I’ve been happily playing the new Gran Turismo for a couple weeks. I’m someone who enjoys racing games, although, like fighting games and shoot-’em-ups, I’ve never been particularly good at them. The way it usually goes for me with GT is that I play for a few nights, enjoy the shiny toys, get bored or irritated with the restrictive challenges and momentum, and then repeat that cycle about every six-to-twelve months. It’s unusual that I’ll get a new one close to launch and then play it every day. That’s what I’ve been doing with Gran Turismo 7, though! I’ve played about 15 hours or so, and I like how I can bounce around through the menu/car collecting challenges to mission modes, tuning and getting new cars along the way. It feels like I’m always making progress and playing something new.
There’s my experience with the game, which is that it might be the easiest, most immediately fun Gran Turismo that I’ve played, and then there’s the elite experience that I’ve heard about secondhand. Sony and Polyphony have apparently fucked up the in-game economy in some boneheaded ways. Worse, they seem like they’ve noticed that they’ve pissed off hardcore fans, walked their bullshit back, and then gone ahead and and implemented the thing that pissed people off, anyway. Mostly, the issue seems to be at the other end of the game, the continuing game that people play once they’re done with all the single-player challenges. For some reason, prices for cars at the highest tier are made to fluctuate and reflect their real-world value. What’s the point of that? There may only be six Mazda concept cars from 1978 or whatever in reality, but there’s no scarcity on how many digital models there can be in GT. I get that there should be challenge to filling out all 300+ cars in the garage, but I don’t see why tying that to monumental amounts of in-game currency makes sense.
This is probably not something that I’ll encounter in Gran Turismo 7. Once I have every license, have completed every mission, and done all 40 or so menu challenges, all that will be left for me is throwing it in when I’m looking for a race or playing online. And since the online is the same as GT Sport, complete with the bad tech of penalizing players when someone else comes in, t-bones them on a curve, and shoves them off the track… I’ll probably go back to my ordinary GT cycle. Until then, though, I’ll probably have a lot more fun zooming around.
Talk Amongst Yourselves!
- Played anything that surprised you lately?
- Do you expect Sony to pull this shit with their increased focus on live service/GAAS games? I sure do.
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Let's see, I've been playing Jedi Fallen Order these past few days. I'm not a big Star Wars fan but I was looking for a good actiony game and it was pretty cheap on sale. So far I feel like it is a solid B. It does a lot right, mainly that the levels are really fun to explore, complex enough to be interesting to navigate but also visually distinct with good signposting. The classic metroidvania style of progression where you gain a new ability and unlock areas on the map with it is a great fit for a Jedi game. I'm playing on Jedi Master difficulty and have mixed feelings about the combat... The high-risk parry based gameplay seems perfect for lightsaber combat, but in practice it feels imprecise and arbitrary. The enemy attacks are tricky to read, and the overall feeling is just kind of floaty and loose. I guess this is probably just a classic "good idea let down by its execution" problem. It really makes me appreciate how incredibly slick and responsive Sekiro was, even if I never quite got gud at it. I can imagine a version of JFO that feels as good as Sekiro to play, but for now I am generally just kind of getting through the combat. I will probably turn down the difficulty if I ever get stuck in any significant way.
My week started out great with a super relaxing monday off but now it's getting busy quick 😩. I'm going to a conference in Philly in 2 weeks so I've got to hit some deadlines before then. My job is so rarely like this... I'm not particularly mad or anything but it is a bit surprising. Hope you have a good one ✌️!
Aerial_Knight's Never Yield. Plays kind of like an endless runner and was good for some quick gaming the other night. Got it free with Games With Gold on Xbox I think. Always nice to try out new games and genres I usually don't play.
**Do you expect Sony to pull this shit with their increased focus on live service/GAAS games? I sure do.**
Yes... yes I do.
I've heard not great things about Gran Turismo 7. The always online part of it is ridiculous. As well as everything else you stated.