Eurogamer Expo 2010: GT5 – Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
Now this is a statement that I still find shocking – and chances are many of you will too: Gran Turismo 5 actually exists, is playable and is on course to actually be out on it’s release date in November 2010! I know – you still probably won’t believe me until you actually have a copy in your sweaty palms.
As we all know, GT5 has been in development pretty much as long as the PS3 has been around – and is a series that is well-known for realism, a varied range of tracks and looking jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Well, the good news is that GT5 appears to be on the money for the first two of these hallmarks.
As a game that’s been hotly anticipated and has threatened to be released no less than eleventy-thousand times over the past 5 years, it’s only right that the game made it to Eurogamer Expo – and I was lucky enough to have a tinker around under the bonnet, kick the tyres and engage in a range of other questionable automotive metaphors as I gave the game a spin round the block.
The cars handle pretty much as I would expect them to, and found myself watching the world go sideways as I rather over-estimated my driving abilities as I gave a Lamborghini Murcielago the beans as I went round a corner – in real life, these cars have a penchant for wanting to kill you, and they’re no different in GT5. For the uninitiated, the learning curve is likely to somewhat on the steep side, but it’s worth persevering and availing yourself of the usual bevy of driver aids to help you muddle through.
As far as tracks are concerned in the demo that I played there were a number of courses to try out – a good mix of street racing, circuit racing and even one of the rally modes that will be available in the final game. There wasn’t much in the way of environmental effects for the majority of the courses – indeed, it almost seemed persistently sunny in the world of GT5 – but the rally stage did feature some transitioning from day to night which looked quite impressive.
So that leaves me with the task of contemplating whether or not I was agog at how the game looked. We’ve all heard the usual clap-trap about polygon counts being the appropriate yardstick by which games such as GT5 flounce their graphical might. Well, that’s all well and good – but I must admit I was quite underwhelmed. Now dear fanboys, please take a moment to read what I have to say before launching into a diatriabe about how I’m an Xbot and therefore my opinion on such matters is irrelevant.
This game has been a long time in development – and Polyphony and Sony have not exactly been shy at coming forth with expositions regarding GT5’s graphical superiority. The sad fact is that GT5 just doesn’t cash the visual cheques that the jibbering mouth of the PR blitz surrounding the game has been writing.
There’s odd shadowing artefacts, there’s a lot of jaggies, some textures at sub-par resolution and even some pop-up. Now I’m not denying that it looks good – it certainly holds it’s own against the current crop of racers and is pushing a shedload of polygons at 60 fps – but it doesn’t look perfect and nor is it a quantum leap from the graphical fidelity of GT5: Prologue. Frankly, it should be. In addition to the odd graphical glitch, GT5 simply looks sterile in comparison to games such as Forza 3, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
I’m willing to give GT5 the benefit of the doubt — the demo shown off at Eurogamer may have been based on pre-release code [Editor's note: it's the same code seen at E3] – but the game is so close to release that these graphical glitches should have been sorted out long ago. Whilst the inclusion of myriad game types and modes is doubtlessly going to give rise to a long-lived and highly enjoyable racing experience, one does wonder whether Polyphony should have spent a tad longer getting the basics completely bang on before getting carried away with themselves.
That being said, the controls were sharp and responsive and the cars all felt like they had a satisfying weight to them. But, the driving game bar has been raised considerably since GT4, and whether GT5 will provide what today’s gamers expect from a racing title is still far from certain.
Regardless, as I’m a bit of a racing nut, I’ll still be picking up GT5 on launch day. GT5 looks it’s going to be a great racing game – but whether it’s the perfect, definitive racer that we’ve all been promised for the past 5 years is another matter entirely.
yeah i've been meaning to get one for ages, now that GT is so close. . . But so far away, i must go seek one out. Does that g27 have a more prominent rumble feature? )
GT, I'm ready 
