Gran Turismo 2 Critique Commentary Part 1
1Greetings one and all to a realm of commentated videos where I essentially critique a wide variety of games that I have enjoyed not just thoroughly, but also enable a high level of creativity in some form to make the experience special for me to talk about!
So, going from a wacky, colourful and highly sci-fi fantasy football game about cars rocket boosting in the air and pulling off various flashy stunts and air tricks to score against an enemy football team of car players in their own massive goals, lootboxes and gambling of the children asides, all that and more...
...To transitioning all the way back to the very first PlayStation era to cover a game that defined the utmost-realistic car driving simulator scene for many years to come? (Yes, quite a similar game in core principle, in that both games heavily focus on the many cars available and how each one *feels* different from the next alongside how beautiful they both look, but VERY different in how the gameplay centres around them and what the aim of both games couldn't be any further apart from each other!)
Indeed, this is a first for the Critique Commentaries here as now I've decided a few PS1 games are, in fact, worth covering on this series as opposed to mostly PS3 games and the occasional PC venture as, although the technology behind these games of nostalgic wonder are between levels of somewhat to HORRIBLY outdated in various elements, there is still some merit to be had by paying respect to the 'grandfathers' of gaming and all, hence Gran Turismo 2! (Though if we are to get technical here, really Gran Turismo is just the modern 'renaissance' of realistic car driving simulators as the proper old ones WAY back in the early 1990's and beyond as Need for Speed in 1994 for the 3DO, Out Run in 1986 for the Sega Saturn and even Atari's ancient Night Driver for the original classic Arcade consoles in the primitive years of gaming back in 1976 all pre-date Gran Turismo's success story in 1997!)
Still, why Gran Turismo 2 and not the original that truly started it all?
Well in all honestly, I did have a copy of the first Gran Turismo from WAY back in 1999 during my very early days of gaming (Actually, it may very well be ONE of the first games I had ever gotten my hands on playing alongside such classics as Lego Racing, Crash Team Racing and Bubble Bobble also Featuring Rainbow Islands!) and tried out a LOT of the very early stuff, however it was limited in scope compared to this sequel here which, whilst quite similar in it's visual capacities and doesn't change the gameplay much at all, it is THE true version of Gran Turismo for the PlayStation 1 as it fully expands on what the old one lacked in and did far more to make it truly open for casuals to get into whilst leaving a good deal of hardcore content for the sheer dedicated of players to bite right into that juicy meat indeed!
To give but a few examples of this, starting off is the game's 'barrier' of entry that is the Licenses, seeing how the first game only had three (the basic B license for rookies, the more advanced A license that was nigh-on impossible for juvenile me to learn and the piss-off difficulty IA license that required you to speedrun various tracks at ludicrous records WITHOUT hitting anything, quite the nightmare for my kind of gaming style here!) whereas this game has a much more flexible six to spread out the difficulty! (B and A now serve as the basics, IC and IB the intermediate stuff the previous game lacked and IA is similarly hard but can be done, but now the new S license is the de-facto 'speedrun' tests that are actually BRUTAL to complete, casuals beware!)
The reason why this is so important is that, without any license, one can not participate in the many tracks, circuit races and tournaments that this game offers. It's why passing all of these is most ideal but, being realistic here, the IA and S are probably not going to be attainable for a good majority without some SERIOUS sacrifice for enjoyment here! Having said that though, only the hardcore and elite-tier tournaments are really locked behind those two licenses, so it goes without saying you can afford to miss 5-10% of the content if you can get those first four unlocked!
Other stuff like way more cars offered by numerous real car companies, whole new racing tracks and new various tournaments and regular races to accompany them plus further refining of the game hub and little performance differences here and there to make Gran Turismo 2 a much more smoother experience!
All that and more to show off soon but, for now, it's just me showing off the game in it's basic essence, revealing my success as a racing car driver thus far and revealing all my unlocked and bought cars to date, fun stuff and all! The races though, via a most nifty feature? Well...
In any case, I hope you enjoyed the video and any constructive comments or criticism is appreciated!
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