The delicate and skilled operation of a high performance vehicle projects Gran Turismo Sport's utopian vision. Its factitious structure and inattentive principles remind the player that it operates in an unstable reality. Gran Turismo Sport lives in a world of sportsmanship and prestige and doesn't much care if would-be residents find its narrow paradise aloof and inhospitable.
Gran Turismo’s paradisal vision of driving has long served as its divine signature. The Real Driving Simulator complimented the back cover of its first iteration in 1998. Driving is for everyone is the phrase that titles Gran Turismo Sport’s opening cinematic in 2017. The ever expanding range of technology repeatedly challenges Gran Turismo to approximate control over powerful machines operating at dangerous speeds. Gran Turismo Sport, four years after the PlayStation 4’s launch, captures the latest opportunity on modern hardware.
Driving and racing as a lifestyle is Gran Turismo Sport’s warm embrace. The early morning starts, prepping the car, walking through the track, conversing with friends and rivals — the pre-race rituals practiced from amateur to professional racing serve as admission to a prestigious club. You’re not a fan in the stands. You’re a driver on the course. Gran Turismo Sport operates on the philosophy that driving is sacred and racing is its best practice. And it deeply wants to show you the importance and value of your participation.
Exercising its thesis is Gran Turismo Sport starts getting into trouble. The traditional model for simulation games—competing in low stakes races with modest cars until you can compete in high stakes races with super cars—has been vacated. In its place Gran Turismo Sport divides its time between an arcade mode, a series of solo driving challenges, and a chaotic approach to multiplayer. Various measures of progress govern different disciplines, including a driver rating, a sportsmanship rating, an experience level, daily mileage, and accumulated credits.
Arcade mode houses the bulk of Gran Turismo Sport’s traditional racing content. Select one of 162 cars, choose from one of 40 track variations, and then you’re literally off to the races. Options for time trials, drift trials, and custom race configurations are also presently. Arcade mode’s most interesting feature is a bit of a throwback; a split-screen two player mode. Perhaps this is a concession to its limited scope but I thought it was rad as hell for a modern Gran Turismo game to toss a largely abandoned multiplayer option.
As best as I can tell, no action completed in arcade mode carries over to any sort of internal progress. Arcade mode exists to facilitate the need for (or practice with) a fast car and quick race. It’s a fleeting image of the challenges that defined racing games of the past three generations of Gran Turismo. Back to Gran Turismo Sport as a concept and not a product, it’s a demonstration that Polyphony Digital is still capable of making a traditional racing simulation, should it need to.
One could speculate that a series, nearly two decades into its tenure, was due for a fundamental shakeup. Gran Turismo’s natural dual against Forza and impressive competition from Project CARS, Assetto Corsa, and iRacing all drive the need for change and innovation. The loss of a number after Gran Turismo provides Sport with even more freedom to explore the limits of a racing simulation. The choices Gran Turismo Sport makes, however, often come off as aloof and imprudent.
Participation in anything outside of arcade mode demands an online connection. Driving School, Mission Challenges, and Circuit Experience—events that compose Gran Turismo Sport’s de facto campaign—cannot be performed offline. Same goes for its photography mode, scapes. Each of the campaign segments consists of either timed challenges or specific battles against AI opponents. If you do not have an internet connection (or if Gran Turismo Sport’s servers are down) then none of these are playable. Arcade mode is the only option.
This is insane. It was telegraphed by Sony, but it’s still incomprehensible. There are two (speculative) reasons to justify this maneuver. This first is Gran Turismo Sport’s reliance on YouTube as source for its tutorial videos. Every single player challenge is accompanied by video narrating and explaining the importance of the lesson and the technique necessary for a successful test. Presumably, it was easier to offload these videos to the internet than bloat the install size of the proper game. With Gran Turismo Sport’s considerable load times, watching a one or two minute tutorial video isn’t an unwelcomed trade off.
Gran Turismo Sport’s tight grip on the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, a 113-year-old governing body of racing events, could be another reason. Every aspect of the single player campaign is measured, recorded, and applied to a leaderboard. Gran Turismo Sport’s relationship with the FIA presumably imposes tough restrictions on this data, ensuring it isn’t corrupted by less than scrupulous players (Gran Turismo Sport’s idea of sportsmanship, which I’ll get to shortly, also ties into this theme). This is another example of Gran Turismo Sport seeking to enhance the legitimacy and reputation of its brand. It’s looking for respect, but it’s forgetting (or actively ignoring) the trust of its community in the process.
Once you’re past the bizarre online restrictions, Gran Turismo Sport’s campaign opens up a modest but focused series of distinct disciplines. Driving School reprises the majority of the familiar License Tests from Gran Turismo’s past. You’ll learn how to stop on a dime, manage your throttle across a half turn, and make the best of a limited amount of fuel. Bronze rankings are easily attainable, but obsessively grabbing gold is going to require a mixture of patience and applied skill. Gran Turismo Sport neatly highlights the difference between tenths of a second, and you can instantly feel it when your performance is off the intended model.
Mission Challenges are similar to Driving School, but feel more interested in practical application than basic instruction. Early events feature oddballs like knocking over cones like bowling pins and serious strategies like drafting in straightaways. Regular races, endurance challenges, and high speed challenges round out later events. The seventh (of eight) tier, for example, is focused entirely around pushing super cars through different parts Nurburgring. Mission Challenges are also measured by bronze, silver, and gold medals.
The campaigns third peg belongs to Circuit Experience. This section slices up pieces of Gran Turismo Sport’s tracks and demands the application of skills acquired in the other two modes. Each segment is gated (and ranked) by time. The eventual goal is the presumed mastery of a given course. I found Circuit Experience to be a better use of time over arcade mode because it was utterly committed to the craft of driving (and all the tracks were already unlocked).
Going for gold on Mission Challenges reignited a sensation that I hadn’t experienced since, well, the Gran Turismo 6 came out in 2013. The idea that there’s a car, an opponent in front of me just a few feet away, and that it would demand rigid perfection to approach and overtake it, had me reeling. It’s not unlike a boss fight in a traditional action game. Moving up race positions can be narrowed down to a repeated series of duals culminating in overtaking first place. The strict rules enforced through Gran Turismo Sport’s challenges ensured I couldn’t brute force my way to gold. Each victory felt earned.
The nature of a racing game demands this kind of response. Pumping money into a car until you can overpower anything is the equivalent of grinding experience out until you go blow through a role-playing game. There’s fun to be had here, but it destroys the intended challenge. Developing skill and applying that skill in a series of rising tests—moving from last to first in a race—is the ultimate measure of progress. Gran Turismo Sport’s litany of levels and meters all feel extraneous once you learn and know how to drive its cars. If you’re able to contend with (and appreciate) its raw driving mechanics, the simple act of obtaining victory can take you as far as you need to go.
Ultimately, Gran Turismo Sport wants to be recognized and appreciated for its (actual) online multiplayer. The titular Sport Mode is home to daily challenges and lobby-based pick up races. Through Sport Mode the player can build their Driver Rating, which is a basic measure of skill developed through race performance. More important is your Sportsmanship Rating, which measures the purity of your technique and opens up Gran Turismo Sport’s largest can of worms.
Gran Turismo Sport is consumed with the idea of sportsmanship. Before you’re allowed to play online, you’re required to watch two short videos on the nature of respectful play. Don’t turn your car into a missile and ram others. Don’t bump into others as a substitute for a turning against a wall. It continues along other “don’t be an asshole” reminders until it gets to not using your car as a barricade to prevent other racers from advancing forward. Gran Turismo Sport deeply wants the player to concede their position if it’s clear another player can take advantage of the road. Really.
I get the idea that this planet is hell, online interactions with callous strangers are generally miserable, and the environment of online play is as bleak as most of Iñárritu’s work with film. Socially engineering Gran Turismo Sport’s ethos toward the direction of positivity and respect is noble, but, if you’ve ever played anything competitive online, completely unattainable. It’s a fantasy. People are going to behave like idiots forever and the notion that this can somehow be corrected is a gross expression of naiveté.
You could make the argument that Gran Turismo Sport is built for this. Repeated bad play—bumping into others, getting bumped into by others, anything that could be perceived as chaos—lowers your rating and, in theory, starts grouping you with others of the same rating. Gran Turismo Sport will probably put all of the troublemakers in the same place. This is hard to evaluate in a review of a game that has been available for less than a week, but their intentions, as misguided as they may be, seem pure.
The measure of sportsmanship, however, is inconsistent. Gran Turismo Sport turns opponents invisible if their behavior is egregious, which negates their impact on you. Still, minor collisions are unavoidable and Gran Turismo Sport is weirdly judicious with when and where it decides to render someone (or you) transparent. It’s another instance where Gran Turismo Sport seeks to achieve some kind of compromise between philosophy and reality and can’t quite nail it.
What’s even less clear is the organization of its Daily Races. When Gran Turismo Sport debuted on October 17th, there were three different online races every twenty minutes for an entire day. Then October 18th happened and it was the same three races. As of today, the 20th, the twenty minute wait time has been reduced to five minutes. If you’re wondering what’s going on and why Gran Turismo Sport is like this, so am I. So is everyone.
Daily Races, or what Gran Turismo Sport seems to be aiming for with Daily Races, is another move toward its idyllic vision of driving purity. Gratification bends the knee to structure, the ultimate model of reform. Race times are set and, while you’re free to do practice laps in the interim, ultimately bound to specific instances. Use the time to qualify, if you choose, and then it’s time to race. It calls to mind the race meetups Sega used to do with the Saturn version of Touring Car in 1997, which is the only precedent I can think of for this punctual mode. In November, recognized championships, ostensibly built from your acquired ratings, should become available.
Gran Turismo Sport’s list of cars will also cause division. While 162 models seems like a lot, it’s a sharp drop from Gran Turismo 6’s 1197. There are some things to consider. (1) Gran Turismo Sport’s focus isn’t on Pokemon‘ing every car into your garage. (2) Every car in Gran Turismo Sport is a premium model, unlike Gran Turismo 6 which was still trotting out up-res’d Gran Turismo 4 assets. (3) This game would have never come out if Polyphony fed their compulsion to perfect every last detail of one thousand cars. Count me among Gran Turismo players who are fine with a reduced inventory. I still feel like there’s plenty of variety, even if I can’t drive and modify the cars I can actually afford in real life.
How cars are acquired starts getting back into Gran Turismo Sport’s fascination with style and image. “Brands” is an entire menu tab, allowing the player to select their make and model by continent of origin. Curiously, an expensive watch manufacture is listed at the bottom of the screen under “partners.” If you access it you’re treated to a picture of Patrick Dempsey wearing an expensive watch and some promotional videos for the nice watch. Gran Turismo Sport advertises this as perfect keepers of time, which is hilarious. What is this doing here?
Scapes are another one of Gran Turismo Sport’s coveted features. Essentially a photo mode, it allows you to place you customized car in a hundreds of gorgeous locals and apply a smattering of camera effects. Customizing the car’s livery (the car body art, I had to look this up too) is finally available. It’s a remarkably deep set of options, and you can even upload (and then download) your own images via the official website. This blends well with Gran Turismo Sport’s online focus.
Racing games are often showcases of their hardware’s horsepower, and Gran Turismo Sport is no different. Even on my launch PlayStation 4 and 1080p LCD, it’s a gorgeous looking game. Gran Turismo Sport also supports HDR lighting and 4K resolution should you have a PlayStation 4 Pro and a capable television. I do not, which means I look to Digital Foundry, who views Gran Turismo Sport as the current high point for PlayStation 4’s visual output.
Gran Turismo Sport’s future is also the subject of speculation. Additional vehicles, courses, and presumably dynamic weather effects are part of Gran Turismo Sport’s vague plans. Free? Paid? Condensed to microtransactions? Gran Turismo Sport isn’t clear about its post-launch plans.
A truncated VR mode is available for PlayStation VR owners. While technical limitations only allow you to race against one other AI car, it remains a breathtaking experience. Being able to look in my rear view mirror and see my opponent behind me, watch their lights bounce off the side view, and glace out the window and admiring the countryside (while driving eighty miles an hour) — Gran Turismo Sport’s VR mode is exemplary and effective. I feel like I’m in the car and that I could live there. Also—having spun a car out during an autocross race in real life—the sensation of imminent danger when a turn doesn’t go as planned is cerebrally powerful. It’s a rush.
If it were 2009, Gran Turismo Sport’s content deficiencies wouldn’t have chaffed my expectations. I know this because I also reviewed Gran Turismo’s dormant-then-revived PSP iteration. That game was loaded with content, but only applied it to individual races. There wasn’t a campaign in sight. I didn’t care. I was just glad it was there, on that platform, and even went off on a commenter who said I was unsympathetic to those who expected more from a premier series (comments were deleted when our site was redesigned last year).
I think about that exchange a lot. At time I thought I’m the game reviewer, my opinion is surely the correctt one, and internet commenters are garbage. None of this was true. The person had a point and I was wrong to casually dismiss it. 2017 is the time when a simple appearance should not be heralded. Gran Turismo is on the PlayStation 4. It looks like it should but acts out of sync. It’s not an extended demo like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, but it’s definitely—at least traditionally—not a full game, either.
Perhaps this was Polyphony Digital’s intention. Gran Turismo Sport is a chance to pivot away from the traditional model. Like any major change (or minor change, look at people flip out every time Twitter or Facebook adjusts anything), people have a hard time accepting that the thing they love isn’t the same thing they love. Nothing stays the same, and in the case of Gran Turismo Sport, it’s, at best, a distressing step toward the future. Some people won’t like it. Some will absolutely love it. That’s OK, but I wish time was generous enough to sort out Gran Turismo Sport’s lingering issues before it finally came out.
The delicate and skilled operation of a high performance vehicle projects Gran Turismo Sport’s utopian vision. Its factitious structure and inattentive principles remind the player that it operates in an unstable reality. Gran Turismo Sport lives in a world of sportsmanship and prestige and doesn’t much care if would-be residents find its narrow paradise aloof and inhospitable.
