I was at the event yesterday and got to play a fair bit of the game (and get a fair amount of free food and drinks, boom), seems a lot of you guys are down on the game already but here's what I thought of it (as a fan of GT since the PSX days):
- Graphics to me looks great, I was really impressed by the trackside detail like the grass and rumble strips, as well as obviously the cars. Obviously this isn't reaching Driveclub levels though, and probably never will do (even if development actually is at 50%). At the moment there's a fair amount of slowdown and screen tearing when there's a full field and everyone's bunched together, but there's still a few months of development to work on that, I'd say. I'm really looking forward to what the final build looks like.
- The tyre squeals are still pretty prevalent, especially coming from games like Project CARS. I would wish they'd get toned down, because the engines definitely did sound better than previous games (again still not the levels of other recent games though). Don't have much else to say about the sound, the music in the arena sometimes overpowered my headphones ha. Really hoping the sound improves but knowing GT the tyre squeal will unfortunately reign supreme.
- The cars really go feel great to drive. I had a play around with a few different cars on all the tracks available, and while I can't really speak for the realism of the physics, driving something like the Renault RS 01 on the Nurburgring felt great. With racing mediums on, it wasn't too forgiving and was still a decent challenge to lap decent times, I'd say it felt a little more alive than at least GT6. (Full disclosure, don't really know enough about the finer aspect of car physics to say if it's more or less realistic, but what I played really did get me excited for the final product).
- As someone who barely plays online on any game, I actually think the 'sport' aspect of the game is the most interesting to me at the moment. We got to have a few races on the stage all against each other (I think it was 16 or 18 racers at once), and the presentation of the races was just spot on. I can see this being one of the big draws of the game, really. I just hope they implement tyre degradation (the event's build didn't) and proper pit stops and qualifying so that the whole race weekend concept is really fleshed out.
- Some interesting points from the Q&A - Kaz said GTS may as well be called GT7 by this point, although it did start as just a fleshing out of the 'sport' concept. Also didn't realise that they had a build of GT6 that was Oculus compatible - so they've been playing around with VR for a while, I think this could be one of the first PSVR killer apps. The damage question was great, at first the only reply was "Yeah, we'll have damage". Still not sure if that's cosmetic or actual damage, surely if it's only cosmetic that'll affect how people drive online? We'll see about that I guess.
All in all, I'm looking forward to being able to play the final game, but I'm not raising my expectations when it comes to sound and damage. Also, thank god they got rid of those nasty PS2-era cars already, so glad they've decided to get everything up to PS4 level instead of just throwing everything in again.
Deswegen hoffe ich das GT Sport sozusagen leicht ist.