User Review : Gran Turismo 5

GT5 is a mixed bag, but does it live up to longtime fans expectations?

GT5, is a difficult game to review. Never before have I played with so much content, and so many features, that I have gone months playing the single player, and could easily go for a few months more. The multiplayer only adds to the length of this extremely feature packed game. In this review I will attempt to critique most aspects of the game.

Lets start with a little history of me and the GT series. I have been a follower of the game since the PS1 days, starting with Gran Turismo 1. It was pretty good, but was not what I had expected, and felt more like an arcade game. Moving onto the second it vastly improved the career mode, to the point it needed 2 disks. I was very happy with the changes and improvements in the second, but I still felt this game wasn’t what I wanted.

That all changed in the PS2 era. GT3 brought a much needed graphical improvement, and some much needed features. I was very happy with the way the series was going. The biggest jump for me has to be Gran Turismo 4, featuring the best graphics ever seen on the PS2, and one of the best career modes to go along with it. The world map was my favorite part, and the seer amount of events and cars was mind boggling.

With the release of GTPSP, I was greatly disappointed, and had a feeling that the series has reached its peak, the game felt very rushed, and had some horrid design choices that made me go, what were they thinking? With the release of GT5, that all changed.

*I have not finished the game, up until this point I have not reviewed a game until I finished it. I am currently level 28/40*

From the startup of GT5 I was greeted with the option to install, at first I skipped it because I didn’t want to wait. It wasn’t long before I realized how needed the install actually was, the loading screens were long, and took forever. I decided to bite the bullet and wait the 60+ minutes to install the game. Once that was over with the loading times were greatly increased, and the game felt much smoother.

The career mode is not what I expected from GT5, coming from GT4 I expected it to be like a world map, but instead I was greeted with simple menus that look shinny. I was a little disappointment by the linearity of the game, and the lack of the world map, though I see why they chose this direction. To me the world map is a feature that will be missed.

The events are the same as in previous game, you need to use a car that’s within the events restrictions and get first place. Surprisingly this formula still works to this day, and I still have a blast racing on the tracks. The story mode progresses through an all new level up system, and racing provides exp. and money now. The addition of exp. provides a more linear experience than the previous game, but also provides more rewards for racing.

The game moves on to a new direction with the series to mix the standard formula up a bit by providing the new special events. To me special events provide a challenge that no GT game has given before. I love the idea of being forced to win a race with hard tires on, or go around the world on a world tour to earn photo mode locations. It really mixes things up from the standard GT formula. Although the special events are a great addition to the game, I feel they are over too quickly, and the game could have used some more.

License tests are still in GT, and to me they have always been the low point of any GT game. The great thing is the requirement has been removed, so you don’t have to do them to race. Removing the requirement makes me happy, but now there is hardly any incentive to actually do them. The exp. they provide is so little compared to race events, and the cars they reward are dull and boring, making the license tests hardly something anyone would want to complete. The good thing is you don’t have too anymore.

B-spec has always seemed like a pointless feature to me in GT4, so I was not too happy with its return in GT5. When I tried it out in GT5 I was quite surprised and found it to be much more enjoyable than I expected. Splitting A-spec and B-spec into two different level up systems makes it feel like you’re not cheating your way to the max level and better cars like in GT4. B-spec is something I want to do now thanks to an improved UI and the addition of special reward cars for doing it. Though the promised online B-spec mode is still missing, this has me a little disappointed.

The AI in B-spec has to be the low point of the improved mode. While they can drive around the track, it is very common for them to make dumb moves, or spend a long time trying to pass someone. It gets to the point where it is frustrating to deal with my bob. The AI gets better as you level them up, but it’s never enough to not be frustrating.

GT5 also marks the return of Photo mode, which is better than ever. The cars looks fantastic, and truly show their stuff in this mode. I have zoomed close to headlights to read the text around the bulb clearly, it’s that accurate. The environments for the car are also outstanding, and nearly match their real life location. The lack of being able to bring standard cars into photo mode is disappointing, but understandable.

Online is a nice addition to GT5, I feel its how online in a racer should be done. There is content for everyone, rooms with racing going on, and room with people just hanging out talking about cars. I have made many friends online and met some really cool people. The community is great and fun, and is what I expect from a racing game. There are some small issues such as the community is forced to put restrictions on to prevent asshats from joining with an X1 when everyone else is driving RX7’s.

I feel like it could have used dedicated servers, but rather PD has chosen to go the hosts route, while not always bad, there are some rooms filled with lag issues. I guess we PS3 gamers have been spoiled with dedicated servers for too long in all our exclusives, that we are just used to nearly perfect connections.

Going even deeper into GT5 we can find many customization options. Your GT Life page is a portal where people can post comments and view your latest accomplishments. While a great feature, not enough people use it. I feel like it could have been integrated with another service, such as PSN. A feature like this should be for more than one game, too many games these days try to make a community system that people just don’t use.

Customization of the cars is a lot like older GT games, but slightly more limiting. For instance, you can no longer customize individual gear ratios of a car, and are forced to customize a simple top speed adjustment. The addition of new things such as springs is a nice touch.

The addition of items is minor and not something I feel too excited about. Receiving a random horn sound every 10 cars is cool and all, but gets old fast. PD also allows you to paint your premium cars any color you have obtained. The requirement to obtain the paint colors now makes it easier to have a unique car color, as if you get matte purple and paint your car that color, it is unlikely you will ever see that car in the same color when playing online.

There are some additional features that feel pointless, such as eye support. Head tracking is cool, but beyond the few races I tried it in, It felt pointless. I have yet to try 3D, but I expect similar feelings as I had with head tracking.

From a technical standpoint, GT5 is both astonishing and disappointing. Under some conditions, such as driving a premium car on London, the game looks better than any racing game on the market, and debatable any game released. Then you go and drive a standard car on trial mountain, and you feel like you’re playing GT4 all over again.

That has to be my main issue with GT5, standard and premium cars. Standard cars look fine in most cases, but don’t have that glamor premium cars have. Premium cars are so detailed that my mind is blown every time I take them into photo mode. The lack of standard cars having cockpit view is very disappointing, and reminds me of playing GT4. Standard and Premium also seem to go beyond the cars and extend to the tracks also. There are some amazing tracks that look photorealistic, such as London and Monza, then there are some disappointments like Laguna Seca, and Trial Mountain.

The new lighting effects are great and are what I expected from PD. Shadows are sadly disappointing, filled with jaggies half the time. Jaggies are also noticeable with smoke and dust effects. I really feel like PD could have greatly benefited with the use of MLAA. Not only would MLAA provide jaggieless gameplay, it would also allow for better textures and visuals by not using as much processing power. Screen tearing is also very noticeable, and a little distracting.

The improved physics engine really adds to the game. The cars feel very realistic, and are almost exact to the real life counter parts. My in game Miata shifts at the exact same time I do in real life, and takes turns at similar speeds, it’s that accurate. The audio is also impressive, the engine noises no longer sound like vacuums, and sound like their car alternative.

The AI to me is an improvement to the series, but still disappoints. They do get much better as you go through the game, yet still I get hit when I spin out when they had plenty of time to avoid me, and they still get in the way. I like how they do make mistakes sometimes, however they still feel like robots.

It’s hard to say whether or not GT5 lived up to my expectations. I expected a perfect game, coming from a developer than thrives on perfection, but I got a game that feels incomplete. The game does however make up for its incompleteness through great and addicting gameplay, and the sheer amount of content. Giving the game a single score was a very difficult thing for me to do, as its mostly a mixed bag.

You see, I can’t give GT5 a 9, I just can’t. The game is missing too much for me to consider it an outstanding game. As much as I love the series I still have a hard time giving it a great score because of the disappointment’s. Perhaps I am being too hard on PD and expecting too much. As a long time follower of GT5, and the GT series, I have high expectations for the GT series.

The funny thing is, despite all the disappointments, the game still remains in my PS3 to this day. I still play it every day I can, and don’t see a time that I plan to stop playing it. What the game lacks, whether it be features, graphics, gameplay, etc. it makes up for greatly by being a fun game. Is it perfect? No its not, but it is more than deserving of a good score.

Good Job PD, and thanks for a great game.

-Jidery