WARNING! BIG ASS POST AHEAD!

Gran Turismo 5.

You know what? I got bored, and as usual when that happens I end up doing something that takes a rather large amount of time. Some people praise GT5 like it’s perfect, others can’t see past the first flaw, some may never play the game at all. Anyway, I felt like typing out a review of the game.  This is an honest review and isn’t designed to sway anyone’s opinion, rather it’s just my thoughts on the game in as much of an un-biased manner as possible. I shall dispense with the talking about talking and shall commence with the talking that I’ve been talking about.
Firstly, GT5 is a massively confusing game. It has the best and worst graphics I’ve seen in a long while. It contains some excellent ideas and some of the most downright retarded ideas possible. It may take leaps and bounds ahead of other games in some areas but at the same time it’s stuff with concepts and mechanics that got old back on PS1.

Polyphony Digital has managed to get away with something that really shouldn’t have ever happened. The Standard/Premium car issue is one of the dumbest things in the game, here’s how it goes. Of the 1000+ cars in the game, only around 200 of them are premium, the other 800 are standard. Premium cars are the best looking wince they were designed with the latest modeling technology. Apparently the premium models in the game still aren’t even using all of the data for each car since the PS3 just isn’t powerful enough. The models they made are so detailed that they had to downscale them to work with PS3. Even then they’re absolutely amazing and are probably the nearest thing to reality you’ll in this console generation. The Premiums are the one with the in-car camera view as well. However the standards are not as good. They are actually ported and upscaled from GT4 on PS2. They look much worse (though not complete rubbish), have no interior view, cannot be taken to photo mode (where you can get excellent pictures of your car) are not allowed to change the rims, no bumper or body parts can be added,  and their damage model is rather poor as well. They’re still fine for driving as all the physics  are in place properly, they just look much worse and have no interior view. In my opinion, they’re sort of “bonus cars” thrown in just to get the car count up. I think it would have been far better to only included the Premium cars for the sake of keeping everything looking the same. It is said that they’re working on upgrading standard cars to premium through a future update but it’s unclear when or how many will be upgraded.

The graphical issues extend beyond the cars to the tracks. Most of the time they look fine, especially when you’re driving at speed like you should be. However you’ll end up finding many two-dimensional crowds, trees, and other track-side decorations. There are also a decent number of spots that just look un-detailed and have very flat, low resolution textures. The smoke effect also has the odd side-effect of pixelating thing that are behind it. This looks ugly and has screwed up some otherwise great photos. Overall though, the graphics are astounding. Car reflections are excellent and the lighting is amazing. Shadows cast by cars and other objects will also be cast on smoke and dust, making this really cool streaming effect. Photo mode locations are very nicely detailed and look excellent.

Apart from graphics, this game has tons of features. The customization is mainly mechanical, but some aesthetic additions are possible too (premium cars only).  You won’t be busting out your inner pimp like NFS Underground and Midnight Club let you. When it comes to painting, things get stupid again. Previous GT games never let you repaint your car. Now, instead of taking it to a paint shop and selecting any paint color, you must already own a paint chip of the color you want. The problem is that the paint chip goes away when you use it and you can’t just buy them. How do you get them then? Well you get a few as a log in bonus each day but other than that you only get them when you buy a car. Buy a red car, get a red paint chip. What if you want matte pink? Well the only car in the game that comes in that color costs $350k. So if you want that paint, you need to cough up some big money and you only get to use it once!  Tuning is great as minor adjustments can affect your cars handling by a large degree. You can tweak downforce, engine power, ballast, gear ratios, drivetrain settings, suspension… all the good stuff. You can pretty much make your car handle any way you like.

Driving in the game is fantastic, easily the most fun part of the game. This game is by far the closest to reality driving simulator on consoles.  Once you get used to not just throwing your car into a turn at full speed, you’ll be able to bust out some great runs. Drifting is even possible (it’s real so why not) and there are weekly online challenges for drifting high scores. Driving off-road is also great fun. Rally courses and events are very few in number, but are still a blast nonetheless.  A few problems plague the driving though. Damage modeling (which hasn’t been in any GT game un ‘til now) isn’t very good. Standard cars mainly get warped and bent but the main problem is that it takes a ridiculous amount of repeated impacts to noticeably damage a car. Also, crashes and collisions are way off, rolling a car doesn’t even come close to realistic at all. When you put a car into a wall head on at 200mph it should get game over. Instead it’s minor damage and you just drive along your merry way.

Now the actual events, the meat of the game. There are two modes to your career in GT5 A-spec and B-spec.  A-spec is what we’re all used to, you drive a car in various races to earn money and advance to higher level events. B-spec has exactly the same events but instead of you racing, you set up an AI driver and act as the team manager while he races for you. The problem is that until he reaches the higher levels, your driver is really, really stupid. It’s actually quite funny to watch this complete moron crash into damn-near everything on the track. Mostly B-spec isn’t that fun or entertaining, but it is a good way to earn some more cash if you can’t play right then. Just set the dude racing some races and come back to collect the rewards. You can even race your driver against your friends AI drivers and earn money that way as well. Furthermore, you can set your game to standby mode and start races for your driver via GT5’s website so you can earn money without even being at your PS3. I’m actually doing this right now as I type this out. Lol There are license tests that only serve to give Exp needed to unlock more events. However they do provide a decent training ground if you’re new to the game. They’re simple and short little challenges that test your skill in different areas of driving. There are also special events that give unique things to do such as Kart racing, special time trials, rally, and a few goofy races. (hippie van race FTW!) While these are fun, the payouts are only one-time events, where you get the majority of races and repeatable events is A-spec. There aren’t anywhere near as many events as there were in older GT games, this leads to a fair amount of repetition. If you want to buy a really expensive car, be prepared to do a lot of racing to get the cash needed. Overall the main mode is rather lacking in the number of events to do.  You can race online against other people for cash and Exp but the payouts aren’t very good unless it’s a long race. But now there are temporary events that are refreshed weekly. The payouts are good and they add new types of events each time. These are quite fun and challenging, as unlike the A-spec there are restrictions to prevent you from bringing an F1 car to a compact car race. The seasonal events have changed from one-time races with massive payouts to repeatable races with very decent payouts. I think they’ll keep changing them up over time so this a great way to bring something new to the table.

There are other features like the course maker (finally we can use these tracks online) where you can set up a track in a number of different themes. Sadly, the direct control is lacking as it does more random generating than letting you place things. Actually, you only set parameters such as number of sections. Within each section, you can set road width, complexity, sharpness of turns, and turn embankment angle. You pick what you want and hope it doesn’t give you something stupid. If you put a bit of time into it you can get some really nice courses but it never feels like your own creation. And even though there are different themes, things start looking repetitive pretty quickly. Each theme doesn’t just change the look, but the track type as well. If you want a particular type of track you use that theme, when you’ve got a dozen tracks in the same theme, they start looking very similar.

Overall, the game is excellent. There’s tons to do if you like trying out new cars and seeing what you can do with each one.  If you have fun joining different online games and racing with other people you’ll also have a blast. There are the usual noobs and jerks on here too but if you find some nice talkative people, it becomes very enjoyable. However, if you’re the type of person that beast the story mode for a game and then shelves it, you’ll find yourself bored with this game quickly. To really enjoy this game, you’ll also have to look past a lot of stupid ideas and mechanics. Quite a few of these are being worked on via updates but some are just bad game design and it shows. Still, just the amount of content in this game is astounding. There are tons of things to do if you want, there are a large number of tracks to race on and a bunch of them have different configurations, the number of different cars is massive as well. It’s like Legos kinda, if you only follow the instructions to build what’s on the box, then you’re missing out. But if you like doing your own thing with what’s there, you may find a lot of hidden potential.

Nice review Negrumir

The last paragraph sums it up nicely.

This is one of the best race games out there even whit the Nintendo trees in some levels.

I use a Gforce steering wheel and race from the cockpit view so at first i was disappointed about the premium cars or the lack if it but after playing a few months i came to the conclusion i don`t need 1000+ premium cars by far. (it would be nice)

Most cars got 10+ different models from different years. I don`t miss the premium ugly Japanese car from '82 to '92 etc.
Maybe there are 20 premium cars i use and learned to drive fast and that`s where this game is far above any other race game on consoles.

There is plenty of stuff to keep this game going and you can even sign up for GT academy and become a real driver...
Or go for all gold trophy`s and let me tell you some trophy's kept me going for days where i slowly gained 0,020 each time i changed a setting or took a different racing line.

The damage could be a lot better and more realistic especially online would it be more fun if you had the option to totally wreck a car.
You would have to make damage in line whit the game design and that`s the hardest part of this i think, you would end up whit a some what NFS crash or make it realistic in every way and you would have to crash 1000+ cars to test it....hahaha.

All in all a great game for my collection.