I've played most modern racing sims, and would like to offer my thoughts on the "big three" mentioned in this thread...
PCARS2 - Incredibly mundane
in my opinion. I was extremely excited about it to begin with, but on release there was that awful bug whereby I would set a great lap time in qualifying and, thinking it was clearly good for pole, simulated the rest of the session only to find all AI drivers had set astronomically quick (read: impossible) lap times and relegated me to last on the grid. I found it staggering that something like this got past testing before release. In the end I found myself doing time trials instead and tinkering with cars without any real direction to my game. The simulation itself is very good, the sounds are amazing, the cars feel heavy and powerful, noisy and metallic... you could almost smell the petrol.
I just don't like the game. Not being able to actually "win" anything bugs me, no way to buy and upgrade/modify cars leaves me feeling very hollow. It's just race weekend after race weekend, without anything...
tangible(?) to show for my efforts. No real progress as such; each time you load up the game, everything looks as it did on day one. Doesn't mean it's a bad game of course, and if you like that sort of thing you'll absolutely adore PCARS. I don't.
Forza 7 - the sheer number of races and cars available beggars belief, but I find the presentation cheesy and "over Americanised" with daft and unnecessary voice-overs that take away from the game's solid attempt at being a simulator. I guess it's to appease a wider audience, but (again, personally) I don't like it. The first thing I did when loading the game was switch off the background music - more cheese with it's rock backing tracks quickly grating. Getting back to the game itself though - a monumental genre-leading array of cars from countless manufacturers easily leaves it's rivals some distance behind, and it's not too short on tracks either. The AI gets criticised but set to the hardest difficulty and "hardcore" driving mode and FM7 offers a great challenge for a single-player gamer like me, which leads to my next point... online racing. FM7 really is the worst imaginable online racing experience. Absolutely stuffed full of incompetent morons, Hell bent on ramming and crashing and spoiling any hope of fun you might wish to have. Sometimes you get lucky and manage to have a good race, but those times are rare unless it is a "ghost" event where contact is impossible - but contact possibility is all part of the excitement of racing, and switching it off is akin to running hot laps.
Thankfully there are plans to change the online experience, but we'll have to wait and see how that works out. Looks positive though.
GT Sport - regulars here will know I don't play GT Sport, my last 'Turismo was 6, so anything I say about it is not from personal experience and can be taken with a pinch of salt. What I can say though, is that the reason I didn't buy it was it's focus firmly on online play, with a total lack of Gran Turismo mode as we know and love it meaning the game had absolutely nothing to offer me. I love nothing more than starting a new game with a small balance, doing some license tests, winning races, buying cars, improving them, winning more races, better cars, upgrades and so on. Aficionados will say I'm missing out, but I've never been about online play, it's just not for me (aside from online leaderboards that I've invested years in with Forza), so there's nothing for me to miss. I have been tempted lately, however, because I'd love to footer about with the livery editor which, I'm learning, is utterly outstanding for a first go in the GT Series. But the online play would just annoy me, I prefer the freedom to do things at my leisure (which is why recently I returned to GT4).
OPINION - Gran Turismo is a vastly superior
driving simulator than Forza. I spent months playing FM7 solid, and make no mistake I adore the game, but when I loaded up my PS3 for some GT6 a month ago, the difference is absolutely staggering. The cars just feel...
right. I've said elsewhere on these forums, a while ago now, that there is no better experience than turning off the HUD completely, and taking any car around Nürburgring at night time in Gran Turismo (I recommend the 458 Italia). There just isn't a better and more realistic experience to be found on console. It's just a shame GT6 is rubbish as an overall game, and GT Sport isn't a "true" Gran Turismo - I sometimes daydream about GT4's content with GT Sport's polish. My God
I haven't spent long enough playing PCARS to really judge it in comparison.
) that it's not even funny.
