14 DAY TRIAL // Gran Turismo 6 is a big, huge, sprawling game that still feels a little unfinished, a project that has reached new heights on the PlayStation 3 but seems will only realize its full potential on the next generation of the Sony console.
Kazunori Yamauchi, the creator of the franchise, is in love with cars and all the impressive things that they can do.
This means that his most recent game is a great big show, which bundles together the traditional races, the license tests, a pretty hectic Festival of Speed, concept cars that don’t even exist and enough vehicles to cause a jam on a highway.
Gran Turismo 6 wants players to start off low, racing in slow and old cars in amateur events, and then gradually get better, accumulate wealth and then get to the top, after being thoroughly tested.
There are aspects of the title that are rooted in old development philosophies, like the rubber banding in races or the insistence to never apply visual upgrades to the more obscure cars that have been brought over from previous installments.
But the main ambition of developer Polyphony Digital is to get every detail right and they have significantly tweaked the handling model and the way the cars offer twists on the classic model.
But as I have tried to get around the Nurburing without crashing once more in my hard earned specially tweaked BMW, I feel that GT 6 is the most complete racing title of the current generation, a behemoth that can keep a fan occupied for a few years.
Best of all, Sony has added microtransactions to the formula, making it easy to get access to all the most expensive cars, but the game never pushes the concept and almost asks the player to rely on the classic grind to get the money he needs.