Gran Turismo 5 - PS3 - Review

[Ohio Joe]

I really love this series and have been looking forward to this getting released. I was less then impressed with the demo they put out a while back but it seems like a lot of what disappointed me has been corrected. It's GT, if you did not like any of the old entries, there's nothing here to bring you in but if you did like them, this is bigger, better and with a few new twists to give it even more re playability then ever.

The Look - I still think the people in the stands should look better but they don't look completely like card board cutout now. Some of the tracks are a bit... barren. They also still have some VERY minor clipping that has plagued the series bot other then that, the game is a beauty to behold in 1080P

The Cars - Over 1000 cars to be had in the game and I still can't freakin find out for sure if I'll be able to race my T-Bird. F'kers, come on and put out a definitive list already. Otherwise there is little to complain about regarding selection. Go Carts, used cars, classic cars, new cars, Nascar, off road, you name it and they put it in there. They also have some weird thing on the website about paying them to create cars not included for you... not sure of the price though. The cars also seem to be divided into two further categories, "Premium" cars, that can take damage (I think I saw somewhere that there are 200 of them) and the rest, that do not take damage. I don't have any of the premium cars yet so I'm unsure how or if it impacts car performance though I would assume it does.

The Tracks - 20 total tracks with 70+ variations on them. nuff said.

Game Play - They have made some change here and I'm not sure if I think it is for the best or not... It's not any kind of deal breaker on the game or anything but... it's almost as if they made it a little more complicated then it needs to be. On all the previous versions of GT, the first thing I would do is go and get all of the license's so naturally thats what I did this time as well. I did the first test of the first license and got this pop-up telling me I was awarded experience points... WTF? I figured it would make itself apparent at some point so I continued. After passing all 10 tests and getting the license, I went to take the next one only to find that I needed to be level three before I could take it and I was only level two. So... They have added this whole level up thing before you can participate in races or take tests. It comes down to having to take some tests, do some races, take tests, do races, instead of just letting me get the tests out of the way right off. A little annoying but that big of a deal.

There are also several different modes of racing:

A-SPEC - Regular racing, you drive.
B-SPEC - Your the crew chief and give orders while the computer drives. I don't get this mode yet as there are only a few orders and none of them seem to have any effect on whats going on.
Online - Race against real people and still have full screen Have not tried this yet. I did notice it has it's own garage section and I'm not sure yet how you put cars in it. I will be doing online though and will update at a later time on how it works.

Bottom Line - I love it, massive in scope and at least at this point it delivers real driving fun.