Gran Turismo 5 Review – Here’s To The Dreamers

Calling all cars

When you join a lobby, you can see the track in a small window. If the race is underway you can just hop in and spectate. If however the race is not yet underway and people are choosing cars and so on, anyone can hop straight into the track and start doing some practice laps for fun or other purposes. Once everything is set, the race begins and off everyone goes.

While us as South Africans usually suffer in the lag department even with the best of connections, I found that random international races in GT5 had their moments. I had some races begin with cars facing strange directions and apparently some people have reported races starting without them. The beginning of races when everyone is packed together can be a total nightmare with cars glitching into each other and huge crashed taking place. If you are able to survive the initial mayhem though, everything tends to smooth out very nicely and I found the majority of my races to be smooth and hassle free for most of the race (stupid incapable online drivers aside).

Now let’s get to the real reason that Gran Turismo exists, the driving.

Taking The Benz

Gran Turismo calls itself The Real Driving Simulator, and so far the series has managed to keep those words true enough.

The driving physics and mechanics have been overhauled since Gran Turismo 4 so everything feels a little different. When I say a little different, what I actually mean to say is, a little perfect.

The driving in Gran Turismo 5 is simply sublime and a petrol-heads dream come true. Anyone who has ever had any track experience can tell you straight away that when it comes to the feeling of being on a real track in a real car, Gran Turismo 5 has it nailed down.

Every single car feels unique and true to its real-life counterpart. Even if a show like Top Gear has ever explained a car’s handling and feeling to you, try it in the game and it will feel exactly the same. I always had one major issue with the Gran Turismo driving physics, and it had to do with wheelspin on pull off. In previous GT games, if you nailed the accelerator from standstill, the cars tended to do this crazy thing where they vibrated a lot, hit the limited a lot and then eventually came right. Gran Turismo 5 has now fixed this issue and pulling off feels a lot more natural. Hit it too hard and you will be facing the wrong direction before you can say vehicle insurance.

Anyone needs to understand that Gran Turismo 5 is not about the thrills and spills of motor racing. Sure, you might get into some hairy moments but at the end of the day, Gran Turismo is, was and always will be all about finding a smooth line and driving safe, consistent but still quick enough to come out on top.

The cars also have a great feeling of weight and physical presence to them. Drive a large American muscle car and you will be sure to feel the roll of the body as you brake hard, or corner sharply whereas your high-end supercars and race cars feel flat, nimble and balanced.

When it comes to being a simulator, Gran Turismo 5 has no equal on consoles. It is ahead of everyone else and only once you have played it do you realise how much of a difference it makes to the overall experience.

Artificial Lack Of Intelligence

There are however some other elements that don’t get my thumbs up where the main gameplay is concerned. I can quite easily say that Gran Turismo 5’s artificial intelligence is absolutely atrocious. On way too many occasions I had the A.I drivers treat me as if I wasn’t even on the track with them. Spin out in the wrong area and your whole race can be destroyed as a small spin becomes a massive incident when 4 or 5 A.I cars slam into you, causing you to fly off the track, over the sandtraps and into the barriers.

A.I drivers also tend to brake unnecessarily at times, which can be incredibly infuriating in special events where collisions mean instant disqualification. I also had situations (and my Twitter followers are all well aware of this) where I had to redo races over and over and over again due to A.I drivers suddenly deciding that it was a great idea to ram me off the road. When I say ram, I don’t mean like a coincidental bump that knocked me off, I actually had a race where the A.I was swerving out and in at me over and over again until I was blasted off the road like I was in a Hollywood movie pursuit.

Alfa Male

Another issue I have is that Gran Turismo 5 aims at realism above all else, so why on earth put players in a situation where they have only 2 laps to race, start in last place, and need to overtake 11 other cars on a tight street track to get the gold. You surely can’t expect players to drive like sane human beings and still come out on top. The races are chock and block filled with ridiculous out-braking maneuvers, huge collisions and OCBS ( what I like to call Other Car Braking System, whereby instead of braking, you just slam into the guy in front of you, sending him off the track and slowing you down for the corner).

When realism is the main feature, it seems more appropriate to take a hint from games like F1 2010 that five you goals based on the car you are in and the situation you are in. In an all Ferrari race that has you driving a 40 year old car instead of the latest in cutting-edge technology, I can’t see why coming in 6th or 4th wouldn’t be seen as a triumph.

There also seems to be, with the exception of special events, a complete lack of track rules to adhere to. On a track like Monza, with its long straights that are interrupted by tight chicanes, it is completely possible to just rocket straight over certain parts of the track and grass instead of actually taking the chicane. On a track like Monza, that can easily lead to lap times that are 5, even 10 seconds faster than they should be. There is still no flag system at all, no penalties for leaving the track and currently, no damage penalties on the cars either.

Last Updated: December 3, 2010