Gran Turismo Sport
GT:S came out of the gates with a lot of promise. Primarily, it would be the initial foray of the historic GT series on PS4. But also, it would shift focus from the standard GT fare and hone in on competitive racing… online.
And when it was released, it was a hot mess. The game wasn’t full price, but it was pricey enough for something that didn’t feel full featured. It looked and felt great. In so far as it looked & felt like Gran Turismo, anyway. But it didn’t have the breath & depth of the past games. It felt like a long con. We were duped into investing into this title that carried the weight of expectation, but never delivered on that expectation.
But, all that has changed. A few months down the road and the game feels a lot more fleshed out. There’s an actual career mode. No, it’s not as fully featured as GT6 was, but it’s got enough to keep you busy for a few days. Same goes for the old school style licenses. But, as you play through the normal mechanics of yesteryear, you end up dipping into the online “Sport” mode. Which, for the most part, is fun.
The game forces players to watch two videos on racing etiquette which feel a lot like a teacher wagging their finger at a bold student before the student has actually done anything wrong. But once you’ve consumed some of the most boring video ever created on racing, you can get into the action.
And the online play is pretty good. You can hop into future race events to set a lap time before racing, which gives you decent odds of placing well since it seems a lot of players don’t do this yet. The back of the pack are people hopping into races a minute before the race starts, so those folks tend to be more reckless drivers, crashing folks off the track if possible. Meanwhile, the front is all about smooth, fast times.
Overall, I would have said this would be a poor investment when it was released. But with persistent updates and the old GT vibe being re-instated, this is well worthwhile. I’ll gloss over the other features of the software (“Scapes” picture mode is pretty cool, but not at the core of what GT:S is all about), but know that hopping into this game today will reap reward. And if you ditched it in anger a few months ago, get back in now. It’ll reward you.
