Gran Turismo 6 preview

Despite the excitement and hype around the next generation of consoles, there have always been two Gran Turismo titles for each PlayStation system and the PS3 will be no different. Gran Turismo 6 will release later this year as a PS3 exclusive, but the first public demo is available now and we’ve put in plenty of laps to find out what has changed since GT5.

The first thing that is immediately noticeable is the menu system. The home screen has been significantly simplified, so you no longer have to wait several seconds for a button press to register. You can access car dealerships, your garage and race events very quickly from a single screen.

Of course, the demo is very light on content, so it remains to be seen how this system will handle an entire game’s worth of races, car dealerships and upgrade menus. The final game may even use a completely different layout, but these initial improvements are certainly promising after the confusing mess of GT5’s UI.

As well as giving you the chance to experience GT6 for the first time, this demo also serves as the entry tool for the 2013 GT Academy, Sony’s incredible annual competition which sees the best Gran Turismo players in the world getting the opportunity to pursue a real motorsport career.

To this end, the demo’s first two events place you in the electric Nissan Leaf to start you off at a slow pace before competing in the GT Academy time trial, from which the fastest drivers are selected to take part in the GT Academy TV show.

Seasoned GT5 drivers will feel some differences in the handling right from the first GT6 lap at Autumn Ring Mini. Body roll and weight transfer is far more noticeable than it was in GT5 and allows you to predict how the car will change direction through flowing sequences of corners. This means you can place the car more accurately in twisting sections of circuits. It is also much easier to catch slides, especially in moments of snap oversteer. Braking could still use a little bit of tweaking as it can be quite difficult to find the right braking point on long straights, but otherwise GT6 offers a great connection from the steering to the tyres to the road.

The tyre model is substantially improved as well. In GT5 you couldn’t push the sport tyres very hard before they overheated. In the GT6 demo it feels as if you can put more load through the comfort and sport tyres to maintain better temperatures and therefore extract more grip. Racing rubber isn’t available in the demo, but it will be interesting to see how temperature sensitive the best tyres are in the final game.

The graphics offer subtle improvements over GT5. The demo’s events all take place at different times of day and this is beautifully communicated by the lighting. Morning and evening races were particularly impressive. Engine sounds are improved versus GT5 as well, but they still need a lot of work to match up to Forza Motorsport and GRID 2.

Gran Turismo’s car models are as impressive as ever, but the cockpits are lacking in detail at this stage, even compared to the likes of Forza Horizon. Some of the trackside objects also need some work, especially the trees. There are a couple of framerate drops in the demo too, which is highly unusual for this series, so you should expect this to be fixed by the time of the game’s full release.

After two races in the Nissan Leaf, you move onto a specially tuned Nissan 370Z, which instantly demands more concentration due to its greater horsepower and grippier tyres. You have two races in this car, but none of the four race events in the demo are particularly challenging because there are no real improvements to Gran Turismo’s notoriously poor AI. If you were hoping to see some better wheel-to-wheel action in GT6, you will probably end up disappointed for now.

If you earn bronze, silver or gold trophies in each of the races, then it’s time for the GT Academy itself. Using a more aggressive version of the Nissan 370Z, you must first tackle several challenges which take place on short sections of the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit. Silverstone is new for GT6 and these challenges are designed to help you to learn the circuit in small steps. This is perhaps the most detailed version of Silverstone that has ever appeared in a console game. GT5 had some outstanding real world circuits and it looks like GT6 will continue to deliver this level of accuracy.

Earning trophies in each of the Silverstone challenges unlocks the main event, the GT Academy time trial competition. Times here determine the best Gran Turismo players in 2013 and will eventually reward them with a place in the GT Academy TV show and a chance of starting a real sportscar racing career with Nissan. You must put together everything you’ve learned about the GT6 physics and the new Silverstone circuit to nail a perfect lap. You’re free to make as many attempts as you like and constantly improve your time, as the final standings will not be decided until August.

Like the other events in the demo, the time trial also features trophies for beating certain lap times. If you can achieve gold trophies in all of the demo’s events, a set of three secret challenges are unlocked. Two of these are currently open and use the Nissan GT-R supercar on shorter variations of the Silverstone circuit. The third is locked until July 29th. We suspect that this will feature either the groundbreaking Nissan Delta Wing race car, or the Nissan GT-R GT3 race car, both of which were available in the GT6 E3 demo back in June.

At this early stage, Gran Turismo 6 is an impressive step forward from GT5, which already had arguably the best handling physics of any console racing game. Big questions still remain though, especially around the structure of the game’s career mode and the minor framerate hiccups in this demo version. For now, the future of Gran Turismo is looking like an evolution, rather than a revolution, but we won’t find out for sure until later this year.

Download GT Academy 2013 from the PlayStation Store now to try GT6 for yourself.