Gran Turismo 5

It's hard to write about Gran Turismo 5 without talking about how long it took for this video game to be put together. There was talk of it at E3 2005, even if the PlayStation 3 was not yet out and a lot of people expected the title to be in the launch line up for the new home console. Polyphony Digital launched a Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in late 2007 in Japan and early 2008 in the West, suggesting, when looking at the history of the franchise, that the new full installment would be coming in late 2008.

Then Sony pushed the title back a couple of times, with the developers saying that they needed more space to polish up things while announcing new additions. And finally the date of November 24 was officially confirmed by the publisher and the game is now out and playable for all those who have waited for it for so long. The only question is: after so many years and so many games which focus on cars and speed is Gran Turismo 5 still worth it?

The answer is a resounding yes. This is a big game, bold in some ways, traditional in others and packing enough content to please the most die hard fans of the series while also attracting new blood to the Gran Turismo series.

My personal favorite element of the new Gran Turismo is running a tight city circuits with a high speed machine that needs to be tamed in order to get through the complex corners but I am sure that anyone who likes cars, races or the previous titles will find a little piece of Gran Turismo 5 that they will absolutely love, even if other sections of the new game will leave them indifferent.

Gameplay

Anyone going into GT5 will initially have a small shock at how much Polyphony Digital crammed in the game (although to be fair they did have quite a lot of time to do it /end of delay references). The GT Mode is based upon level progression and locks out quite a bit of stuff initially which can be a good thing for a new cover but the Arcade Mode (which can easily be turned into full simulation by tweaking the settings) has a lot of cars and almost all the tracks open from the get go, allowing the player to jump in and just do some driving with very beautiful cars on both real world and imagined tracks.

Beauty

In motion

The GT Mode is the heart of Gran Turismo 5, allowing for A Spec events, where the player drives on various tracks and gets money for wins to feed that compulsion to buy new cars, and for B-Spec, where the actual control falls to the Artificial Intelligence but the gamer has a lot of control indirectly. Progression in both is needed to unlock new cars, get levels, gain money and unlock the various Special Events, which start with the rather boring karting but lead to rally races and NASCAR moments.

The content in just one of the mentioned modes and competitions would be enough to form the core of a smaller, less ambitious racing game and one of the biggest problems a player will face is to get the staying power needed to explore the entire game.

The focus of the racing model employed by Gran Turismo 5 is on brake timing and this gets only more obvious as the game progresses and more powerful cars are unlocked. Corners are a driver's worse enemy and knowing when to apply the brakes and how much to hold off the acceleration is the biggest decision a player will need to make in the game. It helps to keep the racing line assist on for the first 10 to 20 hours of the game and to learn the tracks you are racing on but after a while anyone who sticks with GT5 will develop something of a supernatural “brake sense”, an instinct for when to brake and when to push the car forward which will make most of the scenarios a joy to go through, although some hairpins remain a problem no matter how good you are as a driver.

In turn

Architecture heavy

A lot has been made by the developers of the fact that complete damage model for the Premium cars in GT5 but the mechanic is nowhere near real and it takes quite a few high speed impacts to make a real dent. The choice can be justified by the the beauty of the cars featured in the game and it makes sense to not be able to bust them up too much. As the gamer levels up the damage is more apparent, which makes little sense given that a gamer can learn to rely on the absence of damage to gain races only to see this tactic become less reliable as the game progresses.

Another issues with the physics system is linked to collision mechanics. Players also need to be careful about touching other cars and barriers as the game has a tendency to make everything stick together for a few seconds, which can be a problem when trying to overtake or when aiming to build up momentum for a big straight line.

The opposing drivers are an evolution over previous installments but more could have been done. They no longer hug the racing line as tight as possible and plow straight into the human controlled car when coming up from behind. They now seem to actually race each other if they have the space and, while being pretty competent at defending their position, they have the “ability” to actually screw up and end up hugging a wall or sliding across the grass, leaving themselves open to an opportunistic attack. It also seems that the Artificial Intelligence gets better as the player levels up but it's very hard to know if that is the case of if there are simply different behavior patterns on different tracks and when new cars are involved.

One good choice in the GT Mode is that the License tests are no longer mandatory and players can progress through both A and B Spec lines by just doing races and winning them. Still the tests are interesting in their own way and I spend quite a few hours trying to get just Bronze level on some of them. Still they are worth completing for the car rewards you can get.

One knock against Gran Turismo 5 and a pretty weird choice is that the game does not allow for Artificial Intelligence controlled cars to join the 2 players who engage in Split Screen mode. The head to head races are nice and the rivalry great but after a few races it would make sense to be able to get some A.I. racers in there to mix it up.

Seting sun

Colorful

One big problem with GT5 is the way it delivers information and accepts input from the player. It seems like the whole interface was designed with a mouse in mind, not a controller and there are places where to perform a simple action more button presses than should be necessary are required. It all becomes familiar after a while but the first few hours can be mighty annoying.

It doesn't help that GT5 has a lot of loading. After the initial install, which is highly recommended, there are still hefty loading times for races and pauses when taking a look at a new car.

Graphics and audio

Sony might have done Gran Turismo 5 a disservice by saying that the game has over 1,000 cars from which 200 are Premium quality, because it focuses on the number of the cars and not on which ones look best. A better idea would have been to talk about the 200 Premium cars as the focus of the game, which still offers a huge variety of models and driving styles, with the other 800 titles mentioned rarely and as a sort of “gift” for long time fans, emphasizing the fact that their graphical quality on the race track is not anywhere near that of the Premium cars.

Basically GT5 is a game which can look impressively good or just average depending on the choice of car and track and on the impact of racing day conditions. Sometimes the tracks and surrounding area look better than the car that is being driven, which is not good for the title's reputation.

To get a full sense of what the game is capable off I recommend taking a look at some replays after a race which involves only Premium models or take a look at the Photo Mode, where the game works hard to make both the vehicles and the backgrounds look impressive.

There are also some small issues with performance, like screen tearing and frame rate slowdowns but nothing too frequent or too acute and it seems that Polyphony Digital and Sony are determined to offer title updates which take care of them.

A few words about the music of Gran Turismo 5 are also in order. When racing the purr of the engines covers everything else but the screams of the player when he misjudges a corner at high speed. But the menu music is so present and different from what one might hear in other games, be they racing themed or not, that it makes an impression that can be good or bad depending on the taste of the gamer.

Multiplayer

The biggest problem with the newly added multiplayer in Gran Turismo 5 was that the game lacked a clear and simple system of classifying the cars that are available for races. This means that anyone who wanted to race a vehicle which is not close to the best in the world could find himself quickly outclassed online. Thankfully the developers offered an update over the weekend to deal with this.

The multiplayer game lacks the incentives seen in something like Call of Duty as there's no experience reward for taking part, no money is gained and no exclusive cars are unlocked. It would have made sense to somehow incorporate online races into the GT mode, sharing rewards and unlocks.

Another problem is the absence of actual matchmaking and the lack of enough filtering options for the rooms a payer can join, but the developers have promised that they will address them in coming patches.

All these issues cannot change the fact that racing in GT5 is very fun and engaging and racing humans is always better than taking on computer controlled opponents so multiplayer in the game could be fun as long as the publisher and developer keep their promise of delivering the needed content.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion