GT2 is by far the best in the series.
No, it's GT4. What does 2 have over 4?
While GT4 seems to me to be the best of the series - prior to GT5, I can see a few things that are sadly missed in GT2.
- Race Mod on just about every car, and at least two variations on all but a tiny handful of singles. A few had three different liveries!
- A wide variety of Rally races, such as the mentioned Pike's Peak events. It seemed there was almost as many Rally events as road racing ones.
- A number of new tracks such as Red Rock Valley and Grindelwald, which will hopefully end up as DLC in GT5, or in GT6.
But other than this and a few odd bits, GT4 is simply a monster of a game. If the physics were remotely like Prologue, I'd still be playing it alongside GT5.
On topic, GT5 suffered too much from three things:
- Kaz, and quite likely the others in the team, kept coming up with ideas throughout the development period, and then found towards the end that it was difficult to reconcile some of them.
- SONY meddled too much, demanding GT PSP and then 3D out of the team. And 3D on all tracks combined with time of day transition evidently became a big drain on the engine.
- The PSN couldn't handle the traffic that GT5 generated, causing the online playground to be cut back severely, until such time that SONY can build up the server backbone with way more capacity.
Frankly, because the GT5 engine has been developed over five years, I doubt very much more performance can be squeezed from it. I imagine the game would have to drop to 720p or some lesser resolution to handle what Kaz wants to do with the next Gran Turismo if he intends to keep it on PS3, which to me would be fine. I'm not sure what everyone else would think of that, but we still have to get through GT5's growing process before we get a sniff of GT6.
But because GT5 can be enhanced and expanded, I'm also fine with it being the sole Gran Turismo game on PS3, allowing Kaz to load up GT6 on a way more powerful PS4 with the content and features he wanted for #5. I have a feeling that the cars and tracks are going to be as detailed as the Premium stuff in GT5. But if SONY funds the hiring of more quality, dedicated modelers, the extra content in GT6 should be extensive. Damage modeling can be polished up and fully implemented, and a Livery Editor added with full Race Mod for just about every car. Sound whiners might finally be content. And I can hardly wait to see the amazing races to come with perhaps as many as 24 highly detailed cars on track at once, or more!
GT5, properly tweaked and enhanced, will be a magnificent game, and give Kaz some breathing room to devote most of their resources on GT6.
