The poll question and the thread question are two very different things. Is GT6, taken on its own, worth it? If I were asked by a hypothetical person - this person that owns a PS3 in 2014, though not an X360, X1, or PS4, and is interested in racing games, leaning more towards the sim side of the genre, but yet apparently isn't familiar with GT - I'd tell them it's probably worth the price of admission. In that sense, it's worth it: even the worst GT game is still a pretty good driving game, overall. $40 (or whatever it is these days) gets you a lot of stuff.
As a GT fan? The least impressive GT yet. GT5 was sort of like a mediocre cover band: I knew the material, but it never really felt authentic. Generally, the long gestation time was blamed on the PS3, and whether it's that simple or not, most of us accepted that. We were assured that GT6 wouldn't be the same bunch of mistakes, that GT5 had build a solid foundation. In a way, that was true: GT6 wasn't the same bunch of mistakes. It was a whole batch of new ones.
I'll admit to starting to believe PD had learned from the errors with GT5. That GT6 had a strong announcement event, with a clear release date goal from the off, was encouraging; it wasn't a bunch of slow-drip PR. I went to one of the pre-release media events a few months before GT6 launched, and I left enthusiastic. It seemed PD had ironed out their issues. Yet here we are, over a year from release, with one of the major bullet points for their pre-release hype, the course maker, still nowhere to be seen, and no hint as to when it might be. I mean, we should've seen that coming; the constantly-shrinking number that was quoted for its size should've been clue number one.
We were promised a "quantum leap" of DLC, and got a pathetic amount of new cars compared to the competition. Even including the R3's. Yes, free DLC is great, but it's hardly a good thing for PD to be releasing content for nothing, so one has to wonder why they're doing it. How much confidence does PD have in vanilla GT6? They haven't taken to crowing about sales numbers this go-round either. Why?
Features that were in GT5 were cut from GT6, for no given reason. Those Photo Travel locations they spent so long modelling for GT5? Gone. B-Spec? Gone. Gifting? Gone. We were told Standards would be improved, and were met with less than 1/10th of them getting any sort of update. The 120-ish cars that were actually new to the series consisted of the new GT trademark: number-padding near-duplicates. Here are two Huayras, one with... a splitter! Here's an imaginary Veyron! GT5 was a game that struggled to present itself consistently, with frame rate issues and screen tearing. GT6's solution was to bump resolution and make frame rate issues a constant problem. Success? The paint chips were at least handled a bit better, though there's now no easy way to sort them, and we're still laughably far away from a proper livery editor.
It's far and away the GT I've played the least, and it's convinced me to not buy GT7 until I can either try it out, or get detailed reviews from those I trust on the subject around these parts. Yet there are still those who insist that GT7 will be where PD really gets it right, even though they've a) spent around half the span of GT's life working on titles that didn't do that, and b) already set up the perfect scapegoat for if GT7 doesn't end up a return to form ("working on a new system is HARD"). But more than ever, I can't think of another company - especially a first-party developer - that so often blames the system for its shortfalls, when they of all devs should have an inherent idea of where the limits lie with the system. If an interior designer is told by a condo developer that he only has 600 square feet to work with, and comes back with a sprawling, gorgeous condo layout that takes up 1200, it's still his fault for not staying within the guidelines.
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