I must say I’m struggling a bit with Gran Turismo both as a game in general and then as a VR experience as well.
A little history
Now before someone calls me an Xbox fanboy let me say that I’m a petrolhead first before I’m even a gamer and I was there when Gran Turismo 1 came out and subsequently Gran Turismo 2 and spent hundreds of hours playing each.
Gran Turismo 3 (alongside MGS2 of course) was the game that made me buy a PS2 and probably the one I played the most of them all.
GT4 was a bit more of the same and came too late on the generation and I played a lot of it but nothing like the ones before.
In between Forza 1 came along which was interesting but certainly not stealing the crown.
Forza 2 however shifted the balance somewhat and saw me spending a lot of time within but still enjoying GT as a similar but different game.
By the time Forza 3 came along I feel that was the turning point that simply eclipsed Gran Turismo and added to that Gran Turismo 5 was very late to the console generation.
When Gran Turismo 6 eventually came around the “Japanese” nature of it was just too much me. The menus and everything about it just felt like work and when you finally got to actual racing you always started at the back and every race just the same and physics was weird. Cars had no weight to them and felt like matchbox cars and had magical braking abilities and it all was just very arcade except for being on a track.
Forza of course split into Motorsport and Horizon which gave you options depending on how you felt at any given point and this made Gran Turismo feel like the weird halfway house except for one thing it kept music in the track-focused game.
The non-VR problems
So much like with previous games the menu system and the entire way the game operates seems to be anti-progression.
These talking head idiots who don’t actually talk but just put overlapping text on screen add absolutely nothing but frustration and annoyance and taking just this one thing away or the option to turn it off may help it all along.
Then forcing them on you makes it even worse with this weird Café and food menu bull****. I had no idea how to make progress because where you expect it to live…under the career is instead in this Café crap.
Then you get to licenses and some other idiot keeps talking to you and then besides adding a whole bunch of confirmations for no good reason. And it’s not once…it’s over and over again. To make it worse there is no “next” thing button but instead a back and forth across the same menus. The UX or complete lack there of is actually shocking.
I hate to make the comparison but Forza on the other hand takes you one a journey of progress that keeps you playing and going from the one thing into the next seamlessly while treating you as an adult and doesn’t need to hold your hand the whole damn time.
It’s just a terrible and annoying experience that makes me want to put it down not get deeper into it.
Then we get to the gameplay. I realise a lot of this is about not wanting to alienate a fan base, but as someone who has actually spent a bit of time on actual tracks and driven a great many cars over the years this is nothing of a “real driving simulator”. It’s still the same thing with weightless matchbox cars with magical levels of grip and incredibly turning circles with this weird disconnect between how far the wheel turns and the actual wheels steer.
Yes Forza isn’t a super simulator either, but at the very least they actual feel like cars.
The VR problems
So okay I hate the gameplay but maybe the VR aspect is enough to keep me playing.
Well…the way they’ve implemented it has lead to the first PSVR2 game actually making me nauseous because instead of being VR all the time it’s 2D most of the time and then very last minute as you are about to start the race it throws you into the VR mode in half a second before you take control and you just want to eject.
Then it takes about a lap to settle down and you acclimatise to it, which means it’s alright when you start doing longer races but when you just began the game it’s this constant back and forth in and out experience and I can’t understand why it’s not just all in VR all the time.
When you are finally driving there are no controls to setup where/how you are sitting in the car. Some cars are better than others but it means most of the time I’m sitting on a position I would never sit in an actual car which makes the entire perspective feel wrong.
Taking it further when you run off the road slightly there is no feedback from either the controller or the headset to give you any indication you are on the curb or running wide, which is a quintessential part of racing an actual car as it’s so noisy you can’t hear **** and need to feel everything.
So ultimately the VR factor which is supposed to make it all feel very realistic actually does exactly the opposite and makes it feel more like a toy car.
Then add the visual disconnect of the steering wheel turning into seeming infinity and it all just gets very strange.
I would like to have said the VR-factor made it worth playing for me, but the reality is I would have refunded it if I could.
By far the worst PSVR2 experience.
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