Whatever it is, it’s currently packaged and sat in boxes at retailers all around the world, waiting for next Wednesday to arrive. More importantly, it’s finally finished! People are even playing it! It’s no longer just vaporware!
Yep, Gran Turismo 5 is almost here. The 5 year wait threatened to reach comedy levels at numerous points in a development cycle that more people doubted the longer it went on, but with less than a week until release that will all soon be forgotten. I expect Metacritic will be littered with reviewers who will be climbing over themselves to remind us of that, before awarding the game an 8 or a 9, but I personally believe that like a fine wine, most gamers will appreciate where the time went once they’ve sampled it. With more than 1,000 cars, 65 course variations and more game modes than you can shake a gear stick at, Gran Turismo 5 should cement itself as the generations defining racing experience.
I honestly couldn’t be more excited right now. As a long term GT fan, the wait has often proved excruciating, but I fully intend on making up for last time from next week onwards. Expect a first impressions piece to follow. In the mean time, anyone interested could do worse than read amar212’s excellent and constantly updated hands on report for GT Planet. Even if just as proof that this thing actually exists.
Email the author of this post at matc@tap-repeatedly.com
I haven’t played a GT game since the original, but your enthusiasm has raised my interest in this.
Oh wait, it’s only on the Playstation. Oh well…
Flan Machismo Live?
Like Armand, I too haven’t played a GT since the original but I’m eagerly looking forward to this — it looks incredible. 1000 cars… by crikey.
If I was to really convey my excitement about GT5 on a Tap post, it would sound like the ramblings of a fanboy lunatic strapped to a chair making car noises while having flash backs of racing around Suzuka in a Dodge Viper (or a Mini Cooper). Nobody wants to read that.. or do they?
To quote another famous racing game Mat: “Go for broke!!”
I want at least one jibbering paragraph in your first impressions.
For about a year now, I’ve been thinking of picking up a PS3 just for this game. But what I’d really like to know is, how does it ACTUALLY look? What I mean is, FM2 on Xbox360, for example, looked absolutely incredible in screenshots, but in-game, especially if you’re trying to play on a racing setup through your computer screen (i.e. where you’re just a few feet from the screen) it looks AWFUL — very low-res, horrible jaggies, no anisotropic filtering … I mean orders of magnitude rougher than even fairly old PC gaming games like GTR2 and rFactor. And so, again with GT5 we’re seeing nothing but gorgeous screenshots and then skaky-cam footage or gameplay, making the actual graphical detail and sharpness level really hard to judge.
Anybody have any firsthand experience? Graphically, how does it compare to FM2, for example? And do you need to sit 8 feet away from your screen for it to look good?
Personally, I think the game looks great, but it’s a little inconsistent. From some angles it looks stunning and some screenshots that have posted from the community (from in game footage) are genuinely difficult to detect from reality. From others? It’s not faultless. Jagged shadows under cars spoil the illusion a little and there are occasional moments of both slow down and screen tearing, although in my personal experience both have been minimal and grossly blown out of proportion by the games critics in the last few days.
In motion, the game looks great. Play around with a still camera angle enough in the replay modes and you will find inconsistencies, but to sit and watch it GT5 generally looks the business.
What it might not do is blow you away. GT5 looks good but it has a sort of subtle beauty to it. Because of the emphasis on realistic visuals there’s no real emphasis on a particular art style. Some would say “bland” I suppose but that doesn’t quite sound right..
Ugh, not only did my attempt at correcting typos cause a double post, but I wrote ‘FM2’ when I meant ‘FM3’.
I have been “hearing” rumors on the internet of Gran Turismo 5 bricking PS3’s during the install process. I have heard reports that folks at Sony support had been “flooded” by calls on this issue.
Madness.