Downloading Gran Turismo 6 Was A Terrible Experience

This month's Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona put me in the mood to do some sports car racing.  I've long since exhausted the racing on Gran Turismo 5.  I never bothered to buy Gran Turismo 6 because based on the reviews I read, a lot of the flaws that bugged me most about the series remained.  However, this past weekend I found myself intrigued once again by the idea of playing the game, and when I found it on Amazon for $14, I decided to give it a try.

Sarah has been using the PS3 as a DVD player for her workout videos.  That, combined with the fact that I was interested in playing the game sooner rather than later, made me decide to buy the game via digital download instead of on disc and awaiting the shipment.  This turned out to be quite a fiasco.  I wasn't able to initiate the download because I couldn't remember my PSN password.  After attempting to reset the password 3 times, I finally figured out that my Gmail was sending the email to the junk mail folder.  After messing with this for about 20 minutes, I was finally able to activate the download.  Except that I didn't have enough space on my PS3 hard drive, so I had to delete multiple files first.  The download was quite large at 15 gb, and despite a 50 Mbps internet connection, it took a few hours to download.  Here is where things get really frustrating.

After the download, I was ready to play the game finally!  Except that it took 2-3 hours to install once it was downloaded.  Finally - ready to play!  Except not.  The game booted and had over 100 downloads to install.  Now I understand that games are markedly more complex than they used to be, and that I was installing a 2 year old game, but come on!  I patiently waited until around midnight, when the updates had finished installing.  Finally, time to play!  Except not again.  When the game booted there was another unexplainable install process, which had an "estimated time remaining" bar listing 100s of minutes.  At this point I was around 8 hours into this process and decided to go to bed.  The next morning I went to work and Sarah texted to let me know that the process had finished overnight.  A simple download that I thought would take a few hours ended up lasting into the double digits of hours to complete.

Now that I have the game installed, I am happy to say that it is better than GT 5 and worth the $14.  While many of the games larger issues are still present (rolling starts, dumb AI drivers, lack of damage), they've improved on a number of smaller items that collectively make a big difference (more intuitive menus with quicker access to your garage and parts, more realistic driving physics, less stingy with the money).  Plus the game looks great, especially considering it is playing on 10 year old hardware.