Game Discussion of The Week: Gran Turismo series

Can you guys believe I never played any of these games? But they sure always looked impressive, and until the PS3 days they were the best way to show how realistic graphics could get on a Playstation console.

Also, they gave us that awesome CGR review that begins with Mark driving his El Camino into the set. This one:

These are the games that got me into PlayStation. It was hard to resist the awesomeness of these games. These are my most played games of all time. I have played them even more than PES or FIFA when FIFA was still good.

It is easy to stack up the hours and I didn't play with a wheel until GT5 and GT6 on the PS3. GT1 and GT2 on the PS1, and GT3 and GT4 on the PS2 I still played them just with a regular controller.

I feel what makes them PlayStation all time flagships and the best selling PlayStation exclusive franchise is the structure of the game. They are highly addictive and have the biggest fan service around.

As a series it's an extremely mixed bag for me.

I initially didn't enjoy the original as at the time I was all about arcade racers and Gran Turismo faded in the shining lights of the masterpiece that is R4 Ridge Racer Type 4, but about a decade later I had played and gotten more into simulation racing thanks to games like DT Racer, R:Racing and the Project Gotham Racing series which mixed arcade and sim in a way for me to transition over nice and smooth and actually start enjoying pure sim racers like the Gran Turismo series, Enthusia and Forza, so I owned and enjoyed Gran Turismo 3, Gran Turismo 2002 Tokyo-Geneva and Gran Turismo 4 before I finally decided to get the original GT, and even though I still think it fades in comparison to R4 at least I can enjoy Gran Turismo for what it is now, something I simply couldn't back when it was new.

I had Gran Turismo 2 for a short while but the divided game on two discs and how poorly it was optimized was not to my liking and it's one of the very select few games I've ever returned as I genuinely saw no place for it in my collection, a decision I have never regretted and a game I've never missed since.

I enjoyed GT3, GT Concept 2002 Tokyo-Geneva and GT4 and think they are some of the best sim racers on PS2 and hold up today with little to no problems.

But, I lost interest in the series after GT4 as the PSP port was extremely lackluster and very poor overall, a huge disappointment after so many years of hearing about how they had worked so hard on it and all that bullshit, it legitimately felt like they spent a total of a couple weeks getting it to run with bare minimum effort and then released it, and then the whole DLF fest of the rest; GT5, GT6 and I think they're at GT7 atm?
As I can't pretend to care about games that focus on delivering a majority of the game in DLC form I haven't wasted my time on the series at all in later years, modern gaming doesn't fit my gaming style so I won't be bothered about any new games in the series either, so GT4 will undoubtedly remain the last Gran Turismo I'll ever own unless the entire industry does a complete 180 at this point.

I give the series a 4/5 overall as I think the best parts are good enough to warrant it despite all the bad that's followed in their wake, then again how were they going to top GT4? Making a game of that magnitude with next-gen quality all across the board was never gonna happen, something had to give and the rest is history.

I remember my uncle had GT3 on the PS2. He was nice enough to give to to me (probably because GT4 came out) and let me copy his save files which had pretty much everything on them. I didn't get my own GT until 5, which I really enjoyed. As someone who was stuck with a controller on the PS3, it was nice being able to remap the controls so that I could use the pressure-sensitive shoulder buttons for acceleration and braking, which was much better than tapping/holding X. I do wish that GT5 and 6 had more of those higher-poly cars that had the cockpit view.
As much as I love GT, I haven't really played alot of other racing sims to compare it to other than Forza. I've heard that there are a few sims out there now that can give GT a run for it's money, but I haven't actually played them myself.