Game Review: Gran Turismo 5

Game: Gran Turismo 5
Console: Sony Playstation 3
Developer: Polyphony Digital
Release Date: 24th November 2010

New games in the Gran Turismo series often fail to noticeably improve on their predecessors, having nailed the simulation handling model and provided a more than adequate selection of cars since at least GT4. While there were numerous small changes to Gran Turismo 5, they're tough to spot when first booting up the game, and make little impact on the overall gameplay. There's standard and premium cars, meaning that they've only improved a handful of cars from their previous models. Premium cars show damage far better than their standard counterparts, but it's nothing impressive for the times.

There's changeable weather on a handful of tracks, and the Top Gear test track is included though as an actual track it's fairly freeform in terms of navigation unless you're an avid fan of the show. Karts are included in the game for the first time also, along with licenses for Ferrari and Bugatti vehicles. DLC and the purchase of in game credits is perhaps the biggest change, making it now almost impossible to own all of the cars featured in the game without a tremendous dent in your bank account balance, or thousands of hours grinding credits as they've been rebalanced to favour the purchase of credits from the Playstation Store. For players still enjoying the game, there's no way to access any of the online challenges or races which featured in the game either.

Career Mode has been rearranged a little, now featuring levelling up for both the A-spec and B-spec modes, and 5 classes of racing, with 9 series per class for a total of 45 racing cups, in addition to the offline driving challenges which appear. This is significantly less than was featured in Gran Turismo 4, though the online races may well have made things more even whilst they were available. Cars bought or won in Career Mode are no longer unlocked for Arcade Mode automatically, and instead must be saved to Favourites to be accessed in that mode. This means that there's no neat way to sort and access the cars in Arcade Mode, and anyone who wants to enjoy the full range of cars available in Gran Turismo 5 (as I do) won't be able to.

The separation of A-spec and B-spec modes seems needless also; in Gran Turismo 4 players could compete in A-spec mode (where they drove the race themselves) or B-spec mode (where an AI driver drove the race, and levelled up according to experience) and a win in either mode would clear the race. In Gran Turismo 5, all races would have to be completed twice to clear Career Mode, which is not only repetitive, but the option to increase the race speed when the AI driver is racing has been taken away also, meaning longer periods of sitting and watching someone else race.

This isn't the end of the issues with the changes to B-spec mode; there are less options for giving instruction to your AI driver with just 4 commands; Increase Pace, Maintain Pace, Decrease Pace, and Overtake. I can't think of a time when you'd want to decrease the overall pace, and none of the commands seems to have much impact on the AI driver anyway, save for overtake, which he just won't do otherwise. This means that there's little to no enjoyment in B-spec mode, and you might as well just hand the controller to a friend and watch them play A-spec mode as it'd definitely be more exciting.

Graphically the game is good; there's not a huge improvement on Gran Turismo 4 on the face of things, but the premium cars look nice both inside and out, and there are lots of small improvements which aren't immediately obvious. Car sounds are generally good and add to the overall excitement of racing, and the music provided for background entertainment is enjoyable at times, though perhaps not as catchy as the tunes provided in previous instalments.

Overall the racing action in Gran Turismo 5 is as good as ever; there's more licensed series to enjoy, more cars and some new tracks, but it doesn't feel like as big of an improvement as it could have been. For those wanting something past the Career Mode endgame, there's not a lot to offer, and the track editor is particularly bare bones, with only sliders to edit your custom tracks. It's worth a play, but the microtransaction based economy will likely halt progress before all of the race series can be beaten.

Rating: 63/100
Grade: C