Well what a mixed bag this game is, even if you ignore all the controversy of the infamous 1.7 patch and server down time. Which cut racing prize money amongst other things, all seemingly geared toward the optional micro transactions to buy more in game credits for real money, taking away from the fun grind of racing on your favourite tracks to earn enough credits for the multitude of cars you’d want.
On the surface, honestly this game series has never looked any better, the car detailing is phenomenal. The scenery really stands out, and doesn’t look as out of place as normal, unless you zoom in super close to a pedestrian, but we’ll ignore that. Where there could be detail there is, all the different surface textures, showcased especially in the interiors is fantastic. The minute lighting details as you drive and pass different times of day, with the weather effects bringing brighter surfaces, or darkening skies before a rain storm. Or as you cross into night the amusements in the distance begin to light up in neon. With the highlight of the graphics coming from the ray-tracing utilised, Scapes mode, which allows for you to make hyper realistic life like photos of any car within your garage, with a plethora of real places for backgrounds.
The car handling is better than ever, and using the dualsense controller on PS5, which brings another 10 out of 10 feature with the haptic feedback. What a game changer that is, so far no game has taken the full advantage of that feature like this. You feel everything, within the menu, to the track, every bump, or different surface, gear shifts, wheel locking, or the furious clicking from spinning out, only touches on the surface of what you can feel. With the controller speaker also acting as the race countdown, all this adds another dimension of immersion to the game. This title also comes with a revamped braking assist system, which on some corners work perfectly, couldn’t be any more spot on but then other corners, even if used just as a point of reference seem off, and some bends, are just over looked completely. As a casual player who probably won’t ever get to the point where I can drive a clean lap fully with out the driving line and braking warning this is a bit shit really.
Having 424 cars to own in the base game, this comes in around 800 less then in 6, it’s still a fair chunk of motoring history you can virtually collect but it misses something of the previous full instalment of the series. The game initially comes off more beginner friendly with the cafe menu, these act as a sort of campaign where you have to collect certain cars to complete a menu page in the cafe. These to begin with are a great touch, really helps you come to terms of how it works, rather then assuming everyone gets the licenses from the get go. With rewards ranging from new cars, classic cars, to new tracks and races, or championships. It fully pads out the game for you and walks you through each major mode, missing off drift, time trials oddly though. But with only 39 menus to complete, with a third of them easily being shitty little tasks like widen your cars body, wash it at GT auto, the initial fun fizzles out, as well only unlocking a couple of different races for each tracks and 10 championships. The content just dries up, and with the missing endurance races, absent from the get go, it just gets boring fast. Grinding out races doesn’t seem as fun as a direct result of it. It doesn’t help that the AI couldn’t give a fuck less about your existence, at times just ploughing straight into your side as you take a corner to slow or as you accidentally stuck to the driving line. Or if you are unfortunate enough for a parade of 13 cars, gleefully and thoroughly ass blasting your car into oblivion as they take turns to smash into you at 140mph one by one.
You have licenses from B to the S license, which is 5 ranks of 10 each mini challenges, which are aimed at giving you a basic grasp of how to brake into turns properly, applying lighter acceleration and so forth. But even this seems watered down, with many of the fun mini like games being relegated to it’s own level specific unlocked missions, and many of them just seem tedious. Some are plain dog shit to just get bronze on the timings. I mean it doesn’t help I’m woefully bad at the game, so it begs the question as to why I play the series so much, sinking hundreds of hours into the predecessors. Living with the moto for this as bronze will do. As like fuck I have the patience to try and gold all the licenses.
The game as a whole doesn’t like shortcuts, everything is it’s own menu, and to do anything you have to back out of a menu to get to another menu. If you buy a new car, you can auto swap to it,but if you need to tweak it in garage, or before a race. But you have to go back into the tuning shop to buy the upgrades for your car, then to mod it is another menu for each separate option. The daily workout after driving around 26 miles, gives you a free roulette ticket, from 1- 6 star rating with 6 being the tippy top shit. But don’t think you’ll get anything but the lowest 5,000 credits everytime you use it, even though you can win up to 500,00, or a nice new car.
Having spent well over 25 hours plus in the game, I honestly love the driving and how fantastic the game itself looks and feels to race. All the different engine sounds, especially with electric cars having that sweet sweet battery hum as well, and all the finer details they didn’t have to add in but chose too. Even with the strange new music rally mode, which I’ll just let you play yourself rather then explain here. It just feels lacking in content, like so much is just missing and for a half car collecting game, half driving sim at the moment it kinda feels like it doesn’t want you to do either. Which realistically is an odd way of releasing a game. Not to mention a massive disappointment for me as this was by far one of my most anticipated games for PS5 and a firm favourite series of mine, having enjoyed the mega highs of 4 and 5, I expected more from this.
So for the moment as much as it pains me I can only certify this a 7/10, so Positively Tasty, even though many aspects of this game are clear 9 – 10/10.
On the plus though with the latest message from PD announcing the addition of new tracks,endurance mode, re-jigging prizes from the basic in game races and online in sports mode in the very near future. Plus more cars, the function to sell cars which should have always been in the base game and other new stuff coming at a later date, this has the potentially to be a genuine 10/10 racer that it should be with a multitude of racing options and top notch credit earning/buying economy. This currently is definitely worth your time now even with all the current flaws, and I can only imagine how much better it’ll be in only a couple months time. And at that time I will be writing up a follow up review as that’s how much faith I have in it. Keep tuned my tasty brethren.
Sony PS5 March 4th 2022
TastyRetroGaming 