Five years. Five long, interminable years have passed since the announcement of Gran Turismo 5. Many things have changed since that distant E3 2005 when Kazunori Yamauchi revealed the provisional name of the "Gran Turismo Vision" project for Sony's newly born console, Playstation 3. As the development of the title began, in 2004 according to what the Polyphony Digital boss made known in an interview, with 150 people dedicated to the creation of the fifth chapter of the series, a lot has happened on our monitors and televisions.
In fact, the competition certainly did not remain to watch, challenging year after year, title after title, platform on platform, the king of simulators. The word simulation in this virtual clash between the concrete of the productions that have taken place to date and the almost magical aura that surrounded the title of Poliphony, took on a new connotation day after day, leading someone to talk, waiting to try something concrete and considering the time taken by the Japanese team, as a definitive driving simulation.
At the end of the games the knots came to a head: was it worth waiting all this time? Read on to find out.
New look, same style
Once the disc has been inserted into the console, an update message to version 1.01 weighing 133MB appears, useful for unlocking the multiplayer compartment. Then you are asked to choose if you want to install most of the game on HDD, about 8GB, or continue using only, so to speak, about 458MB of which 256MB minimum as swap file. The complete installation involves waiting for almost an hour also due to the enormous space required to decompress the data, occupying the beauty of 10GB uncompressed. In this way the loading times of a track are considerably reduced, going from an average of about 1 minute and a half to just 20 seconds. Do not be afraid if the remaining time is stopped for a long time, don't worry, the console has not blocked; unfortunately what is reported as remaining time is not faithful to reality. After this phase and witnessed the long but incredible introduction scene, the main screen appears with only the voices of My Home, a sort of control panel for the entire GT universe, Arcade mode, Path Editor, GT TV, options e Save.
The Arcade mode allows you to try your hand at four types of challenges: Quick Race, Time Trial Race, Drift Test, Split Screen for 2 players.
The main screen is named My Home. This is the control center for the entire Gran Turismo universe. It is structured in such a way as to have quick access to the three main sections:
GT LIFE
- Profile and Community
- A-Spec and B-Spec Career modes - Official and Special Events - Tuning Shop is the shop where you can buy parts for your car - Dealerships is the car shop - Used Car Dealerships is the used car shop - GTAuto is the Garage in which to maintain your car
- The delivery of winning cars - The car garage to choose, sell, share or give to PSN friends - Publish Lobby to play online with other PSN users or watch as a spectator - My Lounge is the place where every player chooses how to challenge their PSN friends
Profile
- Personalization of the profile in every aspect using both preset themes and photos taken during the Photo Mode
Community
- share messages, photos and videos with friends of the Playstation Network, discuss thanks to a voice chat, organize challenges and events
Finally Photo Travel Mode for the management of your photo and video album being able to choose every little aspect for the Premium cars, the position of the car, the wheels, the props, the setting, before creating the final product, a concert of effects and filters which makes even the most mundane image a spectacular photo.
The look used is very captivating while the style that appears between one screen and another or the vision of your customizable background seems to have remained unchanged. The playlist is faithful to the previous chapters with chill out and ambient rhythms during the pages of the various menus, more pressing and rhythmic on board the cars.
A not insignificant feature is the ability to customize a playlist in various situations, ie menus, arcade challenges and career challenges. By unlocking the song import function, you can listen to music tracks saved in the console by simply importing them from a preset folder or playlist and consistent with the required compatibility regarding audio quality (MP3 / WAV).
Arcade and Career modes
In line with the previous chapters, once again the possibilities made available to compete are divided into two parts: Arcade and Career.
In Arcade mode you access a series of tracks with pre-set settings such as weather conditions and / or day and night situations. In addition, you can play offline via split-screen (split screen) together with another person. Each track includes a certain number of laps and opposing cars. The maximum number of cars on the track is 16 and these vary in make and model according to the category. By playing this mode you can unlock a few Trophies, with attached cars and tracks, in relation to the performance achieved. The difficulty level is divided into Easy, Intermediate and Professional. The latter implies only a more difficult artificial intelligence while it does not show any mechanical damage but only something from a visual point of view, remaining faithful to the "Arcade" category.
Great commitment due to the strong realism staged by the game, is required instead in the Career mode. This is divided into A-Spec and B-Spec.
In A-Spec the player has to progress through various tests such as driving license tests, track challenges, collecting experience points useful for leveling up, buying and selling cars, changing their aesthetics. It is important to manage finances so that you can buy the cars necessary to participate in certain challenges. The learning curve is sufficiently progressive: it starts from the Beginner Series, the Amateur Series, the Professional Series and then passes through the Expert Series up to the Extreme Series, in which the level of difficulty is really very high. Each of these series is playable only once a certain level has been reached, such as 10 for the Professional series and 20 for the latest Extreme Series, as a true GT driver.
In B-Spec the player plays the role of Race Team Director having to face in addition to various challenges proposed in the competitions present, even the complicated setting of the car, manage finances and above all specifically enhance various parts of the components (engine, brakes, convergence wheels, etc.). Basically by managing a team of up to six drivers, in every crucial aspect. pic014_150_84_87 During the races you can give commands such as to drive more aggressively or overtake and you have to constantly keep an eye on statistical data such as the degree of mental and physical fatigue and the tension of the driver. Each driver has a unique personality so you will have to pay attention to a series of really important variables to be able to take the victory. It will also be possible to observe the performance of the pilots through a photorealistic quality video. In short, a way to put even the most experienced engines to the test.
This mode can also be managed (1) via the web from the official website gran-turismo.com using your PSN profile and leaving the PS3 console on. Both modes provide all the planned tracks, including themed variations and on the track there are about 70, of which 52 taken from the previous versions of the series and GTPSP, and up for grabs the greater number of Trophies in the game.
Speaking of the level of difficulty present in the Career mode it is good to do some clarity. It is distinguished on the basis of the five series mentioned above which can be summarized in adjectives such as Easy, Normal, Difficult, Very Difficult, Professional. This option also determines the subsequent choice of driving aids. The level of difficulty also affects the management of damage with an almost total absence of these up to the lowest level, only aesthetic damage with Normal, aesthetic damage and partial mechanical damage (eg tire wear) with Difficile, both aesthetic and mechanical damage (tire wear, fuel consumption, loss of grip with off-piste, loss of engine performance) with Professionale.
The much claimed mechanical damage in GT5, in essence, however, is very little, manifesting itself only if certain level points are reached and in any case not going beyond fuel consumption, loss of engine performance, loss of calibration of the wheel convergence. . Only in these cases is the need to resort to the garage to fix the car. No impact, not even the most devastating, can destroy the car instantly.
Going up in rank with the driving license it will be possible to deactivate all driving aids.
The realism lavished by disabling the aids and setting the maximum level of difficulty is certainly the best ever experienced on Sony consoles; A lot has been done both from the point of view of driving realism and for the AI managed by the console with unexpected duels and barriers before a curve to avoid being overtaken. Too bad that the collisions are sketchy, not in line with the rest of the gameplay.
Each car, whether Premium or Standard, which has suffered an impact, a bump, shows a different behavior on the screen even in modeling the affected part. Many of the Standard cars exhibit no cosmetic damage at all.
pic005_150_84_87 The control scheme, while taking up the same basic arrangement of buttons and levers, as well as handlebars and pedals, is completely customizable and is appreciated both with the pad and with the steering wheel, giving the latter an incredibly realistic feeling. The gameplay has been renewed thanks to the inclusion of some new features. The first concerns the use of the Playstation Eye and allows the driver to change the view inside the cockpit with the only movement of his face. This feature is only possible for Premium cars as Standard cars only have views without the dashboard.
Unfortunately this lack could be overcome by using a polygonal model even in low resolution, but in Polyphony Digital they felt it was better to leave this aspect out. The second novelty concerns the possibility of moving the seat position by shifting the internal view in order to choose the one that best suits your driving style. The choice can be made between Normal, Close and Very Close. There is no possibility of eliminating the HUD, which would certainly have been appreciated by lovers of pure simulations, but only reduce it to a minimum by eliminating the map in the upper left, leaving for example the low part summarizing the engine rpm, speed, etc..
The introduction of cars such as caravans and Go-Karts, themed competitions dedicated to Top Gear, Sebastian Loeb for the rally, the Nascar championship, add more depth and depth to the passion of GT5 users. A track generator called Course Maker is able to enormously expand the variety of circuits available by allowing the choice of setting, race time, weather conditions, width of the road sections and slope. Everything can then be shared with other friends of the community, introducing a social element that certainly will not mind.
The Data Logger is another novelty of the series. This new feature inserted after each race is basically a performance tracker (complete with GPS) and provides extensive analysis complete with telemetry, at the end of your session. In the training phases it is possible to repeat the lap on the track trying to beat yourself or other users present as ghost cars. In fact, every data is stored in order to be usable all over the world and sifted through in every part to understand how to replicate the record times recorded by gaming professionals. This aspect is certainly a merit above all because it puts each player in the same guise as real pilots who must study the telemetry to avoid errors.
Show and wonder
The graphics compartment of Gran Turismo 5 is only admirable by setting the display mode to Sharp in the Options. This is a truly sui generis choice for a console game, but which highlights the magnificence of the graphics sector even more: the detail that has been obtained from a console that has now reached adulthood is truly impressive. with a game born, according to the statements at the beginning of this article, back in 2004. The title was conceived at the native resolution of 1280x1080p and can be enjoyed on your TV at the HD resolutions available up to the spectacular 1080p. The cleanliness of the image created thanks to a detail both of the cars and of the whole, very high, allows the player to feel part of the game. However, the need to confront the obvious hardware limitations made the choice mentioned in the introduction necessary. The three different display modes are: Normal, Stabilized, Sharp.
Normal decreases overall detail so that you have a solid 60fps framerate in any game situation. Nitida allows you to have maximum detail everywhere with slight cuts in the screen due to V-Sync (control of the vertical refresh rate) which in our view do not affect the gaming experience in any way. Stabilized it slightly decreases the level of detail of the panorama and applies less anti-aliasing, leaving very rare drops in framerate appear compared to the Nitida version. gt5_settings_010 Our advice is to first deactivate the filters on your TV, in order to have a clean and unconditioned image rendering, try the three various display settings and choose the one that suits us best. The normal vision, set by default, could leave a bad taste in the mouth of those who expected a perfect title from this point of view, not applying any anti-aliasing filter and using low resolution textures.
The particle effects generated when drifting or abruptly braking, such as smoke or debris dust off the track, rain on the windshield and on the track, mist and snow, are quite credible and can be appreciated both in race as much as in replays.
In addition there is an impressive lighting and light refraction management system. Regardless of whether you are driving with an external view, used mostly for Standard cars, or with an internal view with Premium cars, the only one that guarantees that feeling of really feeling on board a supercar and appreciating the enormous work. of the development team, you are completely captivated by so much show.
What is astounding is that all of this runs smoothly at 60fps framerate. The only point where you notice a slight hesitation in the management of the updating of images on the screen, showing a slight tearing effect, is in clear mode at a crucial point: during a very tight and angled curve with many cars present, regardless of any weather condition.
During the replays there is also a slight decrease in resolution, almost a decrease in anti-aliasing on sensitive points such as contours and particle effects, highlighting sporadic jaggies on cars and landscape objects.
According to what reported by Polyphony Digital, the title uses a temporal anti-aliasing, that is, it is applied only as long as the console can manage it, otherwise it is decreased or deactivated entirely. Standard cars do not show visually consistent damage, but this had already been announced by the software house itself. Even some cars do not get dirty while others do, or do not leave the tire strips after braking on the asphalt.
Many Standard cars among the many present are only acceptable, some instead too dull, probably because models imported from GTPSP. There are no popular cars such as the Porsche Carrera, Lamborghini Diablo, Alfaromeo MiTO, cars that could still come with future updates via DLC, given the recent statements reported by Polyphony Digital.
On the other hand, the sound effect of each car is faithfully recreated, even with gear changes or engine stalling, apart from that during rear-end collisions: hear a dull noise (thud!) Instead of a distinct series of more shrill sounds (crash !) would have helped to justify even just mentally the collision between cars or on the track. The audio sector, apart from this neo, is the state of the art especially if enjoyed through a Home Theater system, with 5.1 channels in DTS always present, or on exaggerated 7.1 channels in Linear PCM (only via HDMI).
If observed closely, the public present on the track, in some circuits denotes too low a detail compared to the rest of the production: they resemble cardboard silhouettes. Sin.
Same goes for some tracks made with too much superficiality. Another lack is saving the replay after a split-screen game session, or not being able to go back and forth, a necessary condition if you want to take a picture and have passed the desired point during the replay, for example. If Yamauchi has always claimed to want to give players a perfect product, then the game must necessarily be updated with a patch that is also quite substantial, because these small details weigh even more on the judgment of critics and the public after an exhausting wait and endless slips. of the release date.
The vision becomes realistic thanks to the three-dimensional support (1). Gran Turismo 5 is without a doubt the clearest and most convincing example of this technology. The implementation of 3D has a superlative impact making the gaming experience unique, immersive, spectacular. Each object on the screen can be perceived better and even setting a curve or overtaking becomes more natural and experienced with extreme realism. Even the replays and related videos and photos that can be made are even in three dimensions. Ultimately GT5 is the killer app for 3D.
Wanting to nitpick, the sensation of speed remains a parameter that is not always appreciable when using the outside view of the car. In this case, in fact, while reading over 180 on the kilometer counter, it seems that the car goes to a maximum of 120. In reality it is a condition dictated by the perspective of the shot. Our perception of speed is determined by many factors, such as the objects whizzing along the sides, the close-up asphalt, many of which are less perceived if the view of the external car is distant and oblique to the track. This therefore explains the different appreciation and should satiate the doubts and perplexities of some players.
Final comment
Gran Turismo 5 is by far the best of the series created by Polyphony Digital. The profuse realism, the visual and immersive 3D show, seasoned with various and well-assorted challenges are the ingredients of an ambitious project that does not end, we are sure, with this chapter. The customization present in various aspects of the game from the pilot to his desktop, the Data Logger, the management of photos and videos both in HD and in 3D that can be published and shared with other users, the multiplayer mode supported by a good netcode, greatly increase the enjoyment of the game and the desire to replay it, more than fully repaying the cost of the title.
Despite having encountered some defections that in the general picture have their weight and leave a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth, it remains a mandatory purchase for all lovers of four-wheeled racing cars and car racing, whether you are newbies with the pink sheet or drivers. thirsty for victory. A missed masterpiece, which does not reach the hoped-for perfection, guilty of too many years of development and little attention to characteristics that, and here I will attract the criticisms of all of you, with a further slip, could have been held in greater consideration.
However, the title manages to establish itself as a new reference point for future productions in terms of feeling in driving cars. The challengers are warned, the king is back after a long absence: will he be able to keep his throne steady?
Votes
Playability 90
Graphics 87
Sound 92
Longevity 95
Overall 91
For
- Premium car with a fabulous interior
- Physics and excellent AI
- Each car returns its own feeling
- Good sound effects and music playlist
- Good profile customization
- Career mode and captivating Multiplayer
- It's the killer app for 3D
Cons
- Some interior of the Premium sufficient, as well as the Standard in general
- Very bare and careless settings
- Anti-aliasing management problems especially with particle effects
- Some sound effects are out of tune
- Hardly credible damage and collisions below level 15
- Exaggerated installation and hard disk space occupation
Small note (Easter Egg): From the GT Life / Public Lobby / Create Room / 1472-6681-3243-9090-8997 menu you can access a secret menu that can set some default changes at will.
The title is available from November 24th 2010 exclusively for Playstation 3, also in Collector's and Signature edition.
