Gran Turismo 5 Initial Impression

Finally, Gran Turismo 5 came out on November 24th, 2010. When was Gran Turismo 4 released? 2004? It's been 6 years or so already. I was still in high school when I was playing GT4. Now with GT5? I already got my engineering degree and is now working. 6 years is sure a long time and a lot of things happened in my life during this period. However, when I finally got my copy of GT5 and started playing, everything felt so...familiar. All of a sudden, it didn't feel like there is a 6-year gap between GT4 and GT5.

In fact, GT5 is pretty much an evolution of GT4. And that is a good thing for me. I enjoy playing the Gran Turismo series because of its style of gameplay. I extremely like the  GT mode/simulation mode/career mode. With GT5 though, more features have been added to make the game even more interesting. The level system is certainly a nice touch. It makes the game more like a RPG - and really, the GT mode is arguably a RPG. The Special Events are awesome. From driving Go Karts and Nascars to mastering the Nurburgring and learning how to do rally races properly, there are many different things to try here.

One part that I have always enjoyed playing in the past Gran Turismo games is the License Test section. As a result, I spent my first week doing license tests. Some are very easy to get gold, some are more challenging. In the end I was able to get all gold and it was not that bad. In fact, I thought the hardest test was the B-5 license test. The Super license test is quite easy actually.

Other notable features are weather changes and damage. The damage is quite unrealistic. However, most people won't be able to enjoy the game if the damage is realistic. Just imagine braking late for one corner, and you rear ended the car in front of you. You lose control of the car and fly right to the wall. In real life, chances are, it's game over. So it's understandable that even when you hit a solid wall head-on at 100mph, your car is still drivable. Unfortunately, weather changes is not available in every track. Nonetheless, it's quite "fun" when driving in the rain on Nurburgring. It's quite realistic too.

GT5 is a great game, and I play it almost on a daily basis. However, I'm somewhat disappointed with the game. First, the car list. Sure, it has 1031 cars in total. However, most of them (around 800) are straight from GT4. I am quite surprised that Polyphony did not add more new cars to the game. For instance, why would they include the BMW 330i, but not the newer and better 335i? This gives me the feeling that the development team was lazy. Just use the lsit from GT4, change the physics, then be done with it.

Another area that is a bit disappointing is the camera views. Basically, the game has two classes of cars - premium and standard. Premium cars have way more graphics (more detail), have interior view, you can change rims and add aero kit. Standard cars on the other hand are not as detail and they don`t have interior view. Here is the problem, why don`t they include interior view with the standard cars too? It's ok if the interior is not perfectly modeled. But at least give us an interior. It's a bit annoying to adapt to two different views of driving (some with cockpit, some without).

The game is not bad, just in case if you are getting that impression. It's just that, after that many years, I expected more. I guess the development team spent most of the time perfecting the physics engine instead, which is after all the most important aspect of Gran Turismo. And GT5 is very successful in that category. Also, the game updates the game once in a while. It's possible that my concerns will be addressed in the future. The lack of new cars can also be fixed by offering downloadable car packs or something along that line.


Anyways, that's enough talking...time to play GT5 again!