GT5: Sublime or Ridiculous?

Watchful 56 Comments

Installing…

It’s been over three weeks now since Gran Turismo 5 spent a seemingly never-ending 61 minutes installing its way into my life. For the last ten of those minutes it was teasing me with a remaining time of three seconds. I guess my expecations that GT5 exists in the same time continuum as the rest of us should have already been crushed by its extended development. Yet somehow all its ‘interactive teaser trailers’, GT HD Concept, GT5 Prologue and the Time Trial demo a year ago, seem to have altered my perception of the wait.

After waiting for over an hour with only a dull, inaccurate progress bar for company (really Polyphony, you couldn’t come up with a more interesting install screen?) I finally got to watch the opening movie. Then from the main menu it was straight into GT Mode for me.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to do as immediately GT wanted me to do something I couldn’t. It was urging me to set my home page colour, profile picture, etc., only setting a picture was impossible because I hadn’t taken any yet.

Profile done, I dropped into the usability disaster that is the GT Mode main screen. While I’m now used to it, it is an exceptionally poor interface. That screen and the inconsistent menus throughout the game lead me to the conclusion that that unexplained delay just days before the original release date happened because they released they’d forgotten to create any menus and had to get each member of the dev team to create one quickly. Why else would they be so consistently different?

Once I’d fought my way through the menus to the driving though I was pretty much ready to forgive GT5 all its other failings. GT has always been keenly focused on being a driving simulator and in GT5 Yamauchi-san and his team at Polyphony Digital have crafted an amazing driving experience.

For the most part it also looks as amazing as it feels to drive. However, there are elments that really let it down. I can accept the lower quality models reused from GT4 and GT PSP and look forward to the promised upgrades of some of them (Mazda Furai please Kaz, if you’re reading).

The problem I have with the graphics are the shadows and alpha processing as highlighted by Alex in his review. For such an otherwise stunning looking game it is immensely disappointing to see the flickering triangles beneath a car’s wing mirror, number plates that look like they’ve been cut with pinking shears or the car in front reduced to some parody of 8-bit rendering when it becomes surrounded by spray.

GT5 vs. Forza 3

This is of course going to contentious, but it is purely my opinion. I’ve got both games and have played all UK-released predecessors in each series apart from GT4 and the original Forza. Both GT5 and Forza 3 are great games that have each monopolised my time for weeks following their release.

They seem to me to be very different games with different focuses and each excels at hitting its target. GT5 is the best driving game on consoles. The amount of joy to be had in simply driving around the Nordschleife in the car of your choice is incredible. Solo laps of The Green Hell is not something you’ll find me doing for fun in Forza though.

In Forza I find the driving to be a fairly soulless experience. Forza is all about the racing. Obviously it is way over on the simulation side of the spectrum compared to arcade racers like the brilliant Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, but it is still a distance from GT5 in that respect. Racing is Forza’s beating heart and GT5 doesn’t come close to the feel of being part of races and championships that I get from Forza.

A favourite point of comparison between the two is how they handle crashes. There is no doubt that Forza’s damage modelling is superior to that in GT5. It clearly wasn’t a priority for PD and with the limited modelling they have included I think I’d have preferred it if they’d left it out until at least GT6 Prologue.

The damage modelling isn’t the only aspect of crashing that gets called into question though. The crash physics are also a regular part of the debate. The Forza fans will hit out at GT5 with videos like this:

Leaving the GT5 fans to counter attack with something like this:

While cars flipping like that isn’t without real-world historical precedent:

So for the sake of world peace we’ll call that a draw shall we?

GT5 needs some tuning

Here are some small changes or fixes that would improve GT5 from my perspective.

  1. Fix the Live Timing screen so all the sector times are visible.
    I’ve noticed that on some tracks, like Circuit de la Sarthe and Cape Ring, you cannot scroll across to see the sector times for the final sector.  It’s a minor annoyance, but clearly a bug and it should be fixed.  It’s one of those small things that accumulates to give GT5 an unfinished feel in some respects.
  2. Tyre Restrictions – Make it a button that links to the Tyre Shop.
    The tyre restrictions for each race that appear next to the ‘Typical Opponents’ button could easily be made a button that took you straight to the tyre department of the Tuning Shop.  The shop could even then indicate the tyres needed if you didn’t have them.  At the moment if you haven’t memorised which tyres you have for your current car you can end up going into your garage, then to your current car, then to its tuning screen.  If you don’t have the right tyres it’s then back out to GT Home, into the Tuning Shop, then the tyre department.  Then back to GT Home, back to B-Spec, and finally navigating back to the race in question.  A somewhat long-winded route.
  3. Different playlists and volume settings for A-Spec and B-Spec.
    I don’t know about you but the music I would like to listen to in the two different modes is very different.  I like a good thumping choon while driving and a more ambient soundtrack while managing (and often reading).  Similarly while driving hearing the engine is key, but while I’m sat on the pitwall I’d rather hear more of the music than the engine.
  4. Well done Mr B-Spec!
    I’d like to feel that my B-Spec drivers were more human and less of an algorithm responding to the slow down, don’t slow down, speed up and overtake inputs.  I want to be able to say something like either “well done” or “pull your finger out” in addition to the current commands and have different drivers respond differently to each.  So to get your best out of your drivers you need to understand a little more about their ‘personality’.
  5. Consistent opposition drivers.
    Like Forza 3 has its M. Rossi, who fans have grown to like and loathe in equal amounts, I’d like the members of GT5’s OpFor to be persistent characters whose driving styles you could get to know.  Perhaps C. Costa has a tendency towards caffeine-fuelled aggression on the racetrack, whereas I.Brunel will carefully engineer his overtaking opportunities?  At the moment you cannot know as they’re random temporary entities.

Congratulations you have 100 cars, here’s Horn No. 278.  278?!  FFFFFUUUUU!

The horns you acquire in GT5 were simply a curious ‘WTF?’ kind of quirky addition to the game.  That was until I got number 278.  How many of these utterly, utterly pointless horns are there in the game?  How much development effort was spent on this ludicrous endeavour?  Maybe I’m just bitter because I haven’t found the one off the General Lee yet?

TSA Community Support

Finally, I must highlight the support available for GT5 players within our forums.  Some of our community have put a serious amount of effort into gathering information useful to GT5 players.  These are just a few examples, there’s plenty more as well as help and advice available in our GT5 forum:

So that’s my experience of GT5 so far.  What are your highlights and lowlights?  What parts of GT5 do you think are in need of a tune-up?

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56 Comments

  1. I just knew that once this game released, all the hype and excitement would turn into hate (much like other games). And I was one of the hyped -.-

    One of my awful experiences was one of the above in this article. There I was, finishing installing GT 5. It had 3 seconds left (stayed like that for around 5 minutes) and it eventually completed. I went straight into arcade mode, and chose the long straight night time track and chose for it to be raining. Picked the Mini and I went for it. Straight away, I noticed the jaggy lines that stuck out horribly on the edges of my car. GT Mode was also confusing at first. Hell, still kinda is :/

    • Hate? I hope I don’t come across as having any hate for GT5. It’s a great game and a sublime driving experience.

      It’s just a shame there are so many little things that I find detract from the overall experience.

      The bottom line is though that I’d be content to drive the XJ13 around GT5’s Nordschleife all day if that was the only car and track it had. So maybe the rest shouldn’t matter, but it does.

      • You start the article with a hate slam and it’s hard to get rid of that feeling reading through. I feel sad now.

      • Okay, so maybe “hate” was the wrong word. Lets say I just said “complaining” instead of “hate”. What I mean is I always see a game get hyped up so much:
        “This is gunna be the best game ever!”

        And then the game releases. Approx 1 week later, you often see a forum somewhere saying this:
        “This game could have been better without…”

        You see, I’m not saying this article is bashing GT 5. I fully agree with the article. What I am saying is people need to stop hyping a game so much like its god (a mistake I also made) only for it to release and then have people complain about its flaws and how its not quite as good as its own hype.

        I actually used to see a lot of that in the VGchartz forums before and after game releases, lol. But even on this site where the article creators saying how badly they wanted GT 5 to just release already (even I was in the comments section begging for it to release, lol) a lot of us are disappointed that its not as perfect as we though (see article above for prime reasons). Hell I was so pumped for GT 5, but when I got it about a week ago, its not been “the game” to me that I thought it was. Basically its the hype factor we all get fooled by.

      • @deathbrin And reading

        “GT5 is the best driving game on consoles. The amount of joy to be had in simply driving around the Nordschleife in the car of your choice is incredible.”

        couldn’t dissuade you of that notion? Perhaps you didn’t read it as well as you might have?

      • Useless reply, deathbrin. No “hate slam” whatever the hell that is. Greg painted a very objective view of both titles. Shortcomings in both and major plus points too. Try to remove the blinkers to see that all points raised are fair and genuine.

        Greg/Watchful – great article. Not bothered about either title but due to the size of each respective franchise, I still enjoy reading about them. Hopefully, PD will address the concerns mentioned and win back the likes of me.

      • No, because you know what? Your “good” words have no proof at all, they’re just statements; while you take all effort to prove the “bad” ones.

  2. The main annoyance I have is B-Spec mode … I bought GT5 to race cars, not have the PS3 play itself. I would much rather have had double the amount of A-Spec events … especially now I’m at level 29 and I’ll have to grind xp for approximately 8 hours just to hit level 30. I shudder to think how long it’s gonna take to get to level 40.

  3. Great article and thanks for the plug. I have to say that I only have minor annoyances with the game but they’re all overshadowed by the fact that is at heart-pure GT.

  4. I got GT5 and NFS Hot Pursuit for my birthday 2 weeks ago. I’ve been waiting with baited breath like everyone else for GT5. But i’m so disappointed with it, mostly because of all the jagged anti-aliasing bullshit that the ps3 is well know for not being able to handle! Why can’t polyphony release a patch to sort out the jagged shadows? It just ruins it for me. Lucky I have NFS, as it’s by far one of my favourite games of the year. So much fun.

    • The trouble is the shadows are computationally intensive and the game is already struggling (and mostly failing) to reach 60FPS. That only gives it 16ms to render a frame. Some people are saying if God of War can look so good why can’t GT5. It’s simple. GoW runs at a lower resolution and at 30FPS, it’s got far more time to paint far fewer pixels.

      Kaz was asked why the shadows are so poor on Twitter and replied:

      ” There are several reasons. Camera extremely flexible, dynamic and wide-area lighting needs, it was not cost effective enough. I want to improve it.

      The cost in this context is rendering resources. So he recognises it is an area that could do with improving, but whether they can find a technical solution that does not degrade other aspects of graphical performance is another question entirely.

      • Excuse me, wasn’t GoW3 variable fps?

      • Okay, so it runs at around 30FPS and will actually average about 40FPS through some sections. The point is that Kaz was striving for a constant 60FPS whereas the GoW team weren’t. I didn’t want extra unnecessary exposition to obscure the point used as an example. Happy now?

  5. Highlight- selling the game for more than I paid for it.
    Lowlight- the emptiness the game left me after so much expectation.

  6. Excellent article. I am finding GT5 more accessible than previous games, particularly the GT mode. I found the “nurenbergring” (sorry about the spelling) quite a thrill to drive.
    I would have liked a bit more than single races and time trials in arcade mode, a few arcade events would have been nice.
    I wish that when you want to enter an event while drivng the wrong car that GT would look at your garage and say ” you have one or more vehicles suitable for this event in your garage – would you like to change to one of them now?” or if you don’t own a suitable vehicle it would give you the option to buy from a list of vehicles specificly suited to that event, instead of having to trawl through every dealer trying to find one that’s either available or affordable.

    • But it does do that? If you enter an event with the wrong car, click on the provided garage button in the pop-up and it reveals all eligible cars in your garage? Change car, exit, and you’re back at the race?

      • Lol, i guess i don’t have enough cars yet for that to work!

      • It works no matter how many cars you’ve got.

  7. I don’t see the problem with the huge crashes. Given how rarely they happen, I wouldn’t expect them to spend long working on the physics in air.

  8. The biggest problem with the game is the AI during the License Tests and Special Events. You overtake a car then the next thing your disqualified because the car you just past turned into you.

    • I agree with what (I think) Cam The Man says. The AI can bump you all over the track and this either gets ignored or YOU (the player – isn’t that what a game is about?) get disqualified. This is unpredictable; sometimes just the slightest tap (or even sometimes no tap – collision detection is obviously not 100%!) can get you thrown out, an yet sometimes a quite substantial whack is let go. Is there a quota system at work, or is it just randomness? either way it’s damn annoying (I’m on S-8 and getting bloody fed up!).

      Anyway, great article and whoever designed the bloody inconsistent and ugly menus should be shot!

      • I don’t mind the menus but I do have one little niggle.
        From the Event screen you can click on ‘Requirements’ and from their to your garage, which is good but I wish there was a link from the Event or Requirements screen to the ‘Parts Shop’. I’ve lost count of the amounts of time I’ve had to go back to the main menu, then the ‘Parts Shop’ just to get the right tyres for the race then all the way back to race.

      • Just gone back to watch the videos I didn’t have time to earlier, and found the ‘GT5 needs some tuning’ bit I missed where Greg mentions a button to link to tyre shop. Great minds think alike, well lets hope so.

  9. It’s a great driving game no doubt. I just really wish it would have been a more polished experience after such a long wait.

    Early races are still very sterile, follow my leader. Dull thudding noise and a bounce off the barrier when you crash. So many cars and so few premiums.

    The fact that Kaz is still intent to keep working on it is a good thing but I just cant help feeling it will never be finished. Even after all this time.

  10. The GT5 menus are unusable on SDTVs without the R1 for zoom feature. Not impressed.

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