There was some bug around being able to select dirt tyres or something on races, so probably when fixing that they've introduced a new problem with the licences. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I have to say, I am super impressed with this game and now totally addicted. Yes, there are some niggles but the quality and overall polish is fantastic compared to many recent releases on day 1. The content and features are spot on for those of us who enjoyed the original games on previous platforms but there's also enough new to keep it interesting. I started to customise cars and create liveries, use scapes and the depth here is amazing, so much to do. The modifications and upgrades to cars are also really clear to feel in the driving; it really feels like classic GT but taking advantage of modern hardware and capabilities. I love the grind in some of the races, having to upgrade your car, working through licences etc, it is very nostalgic for me but the modern visuals and handling blow me away compared to the old gen titles. I guess it's what I dreamed GT would be on PS4/5 when I was playing on the older platforms many years ago. Even the 60FPS performance (I have the PS4 Pro) is impressive, going back to some of the best titles for the series on PS2. I imagine how great this is on PS5, lucky people who have that.
My main gripes are relatively minor, but there are some bugs (most are known) -
- I had an issue with the livery editor getting stuck on rendering on 0%, which means you have to restart the game. Thankfully it recovered my work somehow, otherwise that would have been very annoying.
- I'm also not 100% convinced on the AI, they can still be a bit dumb at times (e.g. that penultimate corner on Trial Mountain reversed - why are they so slow there?!) and I suspect there is an element of rubber-banding, but this has always been the case in GT games to keep you on your toes I guess. The fact also that we have so many rolling starts I think shows that the AI are not competent enough as most races are just catching up and passing, not genuine battles up and down. I guess you can go online for that but it would be nice to have better AI.
- Also, the dirt handling feels off, much like it has since GT3. More work needed, not to mention jump physics that seem a little...wild.
- Compared to some previous games, there is still too much menu navigation, pressing buttons when you get rewards, levelling up etc, it's not really necessary and could be skipped for a cleaner experience. The replays could also be triggered from when you get back to the race menu rather than automatically, although I like watching them.
- The loading times are pain...on PS4. I know the solution to that is PS5 and I guess not much to do there. Curious if anyone has an SSD on PS4 and what sort of performance increase there may be or whether it's mostly CPU/Memory bottlenecks.
- Finally, when will we get proper damage in a GT game? I can hit a wall at 100 mph and get a small scrape. I want to see some kind of simulated realistic damage, like BeamNG or Wreckfest etc. Maybe the next title that drops PS4 can do that, even if it's just in certain cars or race series, I think it's a frontier we've never reached in GT, probably due to complexity and development time, plus Polyphony Digital's exceptionally high standards meaning that if they couldn't do it justice it probably wouldn't get in.
Saved all mine so far.
