Pros

• Lots to do
• Heaps of cars
• Premium models look amazing
• Online is fun
• Tracks are realistic with time of day, weather etc.
• Challenges

Cons

• Early races are too easy
• Disparity of realism between cars and tracks
• Progressive damage
• Can't do endurance events in a combination of a-spec and b-spec

Introduction

The long awaited Gran Turismo 5 is finally here. It has gone through a couple of delays but the finished product is ready and waiting for purchase. I must say that the game doesn't disappoint. It is addictive, fun and awesome but there are a few problems with it which seem easy enough to fix in updates.

Review

The game starts off with a 8GB installation which although the timer says will take 20 minutes, it will probably take about an hour to complete. You start off the game by choosing a used car under 20,000 credits and start racing. Some notable differences between GT4 and GT5 is that the a-spec and b-spec modes are separate now so you have to complete the same event in b-spec and a-spec and there are separate levels for each. A-spec is where you do the races while b-spec is when you are the "race manager" and you tell your driver how to race. One of the problems comes in the fact that unlike Gran Turismo 4 where if completing a 24 hour race, you could swap between a-spec and b-spec, in this case you cannot swap so you have to complete the event in both a-spec and b-spec. There has also been a lot of talk about the premium vs standard cars where standard cars are just upscaled from GT4 and look like crap. I found that this is not the case. The standard cars still look good but it is unfortunate that there is no cockpit views and there is a very notable difference between the premium and standard cars. The premium cars are simply amazing. The attention to detail is staggering and everything looks so perfect. The cockpit view was extremely fun to race in and it felt realistic but I couldn't get the head tracking to work so I was a bit disappointed about that.

The new leveling system is another addition which makes the game a little bit more difficult. Certain cars can only be bought at certain levels which means having the money isn't enough to buy any car you want, as well as this, certain event can only be done when you reach a certain level, kind of like the licenses in GT4. Licenses are still there in GT5 but they play a much smaller role. They are mostly there to help you improve your driving and I think it is an excellent change. Getting licenses was sometimes a pain and me being a perfectionist, I always want to get all gold. This way i can play through the game and do licences at my leisure. Another interesting inclusion is the special events where there are different challenges and where you try out different race types like NASCAR, karting and rally and I found these a lot of fun but there were too few challenges to do. They were also rewarding because you unlock things like new photo-mode locations and I found this an interesting thing to do when you get a new car. The photos come out looking realistic and with the SLR capabilities you can experiment a lot. Unfortunately, the race events were not the same. They were essentially the same as Gran Turismo 4 and because the special events made it so easy to level up, i found the beginner and amateur events way too easy and hence they were boring. Maybe some horsepower and weight restrictions would make the events a lot more fun and more of a challenge than something you do just to get the trophy and experience. I still can't believe that my Subaru Impreza WRX STI was able to enter the compact car cup. The one-make events were more interesting because they were a lot closer but overall, i think that there should be more events with more challenge.

Damage is something which has been lacking from the Gran Turismo series from the beginning but now it is here it is controversial. In theory, the progressive damage system sounded good. This is where as you level up, the damage becomes more realistic. To unlock full damage you need to make it to level 40. When I started playing the game though, I realised two things. Firstly, level 40 is incredibly hard and time consuming to get to and secondly, I found myself as i was playing to want to turn damage on so i could see the full effects of my massive crash. If only there was an option to turn the damage on and off at will, it would be a lot better. After seeing a few youtube videos though, once you do reach level 40, the damage is amazingly real and something worth waiting for.

One of the things which i was really looking forward to was the online mode but unfortunately, I was only able to play one free run game due to congestion. I think that the idea behind multiplayer is good but it could be improved on. Just today, with the 1.03 update mechanical damage options were added to online play. Right now there is no way of earning credits or experience through online play so there is no real incentive to playing online besides maybe racing with your friends.

One of the best things about the game is the constant updates. The creator, Yamauchi, has promised updates "every week, every month". This is something which is really good and adds heaps of potential to the game. After seeing games like Burnout Paradise which added quite a few new things just through updates, the potential Gran Turismo has is amazing. However, one of the big problems with the game is the disparity between cars and tracks. For example, premium and standard cars are different in their realism and also some tracks have weather and night racing while others do not. This doesn't happen in many games and I hope that over time all of the cars and tracks are brought to the same standard with similar options. One of the hardest things to believe is that the Bugatti Veyron is a standard car! Don't worry though, the premium Fiat 500 more than makes up for it.

Conclusion

Gran Turismo 5 is a really good game but there are a few disappointing aspects which hopefully will be fixed in the future. I wouldn't recommend it to people who are looking for an arcade game or something which is incredibly fast and crazy like Burnout or Need for Speed but if you are into racing sims then this is the game for you. Overall, the game is almost everything i hoped it would be and there are a few extra little touches which make the game just that little bit better.

Optus has decided to charge their customers $9.99 per month on top of their existing plans to use the iPhone's new tethering feature which allows the user to connect the iPhone to their computer and use the phone as a modem with their existing data plan.

This is quite a strange move as reportedly Vodafone users can use the tethering feature for free. It seems to me like a feature which you normally take for granted as it has been available for quite some time on other phones and now you have to pay for it.

Do you think this extra charge is within reason?

[ad#Adsense]