- 9
First I will begin the topic by saying that I still do love driving in the game. I've been waiting forever for the new Gran Turismo, I've finished all of them and I continued to play 3 and 4 right up to the launch of Prologue. My problem isn't with the physics, but with the surrounding bits.
Primary among my problems with the game is the artificial "gating" we are forced to go through. This has several facets to it. The leveling instead of licensing in order to access races and cars, the restriction of races by certain cars which are only attainable through the used car lot in small lots per day, and the restriction on credits far beyond what was given out in the other Gran Turismos. Couple that last one with only being able to win cars one time, and have many of the big ticket ones unsellable, and you have my main beef with the game.
The effect they were going for with this is to make the game longer. Normally I like games to be longer, but that is because most of the time when a game is longer, especially a sequel, it comes from the addition of extra content that extends the gameplay. This is not extended gameplay however, this is just a chokepoint that we are forced to funnel through before we can continue playing. Instead of increasing the amount of races, or making the special sections anything other than a slight diversion, they have given us relatively the same amount of content and then jammed it up with the levels, lack of credits, and sparse amounts of required cars in order to artificially force us to take longer to play the game. In fact, I would argue that there are more races in GT4 than there are in GT5. How did that end up happening?
There are a few good examples of how this turns into sheer frustration. I, for example, was forced to sit on the Truck race for almost a week as I did not buy a truck the first time it came around in the used lot, because I was saving money for other things and didn't yet realize how hopeless it is to sit around and camp the used lot for required vehicles. The Historic Car race in expert is also a good example of it, with that race being quite difficult for some and with their being a dearth of good vehicles to ride in it, unless you've magically acquired 20,000,000 credits.
The levels system also just drives me batty. There is no functional purpose to it other than to slow down your gameplay. I always get baffled when games come up with gameplay changes that seem to be useless. The old license system was quite excellent in teaching you to drive in the game, and using that as a method for unlocking sections of the game was also logical and enjoyable. I can see that perhaps for some people, leveling instead of being forced to win the S class license lets them eventually race things they might not have gotten to in GT4 or 3, but honestly, how many people would be willing to put in the time to race in a GT game to the last stages, but not be able to beat S license.
I also do not understand when sequels come out with parts missing that were in the previous games. I understand taking out bad elements, but there is never an argument for removing good gameplay from a game for a sequel. I am speaking of a few things here, chief among them the inability to tweak brakes as much as in the past, and the removal of individual gear changes. They also took away the Race Mod items from more vehicles than in the past games. They removed the one make races from the dealerships, another baffling change that makes no sense. Admittedly they were not the most exciting races in the games, but they were still content.
Final among my gripes is the fact that there are actually tracks in Prologue that did not make it to GT5. How did that end up happening? My understanding is that Prologue was built off a earlier version of the same engine before it was given the final tweaks. So how is it possible that those tracks were not implemented in the final game? Couple that with the fact that I am simply not impressed with the amount of tracks in the game, and you have most of my gripes.
It is a good game to drive, but it misses too many things. I don't like being forced to wait for certain cars to show up in order to drive them, to be forced to level for credits and xp before I can advance the game, and I don't like the fact that content was actually removed from the game instead of building off the good bits of the older verisons. The chokepoint method is what primarily frustrates me though. As this series advances, the original fans will continue to get older. At 32, I have the time to play the game and gold it up, but I didn't expect to be forced to spend hours and hours just grinding xp in order to advance sections. The game is pushing away its own demographic with this style of gameplay.
Primary among my problems with the game is the artificial "gating" we are forced to go through. This has several facets to it. The leveling instead of licensing in order to access races and cars, the restriction of races by certain cars which are only attainable through the used car lot in small lots per day, and the restriction on credits far beyond what was given out in the other Gran Turismos. Couple that last one with only being able to win cars one time, and have many of the big ticket ones unsellable, and you have my main beef with the game.
The effect they were going for with this is to make the game longer. Normally I like games to be longer, but that is because most of the time when a game is longer, especially a sequel, it comes from the addition of extra content that extends the gameplay. This is not extended gameplay however, this is just a chokepoint that we are forced to funnel through before we can continue playing. Instead of increasing the amount of races, or making the special sections anything other than a slight diversion, they have given us relatively the same amount of content and then jammed it up with the levels, lack of credits, and sparse amounts of required cars in order to artificially force us to take longer to play the game. In fact, I would argue that there are more races in GT4 than there are in GT5. How did that end up happening?
There are a few good examples of how this turns into sheer frustration. I, for example, was forced to sit on the Truck race for almost a week as I did not buy a truck the first time it came around in the used lot, because I was saving money for other things and didn't yet realize how hopeless it is to sit around and camp the used lot for required vehicles. The Historic Car race in expert is also a good example of it, with that race being quite difficult for some and with their being a dearth of good vehicles to ride in it, unless you've magically acquired 20,000,000 credits.
The levels system also just drives me batty. There is no functional purpose to it other than to slow down your gameplay. I always get baffled when games come up with gameplay changes that seem to be useless. The old license system was quite excellent in teaching you to drive in the game, and using that as a method for unlocking sections of the game was also logical and enjoyable. I can see that perhaps for some people, leveling instead of being forced to win the S class license lets them eventually race things they might not have gotten to in GT4 or 3, but honestly, how many people would be willing to put in the time to race in a GT game to the last stages, but not be able to beat S license.
I also do not understand when sequels come out with parts missing that were in the previous games. I understand taking out bad elements, but there is never an argument for removing good gameplay from a game for a sequel. I am speaking of a few things here, chief among them the inability to tweak brakes as much as in the past, and the removal of individual gear changes. They also took away the Race Mod items from more vehicles than in the past games. They removed the one make races from the dealerships, another baffling change that makes no sense. Admittedly they were not the most exciting races in the games, but they were still content.
Final among my gripes is the fact that there are actually tracks in Prologue that did not make it to GT5. How did that end up happening? My understanding is that Prologue was built off a earlier version of the same engine before it was given the final tweaks. So how is it possible that those tracks were not implemented in the final game? Couple that with the fact that I am simply not impressed with the amount of tracks in the game, and you have most of my gripes.
It is a good game to drive, but it misses too many things. I don't like being forced to wait for certain cars to show up in order to drive them, to be forced to level for credits and xp before I can advance the game, and I don't like the fact that content was actually removed from the game instead of building off the good bits of the older verisons. The chokepoint method is what primarily frustrates me though. As this series advances, the original fans will continue to get older. At 32, I have the time to play the game and gold it up, but I didn't expect to be forced to spend hours and hours just grinding xp in order to advance sections. The game is pushing away its own demographic with this style of gameplay.