We haven’t had a new Gran Turismo game since GT6 came out in 2013 for the PlayStation 3. Now that we’ve moved on to the next generation of consoles, GT creator Polyphony Digital is giving us something to tide us over until GT7. Gran Turismo Sport may have a low car count, but not every racing game needs to be about a range of cars.
GT Sport will be similar to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, which came out shortly before GT5, in that it’s meant to serve as a preview of what to expect from the next big release. The biggest feature of GT Sport is the fact that it’ll be released for the PlayStation 4. This should give the game a huge graphical upgrade to go alongside Polyphony’s tweaks to its physics engine and sound library, the latter of which has always been a bit of a sore point for GT fans.
140 cars will race on 19 different tracks, and there’s a full livery editor (a la Xbox’s Forza Motorsport) as well as a photo mode featuring some 1,000 locations. Yes, that’s lower than a usual GT game’s car count, but remember, this is an interim release meant to satiate us until the traditionally slow Polyphony brings out its full sequel. Thankfully, the cars that are present have been treated to a full graphical makeover, including detailed interiors.
Elsewhere there’s a look at ‘Scapes’, a tarted up photo mode that allows you to place GT’s ludicrously detailed cars in a real scene with accurate lighting. In terms of technology, it’s very impressive and will remain so for all five of the minutes you fiddle with it before going back to actually racing.
Fortunately, there’s a fair bit of that in there too, with a glimpse at how the biggest events on GT Sport’s calendar might look to spectators. Action replays are built into the live coverage and there’s a proper safety car in case someone turns their GT3 racer into a carbon-fibre accordion.
Forget the rules by which other racing sims operate. Kazunori Yamauchi is designing GT Sport to be a proper motorsport but without the wallet-detonating cost of running a racecar. Hardly surprising from a man who just finished 22nd overall in the Nürburgring 24 hours…
Gran Turismo Sport comes out on the PS4 on November 15. In the meantime, here’s the latest GT Sport trailer from the E3 gaming trade show.
1 comment
rest assured that any good new cars you see here will not be in the game, because that’s what happened in gt6