Gran Turismo 5 Review – Here’s To The Dreamers

So again, what works and what doesn’t? The career mode is full of a large variety of races that range from glorified shopping trolleys and pick-up trucks to sports cars, supercars, full-on racing cars and more. Give the career mode the love and attention it requires and you will not be left wanting for variety.

The leveling, experience and money all works well although I did find the game to be a little stingy in the money department, especially when you suddenly progress to races that require cars that cost 300,000 credits, and that’s all that you have earned in your career so far. You can go back and do older races again, but in all honesty, who wants to go and do that all the time.

That said, you wont mind doing it some of the time as the races themselves are usually really engaging and the feeling of the cars alone (more on that below) will have you basking in a truly great driving experience. I did some a couple of races more than once to try and achieve first place in slightly underperforming car, and found it to be enjoyable enough to keep playing (also, as long as the credits payout was still worthwhile for anything other than first place).

Another strange choice made in the game is that when you are rewarded with a new vehicle, instead of just having it become available you have to go to a little icon of a truck delivery and then go into it to see “tickets’ of the vehicle that need to be redeemed. Once you redeem it, the car is unlocked and made available. I am not entirely sure what purpose this has at all and in the end it only included even more unnecessary steps into an already sluggish menu.

On that same note, I felt like more relevant cars needed to be given as rewards more of the time. It doesn’t help getting another car of the same type that you used to win a certain event, when its clear that the event is now over and you need something completely different to enter other events.

Thanks for the Ferrari guys, I’ve already got one (that I won the event with) and have no idea where I am going to scrape the money together to buy a Lamborghini for that event, so err… yeah, thanks. Oh I can sell it for a fraction of the price its worth? I’ll pass, thanks.

Split personality

The dealerships in the game have now also been split into two different sections thanks to the decision made by Polyphony Digital to divide cars into a Premium class with full next-gen high-poly 3D models and textures as well as cockpit view and fully modeled interiors – and standard cars, which are – to be quite frank – the exact same cars from GT4 on the Playstation 2, imported straight into the GT5 engine and lack features such as cockpit views and the ability for certain modifications.

Whether or not the premium and standard cars should have ever been included in the same game is another story altogether. From a straight gameplay point of view the divide made life a lot more complicated than it had to be, and I often found myself wishing that I could just go to a used section in a manufacturers dealership rather than have to sift through what seems to be randomly generated cars available in the used car dealership.

The divide between the different types of cars feels unnatural and just plain strange especially for a game of this caliber and while old-school fans will want to understand where its coming from, newcomers to the series will find it confusing and abnormal to what they are used to.

And on that bombshell…

The Special Events section adds a new dynamic to the career mode, and one that I welcome with open arms. The NASCAR sections will have you learning the basics of driving those big American beasts, and you even get your instructions from Jeff Gordon. The same happens with rallying on dirt and snow, and the Mercedes AMG academy will kick you in the nuts to ensure that you know how to drive a car at optimal pace.

Levels of the special events are unlocked with experience levels, so once again, it gives you more and more to do as you progress through the game.

I really enjoyed the special events for the most part, however I do have one gripe. One of the coolest features in Gran Turismo 5 is the inclusion of the Top Gear track and there is a whole special event section just for it. The problem is that as a Top Gear fan, like around 350 000 000 other people out there, I felt very let down by the way in which it was handled.

Your first event on the TG track is a race in one of those really old VW hippy combi/vans. After all of these years watching some of the most amazing vehicles in existence get torn around the track by The Stig, they give you one of these, in a race. It would also have been nice if the developers had bothered to include just one of the reasonably priced cars from the show as well. The races can also be very annoying, as you start right at the back and have to get to the front in only 2 laps, but the race is instantly over if you run off the track at any point or have a decent collision with another car.

The potential to do events where you had to beat certain celebrities lap times, or perfect parts of the track and so on were all there waiting, but instead we got crappy races. The next race I unlocked was all Lotuses, which felt fitting considering the track was designed by Lotus, but lo and behold I have still not yet finished it in first place because one mistake can put you off the track, and disqualify you. I feel really disappointed that as a Top Gear fan, I eventually found myself avoiding the tracks special events altogether.

Ok, so that’s enough ranting from this Top Gear fanboy. Let’s move onto multiplayer.

For multiplayer, you can create lobbies to jump into with your friends or even just jump into any of the public lobbies available. I really love what Polyphony Digital have done in this department. Sure, some major improvements could be (and probably will be) made, but its the basic lobby design I like.

Last Updated: December 3, 2010