Gran Turismo 5 – Playstation 3 Reviews

But if you’re considering it, you need to understand: this is Gran Turismo. It’s not like other games. For better or worse, they are not attempting to make it like other games or fundamentally change their formula. Many of Gran Turismo’s fans over the past 15 years liked the game because there wasn’t anything closer to their tastes, but today, there is more competition.

Do you want a Gran Turismo style game? If so, this is excellent. Do you instead want something that doesn’t take many hours of work to open up? It’s up to you.

Gran Turismo 5 is excellent, but there may be other games that are closer to what you actually want. Dirt’s series is much easier to dive into and has plenty of graphics punch. Blur and other more arcadey games present cars you see on Top Gear or other TV shows, but with Mario Kart style action.

Gran Turismo presents a tremendous amount of content. Many cars, many tracks. With that content, you can painstakingly perfect your driving technique and develop tuning concepts while enjoying a very wide array of driving situations. The graphics, particularly the lighting, is superior to other games. Period. Forza presents the stiffest challenge, but is somewhat less realistic and has inferior graphics (at least 1-3… I have yet to play the new one) and levels of content. That said, Forza is a great game. Some will find it more fun. Some will wish it had that extra depth GT always brings.

GT has added ‘levels’ to this game, and you build experience when you do various things. You need a certain level in order to buy cars or drive in events. The licenses are there, but are totally optional. This is my primary gripe with GT. The licenses force one to learn proper technique. I think you’ll have much more fun with the game if you do the licenses.

Otherwise: here’s how to play. Buy a cheap car with your starter money. Race some easy races while upgrading the car. Race harder races and buy better cars, building your empire of cars and trophies. It’s great fun.

GT5 has an A spec mode, where you do the driving, and a B spec mode, where one of your fleet of AIs do the driving. The AI is really good, in my opinion. They track stress and mental and physical fatigue and have differing levels of skills. And in B spec, you can tune the car and enjoy the amazing graphics.

GT5 has added Seasonal events, which you have to download from the internet (for free). This provides constant variety as you build a collection of cars from the three dealerships (premium new cars, standard used cars (Which inferior graphics, I should add), and online dealer.

The seasonals are essential to loving this game, as there are far fewer standard offline races than in GT4.

The audio in this game is a radical massive improvement. In most cases, it is obvious the audio is a real recording of the actual car. I can tell how many cylinders and the exhaust system, simply based on the car. A few times, I have heard a car passing me and realized what car it is, simply from having heard that car in real life. It is amazing, and you will love this game if you have a quality surround sound system. Even spectating is great, simply because the audio engrosses.

The graphics are ridiculously good. The standard cars look good (some look amazing and would be the best except they pale in comparison to the premiums). This game has crossed the threshold of graphics. It looks more realistic than real life. Watching the shadows of trees flicker over your leather dashboard, as you use cockpit view without any heads up, it is often impossible to tell this is a game rather than a video. The photo mode is also amazing, and you should check out gtplanet’s photomode forum. You actually can learn a great deal about photography from this game.

For the money I paid, this game is a tremendous value. It’s not perfect. In particular, the game is not evolving from the Gran Turismo formula, and some didn’t want that game when they bought this. I did, and I’m thrilled.

This game suffers from a degree of fanboy mentality that has plagued this generation of PS3 and XBOX 360. Don’t let that bug you. This game (And Forza as well) are excellent and worth the asking price. If you love realistic racing, you should buy this game.

I’ve never spent more time with a game in my life, let alone a racing game.

It all boils down to WHY one plays a game and, for me, one of the greatest factors is immersion.

So expectations were enormous. The damage modeling is moderate, there are a huge number of “standard” model cars, there are a few jaggy shadows here and there, and some of the details in a handful of tracks don’t scream PS3.

BUT, the detail in the cockpits of those premium cars, those cars that I dream of sitting in but probably never will, is phenomenal. Sway your view left to right and in reverse and the sense of immersion is unparalleled. When it comes to graphics, I always ask myself, “is there enough here to keep me in the game or has the game blatantly broken my sense of immersion?” The goal of Gran Turismo 5 is realism so the minimalist approach to details on the track is actually appreciated. You won’t find any exaggerations or artistic indulgences here. The result is pure focus on the vehicle in which you are seated and the driving experience–an aspect of the game that needs no explanation or defense.

Tune one of the hundreds of high-powered premium cars, take a seat and hit the road. For me, this was enough.

I’ll start off with the good parts of the game first.

Graphics:
It’s got outstanding graphics. The photo mode is insane. Yes, only 20% of the cars are fully scanned by GT5, but it’s not a big deal, really. Asking GT5 to put that amount of work into all 1,000 cars is just asking too much for such a small improvement. The game size is already large enough as it is. Stages also look very good.

Car selection:
Couldn’t ask for more. You can look up which cars are available on the web. I won’t list them here. However, some races require used cars, and since dealers don’t have a WHOLE lot of those, you’ll have to wait for them to be offered on the very small Used Car lot. This could take forever. I still can’t find a truck.

Presentation:
Outstanding. Menus are navigable and simple, races are easy and quick to restart, and everything looks very clean. Load times are OK.

Content:
Pretty good amount of content. You won’t be disappointed.

OK, now the bad parts.

Collisions:
One of the big things they promoted about this game was the collision physics, new to GT5. However, I’m not sure if they changed anything at all. Two cars hitting each other at any speed sounds like someone kicked a rubbermaid trashcan for some reason, and barely ever causes any physical change in the car, nor the kind of collision response you’d expect (touching a wall or another car at any angle, even just a glancing touch, brakes you as hard as if both objects were made of rubber). Also, just like in previous game iterations, computer cars are planted securely on the road no matter how hard you try to knock them off. God forbid you position yourself to run them into a wall or try to force them into a tailspin, they’ll win the battle every time, knocking you across the track. I guess you could argue that GT5 isn’t about such aggressive contact racing, but then why can the AI run me off the road? In 20 hours of play never once have I been able to force someone’s car more than 1 or 2 feet off the road, much less spin it out, yet they do it to me constantly.

Physics:
Car physics and performance seem good until you get to some of the mid-engined cars, when they go nuts. The Lamborghini Murcielago LP670 SV performs far below where it should, often being unable to out-accelerate Miuras or Gallardos, and with brakes so bad they’ll constantly send you spinning into walls. The Lotus Elise race on the Top Gear track is famous for being essentially impossible. Touch the brakes and you’ll spin out. Touch the throttle and you’ll spin out. I did the course about 70-90 times and I’ve only been able to complete the first lap (of two) twice. And, by the way, I use to have a Lotus Elise that I tracked, and it DOES NOT perform like it does on GT5. There are various theories on the web as to what the problems arise from (someone forgot to program down force on some cars?). Despite all this, the Ferrari 458 and the Lamborghini Miura, both mid-engine cars, perform very well.

Customization:
Where to begin. Customization has been getting worse and worse in GT5 games, and the pattern continues. You can upgrade about 30 different things but not your brakes. Overly-expensive turbos add a minuscule amount of power (what kind of turbo adds 20hp?). You have EXTREMELY limited amount of control over what you can adjust on cars compared to previous GT5 games. No camber, toe-in/out, splitter, brake force, or wing adjustments, among others. You have a limited control over transmission, suspension, and brake balance, but only if you buy EXTREMELY expensive upgrades, which you won’t want to do usually. That’s about it. The only visual customization is paint color.

B-Spec:
B-spec mode, another new thing they added to allow you to direct someone else while they’re driving, is horrible. There’s no introduction so you don’t exactly know how your driver is interpreting your commands, but there’s only 4 anyway. Aside from those 4 commands, there’s nothing else to do. You just sit there and watch. Oh, and B-spec races are twice the length of A-spec.

Music:
The music is ABSOLTELY TERRIBLE. Half of it puts you to sleep, the other half just leaves your mouth puckered in disgust. I don’t recognize a single song other than the zany rendition of The Entertainer that plays when you go in the maintenance shop.

In the end, this game makes you wonder what they’ve been doing for 6 years. I mean, companies make entire universes of content if given 6 years (like MMOs). GT5 seems to have spent all of that time in the following way: 85% lets’ scan 200 cars into GT5 in minute detail, 9% new courses, 3% photo modes, 3% new menus and screens, 0.0001% collision physics.