Gran Turismo 6 - can it be enjoyable if you know nothing about cars?

[havoc33]

Hi guys,

I need a bit of advice here. Back in the days of the PSX I enjoyed racing games immensely. The Ridge Racer series, WipEout, Colin McRae Rally and so forth gave me a lot good times. Somehow I went away from racing games almost completely on the the next few generations, with the exception of the WipEout series.

So the last few days I've had a real craving for buying a racing game for the PS3. I tried the Ridge Racer 7 demo, and didn't particularly like it. I don't think I enjoy the drifting anymore, I'd like it to be a tad more realistic than that.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted has received great reviews, but it's more an open world racer, and I think I'm more looking for a traditional one with seperate and memorable tracks. Which leads me to Gran Turismo 6. Now I have only played the first one briefly on PSX back in the day, but as I only borrowed it, I didn't really get into it.

My concern is, do I need to be a car geek in order to properly enjoy it? Do I need to adjust different settings manually, like tires, suspension, gears and all that stuff? Cause I really don't have any clue about cars at all, nor will I ever really take an interest. I just want to have automatic gears and have all that other stuff be handled by itself, and still be able to race competetively. So I guess I'm asking is it possibly to play GT like an arcade racer and still be decent at it?

 

[aozgolo]

I've often wondered this myself, I do enjoy the occassional racing sim, but they seem to be like hardcore porn for car nuts, as someone who can't even tell you if my car has a 4 or 6 cylinder engine, I'm not at all knowledgable about the inner workings of racing cars, but I do enjoy the aspect of racing.

It would be nice to find out which racing games are more accessible to a casual racing audience.

 

[stroopwafel]

Yeah, you can enjoy GT without being a car nut. I don't know shit about cars but I do love racing games. GT has really deep customization but a lot of it can be worked out with just common sense(like tires, suspension and transmission/acceleration). The tactic that seems to work for most cars on most tracks is to reduce weight and increase power, primarily b/c quick acceleration is the advantage you need in GT games.

The amount of content and detail in GT is impressive, but I find them too much of a grind. It takes way too long to unlock new cars and earn credits, which makes it all a bit boring(like repeating the same race for the 1000th time). The races can be great but can't prevent(atleast for me) from tedium kicking in. There are shortcuts though like with the latest GT you can buy credits through microtransaction to speed up the process. Kind of ridiculous but I think this is one of the few(if only) games that actually improve by 'cheating' a bit.

 

[havoc33]

The grind aspect of GT6 doesn's sound very attractive, but I'm really tempted to buy it anyway. What could be an alternative? DriveClub would be an obvious choice (especially now that Evolution seems to have fixed it; a lot of my friends are giving it high praise), but it's on the PS4.

 

[stroopwafel]

Yeah, DriveClub is awesome. I'm enjoying that game a lot. Car handling is superb in this game and the graphics look really nice as well. It's what I'd call a 'forgiving' sim. However, I feel this game comes closest to driving an actual car in a videogame. The subtlety of the controls and the excellent feedback are superb.

Anyways, another racing game I really enjoyed on PS3 that is somewhere between sim and arcade is Grid 2. There is also a Grid Autosport but I haven't played that one. PS3 also has a lot of fantastic arcade racers like NFS Hot Pursuit(probably my favorite racing game of all time), Blur and Burnout Paradise.

For a more 'realistic' racing game you can't really go wrong with GT6 though, if PS3 is your only option. Espescially at its current price.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

My concern is, do I need to be a car geek in order to properly enjoy it? Do I need to adjust different settings manually, like tires, suspension, gears and all that stuff? Cause I really don't have any clue about cars at all, nor will I ever really take an interest. I just want to have automatic gears and have all that other stuff be handled by itself, and still be able to race competetively. So I guess I'm asking is it possibly to play GT like an arcade racer and still be decent at it?

The GT series is pretty forgiving on novices, as is the GRID series (avoid GRID 2, it's terrible compared to 1 and Autosport), and allows you to remain competitive even without getting into serious tuning work.

Avoid the Shift games as they do require a lot of tinkering and tuning your cars to stay competitive.

For open world racers, NFS is probably the best option but, IMO, the series peaked with the original Most Wanted and Carbon.

 

[havoc33]

Thanks for the feedback guys. GT6 is now downloading from PSN