking point for that section.
My choice of Daily weekly race last night (Race B: Gr.3 cars around the Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit, so thankfully not the Nordschliefe) was full of fucking morons. I had this race
Which was great fun. Okay I wasn't the cleanest driver and the guy in the Audi I made the messy move on at the last corner ultimately also got a penalty for bumping me (which resulted in our final standings being swapped) but all my races after wards were like bumper cars. I actually rage quit at one point as I was punted around quite a bit then to try and catch the pack I started pushing too hard and was making mistakes at every corner. So, like I said, I rage quit, went to the shop and fetched my eldest from her youth club. Came back and my Sportsman Ranking had dropped from S to A so I tried to spend a few races getting it back up again. Only problem was some of the guys I was racing against had some really weird behaviour. There was a Finnish guy in a bright blue Ferrari who had loads and loads of straight line speed, but that car is awful on the brakes and in the corners and he couldn't manage it and he'd go off, ghost then come back to the circuit but he'd then drift across the racing line in the braking zone causing either myself or someone else to take avoiding action or brake earlier than expected whilst his driving went unpunished. I got placed in a race with him 3 times before I decided enough was enough and switched it off for the night.
Still can't win against humans on it and in normally in the bottom half of the pack too.
I had to write off rounds 3 and 4 of the FIA Manufacturers series, my left analogue stick is acting weird on GTSport, it'll randomly just refuse to steer, and it's only doing it on GTSport. I've tried using compressed air to clean out any dust and I've tried resetting it via the pin button, but that didn't work either so I've switched to dpad steering and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be although last night's race at Fuji, which is full of tight hairpins and chicanes was a baptism of fire for such a control method! Anyway, I started 11th, finished 7th, could have had 6th if I hadn't of cut some corners by accident after my pit stop which gave me a 6.5 second penalty, but by the end of the race the tyres were knackered and I was a sitting duck.
Last night's manufacturers race round Nurburgring GP (not the Nordschliefe) was a bit of a disaster. I qualified poorly due to reasons. Mostly that I couldn't get the grip I wanted from the tyres and my Mercedes chewed up the fronts really quickly. Then in the race, again I had the same problem so was gonna run a two pit stop strategy and see if I could do Mediums (which I could get maximum of 5 laps from) then two runs on softs spread over the remaining 6 laps, with a dash of fuel just to be sure. But I messed up the pit stop and chose hard tyres, didn't put any fuel in so whilst the tyres lasted the rest of the race I had no pace then had to turn the engine down for the final lap in order to just get over the line.
Tonight's manufacturers cup race was fun, I'd missed out on Wednesday as I was run down (have been all week tbh) It was against a whole bunch of SP-B drivers as I'd been dragged into that lot, I qualified 8th. Got a 2 second penalty on lap 2 due to someone losing it in the pack, in not sure what I did (and forgot to save the replay before quitting! :(). I pitter on lap 6, iirc, and switched to the soft tyre hoping to make some time up but fucked up by refuelling and making the car heavier (as I wasn't paying attention). But the front left soft tyre only lasted till lap 9 and I had to put to the mediums sooner than I wanted to but thanks to some consistency on my part, lack of consistency on others and 6 people (overall) quitting during my last stint I managed to go from 13th after my final pit stop to finish 6th which is my highest finish this season.
