{"id":964,"date":"2016-02-02T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T16:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/?p=964"},"modified":"2016-02-02T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T16:46:09","slug":"review-gran-turismo-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/2016\/02\/review-gran-turismo-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Gran Turismo 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s Note: I originally started this draft about a year after Gran Turismo 5 came out.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of it still applies; some of the gripes were corrected in Gran Turismo’s most excellent next release, Gran Turismo 6.)<\/em><\/p>\n

What can I <\/em>say about Gran Turismo 5, a game that was in development for five years; a game that charged $39.99 for its demo<\/em> download three<\/strong> years ago<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n

\"GT5Is it cool?\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it’s cool.\u00c2\u00a0 But then again, I grew up playing Gran Turismo — I probably racked up 100’s and 100’s of hours on Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo II alone (Gran Turismo III and IV, I never played much, and I regret that — III was apparently one of the best games ever released on the PS2<\/a> during the 2000’s).\u00c2\u00a0 GT5 could be nothing more than a port of Gran Turismo IV for the PS3, and I’d still love it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m probably not the best person to judge whether or not GT5 is cool.<\/p>\n

Does it look good?\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, it looks great.<\/p>\n

Does it have lots of badass cars?\u00c2\u00a0 Check.<\/p>\n

By this point, with all the hype that’s been built-up about this game over the years; all the stories of just how maniacal the creator, Kazunori Yamauchi<\/a>, was in making sure that GT5 was going to absolutely perfect; all the stories of how imaging each car for GT5 was taking 10 times as long as it took to image a car for GT4 (which itself took 10 times as long to image for as it did GT2)…<\/p>\n

With all this hype, how could GT5 possibly make anyone happy?<\/p>\n

The Bad<\/h3>\n

The loading times are horrendous<\/em>. (Try about a minute of waiting, every time you start a race.)<\/p>\n

The selection of cars is limited, and the “full resolution” cars, new for GT5, is maybe 10-15% of the total cars.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest are all ports of the GT4 cars, and the much poorer graphic quality of the cars can show.<\/p>\n

The Good<\/h3>\n

All right, but it’s not all bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the graphics look amazing on the PS3.\u00c2\u00a0 And finally, finally, FINALLY, there’s a multiplayer network option!<\/p>\n

Yes, the dreams you had when you were younger of playing Gran Turismo verses races from all around the world is true, and it’s great.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but you can play with your close friends and family on the Playstation Network, and can gift cars to them (great for giving your fiends a leg-up when they first start playing).<\/p>\n

Final Word<\/h3>\n

Is it worth it?<\/p>\n

If you want to play Gran Turismo on the PS3, it’s the only way to do it (unless you’re going to pop in an old copy of Gran Turismo 1 from the PS days).<\/p>\n

Was it worth the wait, though?<\/p>\n

No — no game should take five years<\/em> to come out, past the point of the first demo.\u00c2\u00a0 No game should ever <\/em>charge for a demo (and nearly a full price charge, too).<\/p>\n

Ugh.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s Note: I originally started this draft about a year after Gran Turismo 5 came out.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of it still applies; some of the gripes were corrected in Gran Turismo’s most excellent next release, Gran Turismo 6.) What can I say about Gran Turismo 5, a game that was in development for five years; a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,9,14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive","category-gaming","category-reviews","category-science-and-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZUZG-fy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2075,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.threshold-zero.com\/cblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}