Fifteen years after the first Gran Turismo, here is the sixth and so far latest installment. It features a lot of real circuits, with some fictional and urban circuits, and a very large car roster, with brands from four continents. It also includes a special project, called Vision Gran Turismo, in which several brands from all over the world expose futuristic cars as their own vision of the future of the automobile. Some have taken the chance to show urban cars, others show race cars, and some even mix both options by presenting two or even three models.

GRAPHICS: 10

Without a doubt, the best aspect of the game. The tracks feel almost real, with even the slightest details added, though there are minor details still missing, such as a small bump in Cote d’Azur which is crucial in real life races held on that circuit. What to say about cars, is like if you were watching them directly and not through a screen. Worth of mention is the detail of the iridescent painting, making the color of the car change depending on the angle of vision, presence or absence of sunlight and a few more aspects. As for the inside view of the car, well, I’m not used to it, but I’ve used it in some replays, and though it’s not that detailed I wouldn’t say that it’s plain and simple.

SOUND: 7

Who wants music, when you have the sound of the engines? Well, except for electric cars, in that case a little music could be welcome. In the menus, the music serves a good purpose as an ethereal add-on, while on the replays there are better songs than others, but all of them seem equally suited for a race. And well, the engine sounds… Not very realistic, being benevolent, even if they sound amazingly good, I know that some cars don’t have the noise Gran Turismo presents. I wouldn’t mind if this happened in the early installments, which it did, but after nearly 20 years I think one great addition would be this one.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9

It’s always fun to race, at least for me. I could play this game at all times, and since there are a ton of cars and a lot of tracks to visit, it’s hard to get tired of this game. The seasonal events, the quick play, the online servers, the newly included community… A lot of things to do, many new things to try day after day. If we had changing weather conditions and night races even without proper in-track illumination outside of the online modes I could have rated this a 10.

STORY: 0

You incarnate a young racer who wants to become the greatest driver to have existed. Through many and varied challenges, you manage to worm your way through the ranks, so much so that even Lord March hears of you and invites you to the Goodwood Festival of Speed that he organizes every year.

With such an important man having set his eyes on you, your career never ceases to ascend, and you become able to drive the most select cars in existence, race in mythical events that were just a dream in the distant past, and demonstrate you can handle any machine you’re handed under any circumstances.

Having mastered all tracks, machines and conditions, the biggest and most important brand sets its mind on you: Red Bull. You have been selected to be part of their Driver Development program, and thus allowed to drive their most brutal prototypes, the Red Bull X, the fastest machines mankind has ever built. To graduate, you must defeat the four times Formula One World Champion and Red Bull’s (former) protégé, Sebastian Vettel, in a one-on-one battle with the exact same machine.

Not a bad story, but sadly this is just the background of the single player mode. It could be real, and honestly Gran Turismo would gain a lot with a story mode like this, in a similar way to Need for Speed Shift, but I’m guessing that the real thing would be to change being Red Bull’s protégé for Nissan’s, since they have been a lot more involved with the game.

DEPTH: 9

A lot of things to do, not only in the main mode, but also on special events such as the Ayrton Senna tribute and the Moon Rover experience. You have a lot of races, each with its own conditions and requirements, you have license tests, single-brand quests and coffee break challenges. Not really bad, but still missing something: endurance races never last more than half an hour, when I remember doing two hour races back in Gran Turismo 2. A very weak point, specially when three tracks hosting 24 hour events in real life are represented as 24 minutes at most in the game.

DIFFICULTY: 7

At first, races are of a ridiculous difficulty, but then they escalate to become real challenges, specially when competing in karts or with specifically designated machines. Even then, the difficulty is nothing to mess with, it all depends in choosing the right car, the best settings and the best strategy, mostly on endurance races on the pit stops. Depending on what you choose for these three factors, you can have a very easy time or be unable to win at all. Of course, there’s also the randomness of the opponents, as sometimes you will face different machines when exiting a race and re-entering it, which means that you can still win with a bad choice if you happen to be in the right time. And well, the Red Bull races are made with virtual cars that cannot even be built for real, so I’m ignoring how hard the challenges are (and how hard is to get used to the car’s monstrous performance).

OVERALL: 8

Once again, Gran Turismo demonstrates why it’s the best racing simulator. Or at least was, because in recent times some games have appeared to try and claim the title for themselves. Nonetheless, Gran Turismo will always be above your average racing game no matter how many years pass.

POSITIVE

-A wide variety of track conditions: the time can affect the temperature of the track and the amount of sunlight and shadow, the climate can wet the track and make driving a lot more difficult, and since time can pass as the race progresses, you can start a race during the day and end during the night.

-The tribute to Ayrton Senna. He was the best driver to ever exist, and for Gran Turismo to include three of the cars he drove during his life, as well as two special circuits from Senna’s era, is a very big point.

-The inclusion of the Moon Rover. Yep, you have a few challenges you can make on the Moon’s surface. Not very fast, like 30 mph or so, but overly fun due to the lesser gravity and terrain conditions. Definitely a must for any player who attempts this game.

-Vision Gran Turismo. This is the name of a project in which many brands from all around the world present prototypes of what they think will be the future of the automobiles. Some have resurrected old legends, like the Chevrolet-Chaparral alliance, the Le Mans Prototype of Mazda and the return of the Alpine brand through Renault, and some have simply developed extreme cars like the prototypes they expose at the diverse Motor Shows held all over the world. Chevrolet went as far as to use an engine that doesn’t even exist, and SRT included aerodynamic components that aren’t yet invented, all in the name of the future and innovation.

-Sebastian Vettel. I’m not a big fan of him, but I have relatives which are, and hearing his voice as he challenges you to beat him did really excite them. Seb, maybe you won’t see this, but your fans appreciate that gesture. Too bad you probably won’t be in future installments since you’re racing for Ferrari now.

NEGATIVE

-Car roster. It’s big, and includes a lot of brands and tuners, but a little more variety has been demanded by fans ever since the first Gran Turismo. Some European and American brands only have a handful of cars, while Japanese brands have dozens of the same cars, and I mean THE SAME: same performance, same price, even same year. Do we really need that?

-Offline multiplayer. You can do almost anything when hosting a game in online multiplayer, but have very limited options when it comes to offline multiplayer. Why are we hampered when it comes to play with someone sitting besides you, but have free reign to play with an stranger over the net? Disgusting.

-Seasonal events. Lately, they have been recycled versions of not so old events hosted before, some other times are really specific as to which car(s) you can use, and most of the times you have no room for strategy in selecting the tires, not to mention the weather conditions, which are seldom at night and rarely under the rain.

-Rolling start. Suddenly, the grid system is completely discarded in favor of rolling starts, in an attempt to add more difficulty to the race as your opponents are given an edge even before starting. Probably the most ridiculous option to try to make races even harder challenges.

-Tire selection. In Seasonal Events, this factor is horrible. They are almost always focused on using hard tires, ignoring the medium and soft compounds. At least, those compounds are selectable in single player to give you a strategy factor, but seemingly Seasonal Events don’t need anything like this.