Not sure if I want to be the wily gazelle in that that old gazelle/old lion duo ... but I guess you were hunting me down so I'll accept the role of prey in that race. Roll on Sakkito indeed!
Guys I'm going off on a tangent now because last night I finally played GT7 (raeggee lent me his game discs, wasn't interested in keeping them) and I'd like to share with you all my impressions (no better place than here). So here's my
first night review:
My first impressions of GT7 is that this is the IKEA version of gaming. For those of you that don't know the IKEA stores, we're treated like cattle, following a pre-determined route (
more like a maze) from shop entry to shop exit. You have to go to wherever they want you to go and it's futile (although fun) to try to do some cross country or reverse the path, you'll end up either lost or confused.
While the game loaded/installed fully I had access to some stupid (but entertaining) musical game about how many miles you can do until the end of a particular music. Ok I guess, kept me busy for a while ...
When the game proper started first thing I was directed to do was to visit a used car dealership to get a low budget car, followed by a visit to a virtual café where I would get my gaming objective (related to that car, what a surprise), all while being entertained by some annoying virtual hosts with smiley faces.
Still puzzled but trying to understand where all this would lead me I tried to see where I could race my one and only car and I was presented with 3 small arcade races,
follow the rabbit style. finishing 3rd was enough to get one prize car and ... surprise surprise ... the 3 cars were exactly what I needed to complete my "objective"! Oh my oh my, this is so exciting for any person with a 5 year old brain ... I wonder what my next game objective will be!!!!
Well, details here get fuzzy because I was quick browsing and quickly dispatching the annoying smiling hosts trying to understand where I would find the modes I wanted to check:
online and
offline/career (like we have it so simple in PCars2) ... but no such luck.
But (I think it was) after those 3 races the
license tests opened up and that was what made my first night of playing. I still remember the license tests as my 1st introduction to GT3 and, although this still isn't proper racing the truth is that they are entertaining and at least we can try a whole variety of cars and visit a whole vairety of tracks with that mode.
I found them to be very easy, most were "golded" at the first try. I did National A very quickly but after a while in National B I understood that I had the times from my friends listed there, which made me try just a litle harder to be up there with them. Many familiar names, some others I suspect have chosen different "nicknames" to play this game (
@half_sourly, are you
2CC ?). So I did National B, National A and International B before calling it a night. Before leaving and since I got a notice that I had unlocked Brands Hatch and Goodwood I went in to see what they looked like. But ...
... don't have the cars to race in the races available in those tracks ...
... and also still no sign of online mode, I kept being directed to the café, its annoying smiling host and the bloody menus I'm supposed to fill up by buying cars. Now the game wants me to buy 60's cars (Fiat 500, Mini and some other equally uninsteresting vehicle). Should I? Shouldn't I? Well, I guess it's like IKEA, I must obediently follow the herd of costumers into the kitchen section to be able to reach the room where the office chairs I wanted to check are on display ...
So, herd-like litle me thought that by then and with all the money from the licenses I had above 200.000 Cr. I could check if I could buy them and get that hurdle out of the way.
But no ... the used car dealership (and its also stupidly grinning host) didn't have any of those cars.
So all I could do was to turn off this (supposedly racing) game. I may try to end the remaining License tests tonight just to see if more of the game unlocks itself but my patience is running very thin already.
About the physics. All I can tell comes from the license tests and my impression is favourable. Also forgiving but in a way that is different from PCars2. The FFB is much smoother that PC2 but this isn't necessarily bad, I find it detailed enough and I do think sometimes we go for "harder/stronger" FFB to "feel" more, and that in itself maybe isn't realistic, at least not with road cars.
Glad to say that my old and trusted T500RS wheel works perfectly with the game and is in fact one of the wheels that shows up in the "controller menu". Didn't try the shifter (unplugged because I was charging a controller in its USB port) but see no reason for it not to work.
That's all for now, I'll try to finish the License Tests tonight and see if this opens up the game or not.
)
