GT5 First Impressions

  • Thread starter Danisfast
  • 472 comments
  • 65,451 views
i've been playing since yesterday and this is by far the worest gran turismo game ever.

The graphics are not even close to what they showed in video's and previews.
as said before in this topic the shadows are horrible, and worse than GT5P.

the standard cars are butt ugly, their just imports from GT4, nothing more nothing less (o wait, in GT4 we could atleast change the rimms, even that's not possible anymore)

The menu is a mess, it took me ages to find out where i had to go to play online.
When i eventually found out that the lounge joining option is on a completely different location than the lounge creating option i finally got a list of lounges.

Any lounge i clicked had a network inconpetabillity issue, when i finally was able to join a lounge, i couldn't play, none of the buttons responded, not even the exit buton, so i had to restart the bloddy game.

The AI is a joke, if i drive the same car as the AI, he's faster on the straights (?????) but when we get to a corner i'm more than twice as fast.
So i lose on a track with long straights like Madrit, but i win by 20 seconds on a track like deep forest from the same cars.

Damage? what damage?

I don't see why it took 6 years to import 800 cars from GT4, (nothing has been done to these models from the looks of it.) create 200 new ones and create a few tracks.

this game is far from finished, and not even close to what we expected to get after 6 years of waiting and a dozen delays.

the game is a bloody joke, i've never played forza 3, but maybe now is a good time to start for me....
 
I'm enjoying it, but it's not without it's faults. My Positives and Negatives:

Negatives:

AI is still ropey.

Lack of a PI system hurts it - upgrade till you are faster. And really, in this day and age, why can't the game just auto upgrade a bunch of cars to a similar spec and performance level to your own and fill the field with those. Bit of competition.

Trackside scenery is a bit spartan, flat, low detailed.

Online isn't a patch on F3 - no matter what you think of it's crap hopper system, it's at least stable, and the community features - paints, tunes, etc are light years ahead. My experience of GT online so far has been lag, ignorant dirty racers, and the game crashing at the lobby list.

Engine notes cover a broad spectrum - from broken tumble dryer, to lawn mower, with a sprinkling of hair dryer and vacuum cleaner thrown in for good measure. It's like being cast back to the 90s.

Positives:

Handling is superb - most of the time.
The DFGT feels better (if notchier) than my MS Wireless Wheel
The cars are mostly fine, and I've not really been horrified by the Standards
Some of the tracks are superb.
I love the Special Event thing - no upgrade to win there - wish that was fleshed out to be the main part of the game.
The Exteriors and Interiors of some of the Premiums are Outstanding.
Lighting is great, and I really don't care what the shadows look like.
Road noise is impressive.
Whilst the exterior camera feels stiff (I like bumper cam usually) the cockpit cam has some nice movement in it.

Summary:

One review I read (think it was IGN) suggested it was a 10/10 sim stuck inside a 5/10 game. That might have been a tiny bit harsh, but really, that's what lets it down a bit - it really needs to enforce much tighter limits what's permitted to race in an event - as F tried to do with it's flawed PI system. Bump up the AI, and have them and you face penalties for dirty racing - nothing worse than having an AI car spin you out on the last corner of a tough Special Event. I guess coming from Forza I can see the things it does better and am disappointed by the things it does worse.

Admittedly, I've not done a whole lot - but kids and wife permitting I'll be putting a lot more time into it. So far I've silvered the B class licenses, completed the Beginner and Intermediate Kart Events, Beginner Nascar, Beginner Top Gear, and a few of the Merc Special Events on the Ring. I've done a few Beginner Class A Spec events, a few Amateur A Spec events, and been abused by filthy, laggy French racers online. I've enjoyed almost all of it, though the A Spec Races offered no challenge for my Evo 9 first car (excluding the Kart).

I'm not as warm and glowy with it as I was with F3 when it first came out - that's partly because the online is iffy and partly because this can be a tad more hard core at times.

Case in point - Special Event Top Gear - Intermediate - Elise 111s - whomever thought setting up the Elise with Hard Comfort Tyres was a good idea was wrong: it might work out OK with a pad, but with a wheel, with the assists off, it's like skating on ice. I consider myself a bit of a hardcore sim head, but I spent about 2 hours trying to get that Elise around the TG track in a top 5 spot and failed. Often at the first corner. Even putting all the assists on, and I still haven't done it - I can keep it together but can't quite get the top 5 spot. Revisiting the track with a set of soft sports tyres, more like you'd expect the car to come with as standard, and it's a much easier drive. So that's been my afternoons frustration until I picked my kid up from school.

One final disappointment - I hoped my MK5 Golf R32 would have been in the roster, but sadly it's only got the MK4.

Is it worth buying? Absolutely. If you're a multiplatform gamer then you will find GT5 coming off second best to F3 in some areas and bettering it in others, and that may irk a bit as the expectation was that a year after F3, this would eclipse it in every way, but sadly it's got one foot in the naughties and the other in the nineties.
 
Goes
played about 12ish hours so far and the only thing that really gets me down is the maintenance cost for cars in this game.

If you slightly dent your car it easily costs you 30k for a car worth about the same ( alfa 147 gta).

So in order to turn a profit you have to win about 4 or so races and not crash once or get bumped by ai braking for no apparent reason in front of you.

Gues i'll have to get some overpowered car put on all driving aids (when I play with the ps3 controller ) and redo the "best money / minute race" over and over again.. damn grind. Or just train up a b-spec driver and hope he stops trashing my cars as well after a while...

In short I cant wait to get (and I hope there are ) parts of the game where you can actually make some money and don't have to worry about everything being insanely overpriced.
Click to expand...

IS THAT TRUE?

YOU PAY to fix the car damage? Thats amazing!
 
@MrSkyline

Unfortunately, you're right. To be honest, I too, looking at the game, don't know what they were doing all these years. But... I'm going back to my PS3 to play the game.
 
ToreDL87
Well my first impressions after 24 hrs is I cant find the ae86 anywhere in the friggin game
Click to expand...

It's in the used car lot, I've got one sitting in my garage right now. As a rule of thumb with GT, ALWAYS check the used car lot as soon as you load up the game before you do anything else, because there is ALWAYS an ae86 there, ready to buy. 👍
 
Played the game for about 30-40 minutes...I didn't install it at that point and the UI was unbelievably slow.

I took out a LP560 on SSR in wet/night with all aids off and the car felt unbelievably realistic. Standard cars are a joke though. I would've rather that they just give us premium only cars in the game, even if there's only 200 of them.
 
First impression is that the collector's edition goodies are really cool, but I'd like to actually play the game instead of waiting an hour for the install.
 
I've put about ~2.5 hours into it (not including the 40 min. install,) and while there are certainly parts of the game that are great, you've got to think the overriding opinion of this game is going to be "6 years for this?" And that is NOT to say that it's a bad game, because it's not. But when you keep your audience waiting 6 years, you've got to knock it out of the park. Period.

Pros:

- The Premium cars are visually stunning
- I love the track selection
- Karts are fun
- Museum appears to be a cool touch, albeit something most people will probably never look at
- Night/weather racing is insane, in a good way

Cons:

- The Standard cars are a total embarrassment. When I bought my first car, I was shocked. They barely look suitable for a PS3 game. And we all know about the whole no rim changing thing by now.
- The AI (so far at least, I'll give it time) is its usual Gran Turismo self. You're never racing against the other cars. If you can handle the track, you'll win the race.
- Some of the load times are strangely long. Why does it sometimes take longer for my home screen to load than it does a race? (And yes, I did the install.)
- Why does the leveling system even exist? It's not even mentioned in the instruction manual. At all. I of course assume it's in the manual within the game, but seriously. It's a totally new "feature." Mention it. Different cars have different levels you need to be at to buy, but wasn't this covered in the past by license tests and you know, the fact that better cars cost a lot more? It just seems to serve little, if any purpose at all.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put Nascar as a "con" since I'm not sure it's appropriate to label a new added feature as a con, so I'll just say that it feels insanely unnecessary and tacked on. I don't know how much development time went into getting Nascar into this game, but I sure would have preferred it to either go into making standards look better, and/or more premiums.

And yet overall, it's still a good game. If you've liked Gran Turismo in the past, I can't imagine how you won't like this. Unless of course the long wait had your expectations so far through the roof that you were expecting something revolutionary, and then yes I guess in that instance, you'll be let down. It's better than Forza 3......I guess. But I'll say that the problem this game has in comparison to Forza is that Forza makes the player feel like they have much more control over the game they're playing. The insane amount of customization options in Forza make people feel like it's "their" game and unique to them. Where as Gran Turismo feels a little bit more like "Here it is, take it or leave it." Yes, GT has customization options. But I can certainly understand people who like the other game for what it offers.

But I think the bottom line is that if you only had a 360, you should be content w/ Forza. If you only have a PS3, you should be content with Gran Turismo. If you have both? Buy them both. Because they both offer a feature here and there that the other doesn't which are important. But all the fanboy crap is completely unnecessary. They both have strengths, they both have flaws. Deal with it.
 
Played for 5-6 hours today. Reasonably happy. Yes there are jagged shodows before a race, I noticed its not as pronounced when the cars are moving though. Picture mode is Insane, I swear I could see the treads on the nut bolts on the wheel of my sti! Exporting to xmb couldnt be easier and I expect replays to be similar. If you love gt this game is simply More of what you love. I feel like im playing gt4 v.2.0, At times its exactly the same, and then out of nowhere it shows you its next-gen colours.
My one gripe so far is there is no invite friends button while in a lobby, you gotta send them a msg over psn to let them know if you want to race or something.
The community tool I think are going to be great once people start using them, I had great fun following peoples progress inbetween license sessions or races.
 
I'm continued to be shocked by the flaws. The game freezes in the menus for a minute or two for no reason. Shadows, as said before, are terrible.

In the race, the same car driven by AI is always faster on the straights, and terribly slow in corners.

But - night racing is just beautiful. I felt like it was real.

So, the game is great, but for me it's not a finished product!
 
So... does anyone actually like the game?

It seems more of the same - all I hear is good news, love the replays, dig the car list, track list, etc, and all I hear is people saying how the replays suck, the car list sucks, the track list sucks...

Guess I'll have to play it tonight and find out, hope everyone here is wrong. Or just really, really, really picky.
 
No, they are not picky unfortunately. The game is great in some areas but these little quirks, graphical issues, missing features etc. really add to the overall dissapointment.

I guess everyone had their expectations coming from 5 years of waiting which is not to blame, the game just doesn't live up to them. Yeah it's still GT with better physics but you gotta feel bad that it could be better than this, it's a shame really.
 
diegorborges
IS THAT TRUE?

YOU PAY to fix the car damage? Thats amazing!
Click to expand...

Well off-course, I didn't expect it to be free.
I'm just saying the prices they charge for repairs and after market parts are a bit steep..
That is if you compare in game car prices to real life car prices , and then the repair bill compared to real life spare parts (or aftermarket parts for the tuning part).

Its still a massively enjoyable game for me. It's enough sim to keep it interesting, yet enough arcade to make it enjoyable with some friends split screen and just the ps3 controllers.

Not to mention if the bank transfer clears i'll get my wheelstand and I wont feel bad about losing the race cause the ironing board kept bouncing around :P
 
The economy of the game is crazy, I don't want to get the damage fixed at the most expensive garage in the world.

And I wish the other cars would be a bit more similar to my car in races in A-spec. It's almost hard to find a fair race, either may car is under- or over powered.
 
Anyone else getting problems with the game at the moment?

Mine is saying that a connection cannot be made when I load the game plus the pointer in the Main Menu has disappeared and takes forever to show and to load anything!

Rebooted the game SEVEN times and it's still doing it...

It say's... A connection to the server could not be established.

My internet is fine and I was playing it earlier, this game is winding me up the more I play it.
 
Just got it.

I've played for a total of 5 minutes.


LITERALLY the worst GT ever made.



I would've played it for 10 but I couldnt even stomach it.



Calling Amazon for a refund as I type.
 
This is supposed to be First Impressions. I have had no problems what so ever. First thing I did was download all my cars, Collector's Edition and Gamestops. Second I did the 133mb install, which took all of about 2-3 min. Third I did the full install of the game, it did take close to an hour. It was well worth it as well, as my load times are minimal. I did everything it asked me too do, set-up wise, I then went to configure my audio which it already detected my 7.1 pcm 48k set up. It says you can jump right in and race or start taking the liscensing test. Which is where I'm at now. It's fun with the DFGT. The graphics are pretty good so far. You do see a little glitches, but it's better then not having a Gran Turismo 5. one thing you can benifit from is taking all the Liscense test to build up your level. Which will entitle you to better cars. So far i'm very happy with it. I give it a 8.9. Also the cars have their own sound, some people have complained about this. I have not heard this to be yet, enjoy everybody.
 
ll Deano ll
Anyone else getting problems with the game at the moment?

Mine is saying that a connection cannot be made when I load the game plus the pointer in the Main Menu has disappeared and takes forever to show and to load anything!

Rebooted the game SEVEN times and it's still doing it...

It say's... A connection to the server could not be established.

My internet is fine and I was playing it earlier, this game is winding me up the more I play it.
Click to expand...

Yep. It's doing the same as it was yesterday morning when I got the game - I couldn't get past the movie sequence when the driver walks out to meet the team. This was before the online servers were running so I disabled my PS3 internet connection. I enabled it late afternoon and all was ok. The servers were up and running.

I've been unable to go online this evening and am again having problems with waiting times.

So, basically, it's the game trying to connect to the servers.
 
thechosenwonton
So... does anyone actually like the game?

.
Click to expand...

I think you will find many varying opinions.

To summarize I would say the game is pretty decent but the main point I would make is that the game has not met the majority of people's expectations, and if any hardcore GT Fans read this, deep down they will agree with me.

Ive only played for 1 hour so Im not even going to give an opinion yet.
 
I had to sign up to say I'm loving it so far, it appears so very deep and every car enthusiasts wet dream.

What do I like most, the handling. I'm slightly disappointed with the standard cars and some of the engine sounds, (I know what could have been, as I do engine sounds for games as my job) but none of that really matters to me as it feels so good to drive.

Looking a few posts up, Sorm Chamber, I find your post rather odd. How can you have had any experience at all in 5 mins?

Back to GT....
 
Played for 5 hours tonight and I am extremely impressed. I've owned every GT game since GT1 (excluding GT Prologue 4) and this is, overall the best IMO.

Stand outs:

Intro - just amazing - who said this was a let down? Crazy.
Driving Model - perfect. Rivals rFactor etc.
Premium Cars - detail is amazing.
Karting - fantastic fun, much, much better than I was expecting. Even my wife thought it was fun, and she hates racing sims.
AI - Not a massive step up, but a solid improvement. Collisions between cars now promote close racing and are much less 'bouncy' like GT games in the past.
New tracks - Top Gear track is great, Chamonix tracks are awesome. Even the track generator is better than some whinges were stating.
Interior camera angles on premiums - again, the detail is amazing.

Let downs:

Standard cars - yes they aren't pretty, but I'm just avoiding driving them.
Main GT World seems to take for ever to load - hope they optimise this in future.
Loading times.
Still no option to turn the brake/gear indicator off!! Doh!
No LAN or multi-screen options.
Yes, the shadows have an ugly amount of aliasing, but it doesn't bother me outside replays.
Can't get the online public lobby to display anything yet - maybe just me.

Overall, the main thing that makes me happy, and I'm pleasantly surprised by, is the driving model - it's hard to describe, but it feels more 'organic' and less sluggish than previous versions. The braking model is very good too - aligned with the collision detection between other cars, 60fps, it now reminds me of Sega Ferrari 355 - this game got the brakes and the collisions just right (perhaps a little on the 'cartoony' side). Promotes closing racing and makes things more enjoyable. There were signs they were on the right lines with the GT5 online time trial test they did last year, and I'm glad they went down this route.

Ignore the complainers and buy it!
 
bodger
Let downs:

Main GT World seems to take for ever to load - hope they optimise this in future.

Can't get the online public lobby to display anything yet - maybe just me.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned above, these issues are related. I was online yesterday and this morning with no problems. This evening I've not been able to get into the Open Lobby (just tried and PS3 has crashed!!) and navigation between screens can take ages!

So, you'll be able to remove this from your let down list soon.
 
Last night the wait was over for me , thanks to my retailer who let me get it a day earlier before the release. Though after all the wait and almost 6 years in the making , i am disappointed by GT5. There i said it. One would say , it's not right to judge it just by playing it for about 5-6 hours , but even that period of time shows you enough to see the bad/faulty/linear AI , visual glitches , way too long loading times thus the sluggish progressing , awful multiplayer and no leaderboard? Really? (this can be patched though) And etc. Not even mentioning the things about the standard cars which everyone already knew even before the release.
I am not gonna duck for cover because of what i said here. Just my thoughts. It's still fun and there's still a lot to do in the game but it's not what i and many more expected.
 
Well, the graphics are a letdown for me. I think PD definately overreached with their features, they went beyond what the PS3 can handle. If you have to make the shadows that ugly to ensure a smooth frame rate, there is something wrong. And what's the point in having insanely detailed premium models if they are ruined by blocky blobls of ugly shadow over them? They should have kept GT5P graphics, and just updated the driving physics, imo.

Driving physics seem awesome though.
 
I hate when people exaggerate things. The standard cars look better than most of all the other cars for any racing game for the PS3.(besides prologue)
 

Latest Posts

Back