DiRT 3 dev talks "grindy" Gran Turismo 5
"The game on the disc isn't the final game."
Another racing game developer has criticised Polyphony Digital's PlayStation 3 exclusive sim Gran Turismo 5 for its "grindy levelling up".
In November Shift 2: Unleashed's lead designer Andy Tudor criticised Gran Turismo 5 for its "irrelevant cars". "It's like a grind. It's almost like stamp collecting," he said.
Now it's the turn of Paul Coleman, chief game designer on Codemasters' upcoming rally game DiRT 3, to offer his thoughts on the 5.5 million selling sim.
"Gran Turismo is a massive game," Coleman told Eurogamer. "It's a phenomenon whenever it happens. Personally, I was slightly disappointed with this rendition, but it proved that if you put a game out of that status people will buy it still.
"I felt there were some design decisions, like the grindy levelling up mechanic, that were a little bit disappointing. I know it wouldn't have been a step forward but I would have preferred to have seen the classic use of licenses to unlock events, and that's what drives your ability to actually access those events, rather than time spent doing the same race 15 times to then unlock the next race.
"I know they're addressing that, but it seems strange that wasn't addressed in a design meeting earlier on rather than as a reaction to how the community is responding to it.
"With Gran Turismo it's definitely something that's going to develop. The game on the disc isn't the final game. We'll see how that develops over the next year or so, because I don't think we'll see another full release of Gran Turismo for another five or six years."
Gran Turismo 5 was the eighth best-selling game in the US for the month of November. It topped both the Japanese and UK all-formats chart upon release.
In December Sony released a gargantuan 608MB update for Gran Turismo 5. Creator Kazunori Yamauchi has promised fans the game will enjoy the benefit of updates months after release.
Coleman had brighter words for Criterion's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, a game he described as "a very interesting title".
"They did a lot of things very well. I know a lot of people have said to me they felt it was almost the game Burnout Paradise should have been, which I was a bit disappointed about because I really enjoyed Paradise."