Gran Turismo 5 Review – Here’s To The Dreamers

Whether you are using all of your assists and slamming everyone off the road or driving on nothing but pure talent and keeping to all the lines, the game honestly doesn’t care and it makes no difference to your earnings or position either. That is, of course, if the homicidal AI actually let you finish a race in anywhere but last on certain tracks.

Keeping Track

The tracks themselves, like the cars, are very hit and miss. Some of the new tracks like London, Rome and Madrid are an absolute marvel to behold. It feels as though every little bump in the road has been recreated with pin-point accuracy. Some of the older tracks however, such as Trial Mountain and Autumn Ring look as though they were also imported directly from the PS2 versions and are filled to the brim with horrible looking trees, bland landscapes and terribly low textures.

Some tracks have also been graced with weather effects and/or day and night cycles. This again, is unfortunately a case where some tracks have it and some don’t, keeping up with the theme of inconsistent design that seems so commonplace throughout the game.

This leads me into the tech side of Gran Turismo 5 and what it has meant to move over from the PS2 to the very powerful PS3.

Don’t Blink

As I have already said in the review, many elements of Gran Turismo 5 are completely inconsistent.

Drive a brand new premium Lamborghini with its beautiful cockpit view around Monza in the rain and you eyeballs will have moments where it can’t fully understand just how good the graphics look. On that same note, drive some of the standard cars around a track like Autumn Ring and I am not even kidding when I say that it looks worse than most half-priced PSN or Xbox Live arcade games.

When GT5 doesn’t look so hot, it looks a little bland and boring. However, when GT5 looks good, it looks incredibly good and the visuals are sometimes unbelievable. Premium cars are more detailed than ever before and a lot of the visual flair can also be attributed to spectacular lighting on the cars that no one but Polyphony has managed to pull off.

While it tends to be a good looking game most of the time, there are still a lot of issues with very low resolution smoke and shadow effects as well as terrible screen tearing that occurs.

Car damage is also listed as a feature in Gran Turismo 5, but once again the levels of damage are also inconsistent depending on which cars you are driving. Even cars with damage don’t really look so great once smashed up. Slam your Jaguar into a wall a couple of times only and you might only see a little bit of a bent car, which can look a little awkward and also show no signs of scraping. Racing cars with full damage can have their doors flung open as well as bonnets and boots flailing about, but I also had situations where the cars had the boot, bonnet and doors stuck completely open during the whole race.

If you look at any other racing game released this year, its pretty easy to see that Gran Turismo is well behind in this department and makes me feel like they should have just left it out altogether.

The framerate is also very inconsistent and seems to mainly be affected by the cockpit view or detailed levels. The game will stick to its smooth framerate when in other views, but the cockpit camera is a great addition to the game and one that many people will want to use, but it really does lead to some very choppy races at times which, is obviously a real shame.

Ring-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-a-baaaaa-ting-ting-a-baaaaa

Sound is easily the biggest shortfall in Gran Turismo 5. Cars still have that same digital sound going for them and it really hurts the experience when everything else feels so solid (especially when driving a premium car). Sounds on the track are also a little strange. Knock another car and you get an overly bass-ey thud, and cornering too hard still brings out the trademark “screetchy” tire noises that we all know from the series.

The other major issue that I had was that when I was using the bumper or cockpit cameras, the sounds of my own car’s engine were a lot quieter than it should be when compared to everything else. You can pump up the race sounds in the game to try and hear it better, but then switch to the chase camera behind the car and your speakers might just blow the roof off your home.

The soundtrack is also incredibly strange at times. You can edit the playlists and even use your own music, but unless you go through the full effort of going though everything, you will be tortured by some very out of place tunes.

Gran Turismo 5 was always known for its menu’s relaxed lounge music, but I think that merely calling the music selection chilled in GT5 would be the understatement of the year. Some of the music is so docile, so gentle, so… tranquil… that it LITERALLY put people in my TV room to sleep, and had my eyes feeling heavy between events rather than pumping me up for my next race. I usually play games very late at night, and I can tell you that as someone who suffers from terrible insomnia, GT5’s menus nearly knocked me the-hell-out on a few occasions.

The music during the races isn’t so bad, but once again, due to the quiet engine issues I was having the music was either overpowering and annoying, or when set down, too quiet and just came across as noise.

Conclusion:

There are a million and one things to say about Gran Turismo 5, and if I said all of them this review would be 20 pages long. So here’s my final say:

Gran Turismo 5 is hands-down the best simulation driving experience that you will have this year and probably for a long time to come. The handling and the realism is enough to get any car fan tingling with delight as they nail a perfect line.

This is however, a video game that comes with baggage and excuses that no paying customer should have to ever even think about. As an old and beloved series from a talented team of developers, it’s difficult to keep a balanced and fair opinion of this latest entry in the series.

The truth is that Gran Turismo 5 is the very best dedicated driving sim experience ever created but as a video game, it’s let down by a ridiculous standard/premium car class system, completely inconsistent levels of quality, terrible A.I and features that should be universal.

I love Polyphony Digital, and I know many of you do too. It makes me want to defend them, want to make excuses for them… but the real truth is that they while they have proven that they have no equals when it comes to making a damn good feeling driving game, the industry and innovation that takes place around it has been completely left behind.

If they were a moderately unknown developer, we would have torn them to shreds, and that’s the truth.

If you are the type of gamer who just wants to slam in a disc and have some fun on four wheels, then Gran Turismo 5 will probably lose your interest sooner than you think.

If you are willing to overlook the archaic game design and technological niggles found in Gran Turismo 5, you will be rewarded with the best and most realistic driving experience you have ever had on your console, bar none.

Scoring:

Gameplay: 10/10

There is nothing as rewarding and visceral out there. If you ever wanted to know what it feels like to drive a sportscar around a real track, here’s your ticket.

Presentation (and game design): 7/10

As a score that represents the menus, graphics, overall game design and layout, the great looking premium cars and new tracks cannot hold the score up on their own.

Sound: 6/10

Tinny, digital sounds cars, ok racing music and very out-of-place sound effects and menu music make GT5 an OK, but not great sounding game.

Value: 9.5/10

For those who do want it, Gran Turismo 5 offers an absolute wealth of gameplay modes, online modes, offline modes, challenges, licenses, special events and more. Petrol-heads won’t to play anything else for weeks and even months to come.

Overall (not an average): 8.9

The game of a lifetime for petrol-heads like me despite its shortcomings, but worth avoiding for those looking for something more straightforward and instantly gratifying. A few necessary changes and this game could have been an easy 10/10.

Last Updated: December 3, 2010