ELDEN RING is complete and, with that, I've been able to write this week's newsletter at a much more leisurely pace. It's quite racing game heavy again, which is unexpected but I think as I hurtle towards forty my brain has started going "right, time to get super into motorsport" and its coming out in my current taste in games. It's why everyone's dad watched Top Gear, right?

I still can't drive an actual car, mind. Too much sim, not enough arcade in negotiating the roads of East London.

What is the bloody point?

I recently reviewed Gran Turismo 7 and I loved it. It's a great racing game and one that has a really chilled out vibe to the whole experience. Grab a menu and do some races to win cars, take some photos, spend some cash and buy yourself a used motor, or even one of the legendary vehicles. Sure, some of these super exclusive rare cars might cost a couple of million credits but earning that isn't completely out the realms of possibility, especially with one million being the top prize on the in-game roulette. It's not supposed to be a rush to unlocking all the cars, it's supposed to be something you do over months, even years, with the game receiving support from Polyphony Digital in the same way that GT Sport did - a game that basically double in size over its lifespan.

So when I saw people complaining about two main issues - the fact that it is an "always online" game and not playable offline in any way and the fact that there are microtransactions available so you can purchase credits to buy cars - they struck me as people online doing the normal online pissing and moaning. I had put 40+ hours into the game before they'd even looked at the title screen. I played a lot of GT Sport and competitive gaming in general so I understand the necessary evil of "always online". I also saw that the microtransactions were significantly more expensive that the GT Sport equivalent (and, for what it is worth, the prices weren't made available to reviewers pre-release) but, as I said above, just felt they weren't necessary to get any of the cars if you just chilled out and took your time. Gran Turismo 7 isn't meant to be a game you finish and fuck off in a few weeks.

Anyway, Gran Turismo 7 was offline for nearly 48 hours last week and, when it came back online, was patched to reduce the amount of credits earned from completing races and add some vehicles to the game that cost EIGHTEEN AND A HALF MILLION CREDITS. This can be viewed as little more than an extremely cynical tactic to get people to part with more money on top of the seventy bloody quid the game costs in the first place. It's disgusting and changes what was a very chilled, intentionally slow-paced game into a grim, boring grind with little reward.

This doesn't effect the actual racing, of course. It's still a fantastic feeling drive whenever you get on the track. This is just completely at odds with one of the key elements I enjoyed and was a major factor in me awarding it the score I gave it in my review. Less than a month later and one patch down the line, my review is completely fucking worthless. I don't stand by those words. I'll bore you to tears about how I still consider Dark Souls 2 and Dead Space 2 legit 10/10s and back my ancient reviews of those games to the end. Gran Turismo 7, however? Nope. Not in the slightest.

It's out there though! Out there and readable for, well, as long as the website lasts. People can Google reviews of Gran Turismo 7 and see my glowing words about stuff that simply isn't the case any more, less than a month after release.

Now, lets get some stuff clear. They didn't hide the fact that there were going to be microtransactions, nor did they hide the fact that some of the more desirable, high-end cars were going to take some grinding to get the funds to afford them. That was all clear during the review period and there's always been an element of that in GT games from the very start. They were just a bit vague on details regarding the cost. Annoying, sure, but ultimately forgivable. NO reviewer was aware of the patch that was going to reduce the earnings per race or the fact that some of these cars were going to cost an absurd amount of credits.

Where do you draw the line with this, though? Is it possible a game can be sent out for review, deliberately excluding some extremely aggressive microtransactions, only to be patched in after the thing has had glowing reviews? The pre-release review cycle is already a total joke, with reviewers occasionally having to put in ludicrous amounts of time into a game in only a matter of days to hit a review embargo date/time but are we reaching a point where reviews can only really be completed AFTER the thing is released and any day one patch has been rolled out?

This quote from GT main man Kazunori Yamauchi, taken from an article where he defends the cost of the cars as "an important element that conveys their value and rarity [in comparison to their real life counterpart]" and states that the reduction of earnings was to prevent a player having to "mechanically keep replaying certain events over and over again", seems to indicate that Gran Turismo 7 is, frankly, not quite the finished article yet. No surprises there, it's now a fairly common thing in games that intend to have a significant life cycle, especially if they were developed during the major parts of the recent pandemic but what does this mean for reviews, especially when this flies in the face of many of the positive elements of the reviews out there?

Normally, this sort of thing goes the OTHER way. Look at Dying Light, which is an exponentially better videogame than what it was upon release, or Street Fighter V, which was released in a rough old state but now is a very fleshed out and brilliant fighting game. How do we effectively communicate that the version of Destiny 2 you're going to buy right now is unrecognizable from the game that was reviewed and a lot of the reviews of individual expansion packs are completely pointless because the content has been removed from the game?! Is it simply a case of relying on social media buzz (which as we know, is all over the place in regards to quality control and reliability) or lean towards "influencer" media. Someone like Maximillian Dood is always going to be a greater source of knowledge when it comes to fighting games and is always going to provide content that will keep you up to speed with whether a game has gotten better or worse in lieu of a re-review by any publication.

It's hard to see what the endgame is here but one thing is for sure, traditional reviews can now be completely undermined by a single patch in mere weeks after release. That strikes me as something that should be a factor in changing the way things are currently done, in regards to reviews. Forty hours spent playing GT7 and a couple of hours getting my words into a Google Doc, as well as whatever time my editor spent tweaking the piece, was all basically for naught now. What was the bloody point in all that, eh?

Recommended: F1 2019

Post-Gran Turismo 7 I've been jonesing for another semi-sim racing game. After watching last weekend's first race of the new F1 season, which was a race that felt almost custom built to attract new fans and be as exciting as possible, I opted for Codies' F1 2019 (not 2020 or 21, but we'll get onto why later) over many of the other games available. I'm happy with my choice.

I love a good sports game story mode, me. Stick a cliched 'rise to the top' storyline into a traditional sports game and I'm there. From what I've gathered, they binned it off for F1 2020 and then F1 2021 actually does all of this significantly better than the 2019 instalment but I'm afraid that's not how my brain allows me to work. I have to see things from the beginning, not only for storyline purposes (because I very much doubt they're related in any way) but because I like to see the way ideas evolve and, hopefully, improve as time goes on. So, 2019 it is. Besides, F1 2021 comes out on Game Pass THE DAY THIS NEWSLETTER GOES LIVE.

The 'storyline' stuff is barebones as hell but its just enough to give the standard racing stuff a little extra flavour. You take part in the final three races of the F2 season, alongside honourable and sportsmanlike team mate Weber and against the arrogant and aggressive Butler. You have to make decisions during the races - do you let your team mate overtake you, for instance - and these actions actually shape conversations in the cutscenes that are sandwiched between events. Your overall performance and behaviour during these bits dictates the attitudes these two competitors have towards you when you all go your separate ways into the main Formula 1 season.

From that point onwards, interactions are basically non-existent but it doesn't really matter, the seeds of rivalries and friendships have been planted. When you're trying to pull off a risky overtake on Butler and you get clipped and spin out of the race, you honestly start thinking to yourself "was that my fault, the A.I being a bit crap at finding its way past without causing a collision or was that an intentional shunt by my greatest rival?" I keep my eye out to see where both guys are in the Driver's Leaderboard and, although there's no proper cutscene interactions with them once the season proper starts, you still get the odd email update that keeps things ticking over.

It's fundamentally a decent semi-sim (sim-cade?) racing game that captures the intense thrill of the races and the soap opera drama of the inter-team competition well enough to get me hooked and I'll definitely be checking out F1 2021 on Game Pass. As I touched upon above, apparently its a full featured story mode in that one, which sounds right up my alley.

The only thing that annoyed me is that you can choose the commentary name for your character and - for some ungodly reason - you can't choose HAMILTON. Now, I'm a fairly new fan to the sport but I'm sure there's a well-known and quite successful driver who shares my surname, so I'd like to think they recorded plenty of voice lines for that one! Last time this happened was on PDC World Championship Darts 2008 on the Xbox 360, which was an even more egregious offense because there's a player called Andy Hamilton in the bloody game. Unbelievable.

OTHER STUFF WORTH LOOKING AT THIS WEEK IN ONE SENTENCE.

Tunic - Unsure if it is worth the hype just yet but it is definitely an enjoyable Zelda/Souls-like that I'm anticipating could get special at any moment.

The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain - Elden Ring's got me on the Fighting Fantasy books again and life is so much easier now I can play them with a quest log and dice on a phone app.

Grand Theft Auto V - I think I missed the meeting where everyone decided that GTA is 'bad, actually' but I paid a tenner to transform GTAV into a proper next-gen stunner and it's reminded me how brilliant Rockstar are at creating believable worlds.