Gran Turismo 5 is Polyphony Digital’s much-awaited driving title for the Sony PS3. After more than half a decade in development and a few disheartening delays, the video game has finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel, zooming out at a blistering pace. Racing fans will also love the absolutely mind-blowing series of opening visuals. We indulged in a review of the same just to see how the title gets our adrenaline pumping.
Touted as the real driving simulator, Gran Turismo 5 is here to push your driving skills to the absolute limit while still keeping it real. The problem is, the more realistic a racing or driving video game gets, the more difficult it becomes to boss your way around on the track. Luckily enough, the developer seems to know just how to add some thrills into the mix along with a whole bunch of incredible cars to drool over, while keeping the driving smooth, clean and fantastic. There are also some awfully demanding and tricky challenges in the game’s career mode. GT 5 even seems to carry over Sony’s philosophy of user-generated content with the track creator section.
The driving in GT5 is extremely realistic and it’s safe to say the game delivers one of the best racing experiences on the console without compromising too much in terms of other niceties. You might although, have to turn off some of the racing assists in order to fully appreciate the realism. GT5 even offers the opportunity to take your cars for a photo shoot in various beautiful and exotic locations. The photo mode also allows you to control factors such as focusing, shutter speed, exposure, and the focal length of the camera lens.
A multitude of other options lets you express your creative side while stepping into the role of a suave car photographer. It’s all conceived to let you take stunning pictures of the vehicles you own. The images you take in-game can be saved to your console’s hard drive so that you can take the persona of the game over to your system. The game’s replay mode is great and the scenes are cinematically brilliant. But take a closer look and you’ll notice that the game’s AI is neither dynamic enough nor aggressive enough.
Apart from being able to race some of the most extravagant cars, gamers can also try their hand at playing race engineer. The game features a B Spec arena where you can take on the role of a race track God by carefully guiding your driver through the circuit with the ability to bark out orders over the radio to increase, decrease and maintain racing pace, as well as to overtake an opponent. Get your driver too aggressive on the throttle though and he’ll be susceptible to a greater degree of error, sliding wide and overcompensating. Your best bet is to maintain a good balance between your driver’s speed and physical strength. Adding to this, stressful situations will sap his mental agility, so give your orders wisely. But there’s more to being a race engineer than initially meets the eye. You must cajole your drivers gently, making sure they have the right mix of aggression and cool, mental strength and physical stamina, braking and cornering ability, if you want to see them ascending to greater heights in the world of motor racing.
Gran Turismo 5 also features a track creator mode which is simple yet elegant. It feels like a step down though when compared to the intricate little things provided by the track creator in Sony’s karting title ModNation Racers, but seems to flow with simplistic persona that Polyphony Digital has splashed out for Gran Turismo 5. The ‘Course Maker’ doesn’t let you get into the extremely minute details while creating a track, but gives you some freedoms which can lead to a lot of fun tracks. Of course, you can’t tweak it to just how you would like. After selecting what type of track you want to build, you must then decide on the number of sections it will have, as well as section complexity, corner sharpness and how wide you want the road in each section. You can even play around with various factors such as the weather and the time of day for your creation.
If you’re just not that serious about making a career out of racing or if you simply cannot wait to hop into top end racing cars you can’t afford just yet, you can always jump into a race in GT5’s arcade mode. Here you’ll have access to a whole lot of spectacular fast racing machines without the hassle of racking up the points first. In this space you even have the freedom to race your favourite cars from your career and take on a friend on tracks you have created, which always makes for an exciting time. The vast mix of modern electric sounds smashed together with some ancient elements makes up the beautiful soundtrack of GT5. There are even a few classical renderings in the game plus several other eclectic tunes that maintain a fresh feel for things.
Along with all the above mentioned features, there are a few things that GT5 leaves you craving for. The parameters that can be control by you are quite limited. Sometimes it’s just bizarre. The game won’t allow you to select certain obvious settings. Car modifications are limited and only certain vehicles can be modified in certain ways. This, although very true to real life, takes away a little from the fun factor that racing games generally provide. The ability to add body graphics to your cars is another feature that fails to make an appearance. Adding to this, the fact that you can only photograph premium cars, not standard models appears as a downside. Also, the cockpit view is not available in all cars, and you’ll have to make do with either a bumper cam, a dash cam, or the heli cam view. Another negative in Gran Turismo 5 is that the on-screen information may be less than you want to have. And while you can play one, you don’t have a race engineer to help you along the way.
Final Word: Gran Turismo 5 delivers an absolute pleasure of a virtual driving experience. It features an almost uncountable number of cars and even includes the Nascar franchise, as well as the Super GT and the World Rally Championship series. It not only provides hours of on-track racing, but also several other outlets for your racing needs. Overall, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives and GT 5 is a great game that anyone who is a fan of racing titles simply must have.
Graphics: 9.2/10.
Gameplay: 8.9/10.
Sounds: 9.0/10.
Environments: 9.0/10.
Replay Value: 9.5/10.
Overall (not an average): 9.0/10.