Gran Turismo 5

Racing fans, rejoice. Your new love is here. WoW for racing fans in both its depth and its presentation, there's no reason why anyone who loves cars, games, or both should miss GT5.

The level of care taken by the people at Polyphony Digital shines in every aspect of this title, and this makes for a racing game that truly has no parallel. Gran Turismo 5 is a massive love letter to those that love cars. This is their dream videogame.

There are simply features and options that Gran Turismo offers that no other racing game does.

Gran Turismo 5 is an enormous achievement; the product of an unrivaled passion that shows itself in every mode of play.

Gran Turismo 5 sets the bar high for the genre overall, and with its detailed approach to core mechanics and commitment to creating the best simulation in video games, it's easy to see why Gran Turismo is the gold standard in the automotive genre. Though some missteps were made with some of the modes, the game is a tight package that begs not only to be played, but obsessed over.

Quotation forthcoming.

Despite some flaws we would like to see fixed, Gran Turismo 5 offers simulation and many hours of entertainment. Anyone who has enjoyed the series should buy the game; it is not only the number one driving game, but also more complete than previous entries. A machine ready to race.

Gran Turismo 5 is an extremely realistic racing game that has a lot of options. Polyphony Digital made us wait a very long time, but it was definitely worth it!

In conclusion, Gran Turismo 5 is a very engaging game that will leave craving for more.

Uncompromising in design and steeped in car loving snobbery, GT5 is a petrol head's dream. For gamers it's good, for car enthusiasts it's quite brilliant.

GT5 is pretty much exactly what everybody expected it to be. Overhyped maybe because of the unprecedented delay in its release, but spot on with its goals.

As a pure driving game with neat car collecting and modifying elements, it's simply amazing and the level of passion for the subject on display makes calling it "cold" or "sterile" almost laughable- Forza Motorport 3 is much drier and far less human.

You're doing yourself a disservice if you have unachievable expectations for GT5. However, if you take certain oversights into consideration when you first boot up the game, you'll probably be more than pleased. GT5 is not perfect, but it gets fairly close.

In terms of the tech under GT5's hood, the only fault is the occasional spat of screen tearing. It's not ideal, but everything else looks and sounds so beautiful that it's easily forgivable. Think of it as a beauty mark on an otherwise flawless face.

If there's a lesson to be learned from Gran Turismo 5 (the game itself, not its epic journey to stores), it's not about braking zones, exhaust manifolds, and curve apexes -- it's about patience. Because Gran Turismo 5 contains a seemingly unending supply of driving experience to enjoy, if you just allow yourself the time to discover it.

An unusually complex driving game that demands real dedication and only fully reveals its true power once you've put the mileage in. [Jan 2011, p.108]

The list of faults we've found during our time with GT5 is surprisingly long. And yet, we just keep playing it, and playing it. For all its foibles the profoundly realistic handling keeps drawing us back. The desire to tune up competitive cars from old pusbuckets keeps us fiddling with air filters and extractors. We'll criticise the final product, but that doesn't stop us drooling over the supersexeriffic premium car models, lavished with the kind a detail that we just did not anticipate seeing this generation. [February 2011 p72]

Racing is great yet you find yourselves driving and just enjoying the view. Cars are great and driving them exciting. GT5 goes out with full tank with all its parts polished. [Issue#199]

There's little to take away from the fact that GT5 is a full, accomplished and insanely deep racing sim of the highest calibre. [Issue#104, p.104]

GT5 may have taken a lifetime to release, but it delivers on its promise of being 'the real driving simulator'.

Though GT 5 screws up a lot of the details, the overall experience remains one of the best in gaming, and Polyphony proves once more that when it comes to realistic racing, it's on a whole different plane than the competition.

It's a matter of focus, as the most important aspects of the game are absolutely incredible, even as many areas fail to meet expectations. The range of driving experiences it presents you with is enormous and the depth backing it up will make you fall in love with cars you've never even heard of before.

Gran Turismo 5 operates under an identical premise; the core experience provides a racing simulation of unmatched fidelity, one where every thread unravels in dozens of different directions and grants its own unique sense of satisfaction.

Gran Turismo 5 is a solid title and a rare certificate of quality in the automobile world.

For those who have been playing GT games since the PS1, Gran Turismo 5 will make them shed tears of joy. It may even make them feel like marrying the Blu-Ray disk. The incredible amount of content packed in is certainly what makes this title a must-see and not because it revolutionizes the genre.

After a slow start in GT5, it's apparent that Polyphony has created an amazing racing experience. The feel of driving in the game is excellent and the cars look fantastic. The game is filled with more content than ever, with gokart and nascar races keeping you on your toes when you don't want to play the great normal races. While it's not flawless, Ployphony might have created the greatest racing-simulator of all time with Gran Turismo 5.

While GT5 could have done with more time, incredibly, to iron out a few of the kinks, there's so much quality on the track and so much to do off it that you'll easily forgive its shortcomings and revel in its successes -- of which there are many.

With this fifth full installment in the series, Gran Turismo manages to hold onto its legacy of genre dominating driving sims, but only just. If and when Gran Turismo 6 arrives on the PS3, Polyphony Digital might have to look at bringing more innovation to the series if it wants to pull as far ahead of the chasing pack as it once was.

Light meets shadow, but the good points outweigh the flaws by far. It's not the ultimate real driving simulator it claims to be, but it's probably the best racing game out on the market.

There's no denying that GT5 is absolutely incredible, but due to its immense size and complexity, not all its facets are of the same standard, and as a result it's brilliant, but imperfect. For the most part it delivers a 5-star experience. But I do feel compelled to ding it half a star, simply because of the parts of the game that don't. That makes me feel horribly nitpicky and churlish, because despite my criticism I know I love GT5, and I'll be playing it for months, and maybe even years.

Is it still awesome? Is it still the best racing sim ever? Absolutely and absolutely. For many that ends the conversation. But taking a step back and just looking at it as a game, I have to say that in many ways it falls short.

It's an off-kilter vision of the future, a cumbersome game with odd priorities, certainly. But it's equally a game that heads off in unexpected and exciting directions, makes a few notable improvements, and overflows with love – for cars, for games technology and for its own mad pursuit.

If you like racing games you must own this. Yes, there are things that can be improved like the online mode or strange stuff like the decision to use 800 car models of lower quality, but this GT5 is just pure love for motor racing.

We've all been waiting what seems like forever for Gran Turismo 5, and now that it's here, I don't expect perfection, but tangible evidence that it was worth the wait. It is. I wasn't blown away by every aspect of the game, but overall it's easy to see the sheer amount of effort and craftsmanship that went into the game. This is a racing experience that racing fans should not miss.

When looking at this game, you have to look at the game itself, and leave the hype behind. When you do that, you find a great sim-racing game, with an amazing amount of single player goodness and a real learning experience that most of us will never experience in real life.

Gran Turismo 5 is a love letter to racing fanatics, but also the perfect entry point for more casual players. It plays like a dream, and as long as you can forgive the occasional hiccup here and there, you'll find yourself completely enthralled.

Gran Turismo 5 is marked by many highs and lows in every aspect of the game. It looks like Polyphony (what a joke) needed a bit more time to polish everything and put more attention to the online part. But still, the game is so much fun and retain the core gameplay of the series, with an excellent made single player and the smell of the race passion in every bit of the code.

Gran Turismo 5 is, at the same time, a great game and an incredible disappointment. Many simulation fans will get all they are looking for, yet it's simply unacceptable that after 5 chapters we don't get to see a decent collision system, essential to reproduce what happens on a real track. Add to this the 800 standard cars, way below the rest of the graphics, a disappointing online, and what you get is a paradox. If you loved the series, you'll surely have fun with it. If you're looking for the next step in driving simulation, keep waiting.

Polyphony Digital delivers one hell of a game with Gran Turismo 5. It contains lots of cars and tracks and new features like the special section are great. The gameplay however didn't change, so that means you have to race all the well known cups and championships. Still a great game, but it's a shame the AI is way too bad for a PlayStation 3 game.

GT 5 is definitely the best Driving Simulator on PS3. But because of some technical issues and an unclear structure, it does not set new standards.

I never thought I'd see the day I gave a Gran Turismo game less than a 9. And then GT PSP happened. The disappointment continues, but it's abated by what I can only hope are continued, frequent updates.

When it makes contact, GT5 absolutely hits it out of the park so we hope lesser elements like online integration can be improved before Polyphony's opus strikes out. [Issue#200, p.85]

Gran Turismo 5 mostly delivers on its promise of an all-encompassing, incredibly accurate and challenging racing simulator, and is by all means a treat for car fans and racing game fans alike.

A lot of beautiful cars and tracks were made for Gran Turismo 5. The driving physics are really good but somehow Gran Turismo 5 could not stand up to its previous hype in general. Some recycled tracks and the environments are not looking good. Weather effects and the changes of daytime are looking awesome but they are only available on some tracks.

A 10/10 simulator wrapped up in a 5/10 game – it's driving is as exhilarating as anything that's gone before, and its slavish obsession with the minutiae of many of its cars ensure it's an encyclopaedia of automotive delights. Its brilliance on the track, however is matched by its sloppiness off of it, and there's a lack of polish that would at one time have seemed sacrilegious to the series.

During my first trials, I was shocked: how could it be that GT 5 is suffering from tearing and lags, after five years of development? A few days ago, I was admiring Yamauchi, but now I just feel sorry for him. Over the full-hd-graphics and the photorealistic car models, he lost his sense of the other parts that matter. A good damage model belongs to a racing simulation, just as a cockpit-view for all (!) cars. What remains are the best controls and the most beautiful cars in the whole genre. Anyway, Gran Turismo 5 is the best racing simulation on PS3.

With all this hype, generated as a result of the repeated brilliance demonstrated by the developers themselves in the first place, we were expecting something... more. A lot of its flaws are, at the end of the day, skin deep - and they won't stop people from enjoying the rich experience that the Gran Turismo mode represents.

Motor junkies and passionate car collectors will find in Gran Turismo 5 a great add-on to its game compilation. Pure driving gamers may be overwhelmed by its numbers but not exactly pleasantly surprised with the lack of life in its gameplay modes and its disappointing opponent AI.

Make no mistake about it: GT5 is the best Gran Turismo game ever made - but sooo much of it is enhanced, but reconstituted, content from previous games. [Feb 2010, p.82]

I, like many gamers had high expectations for Gran Turismo 5 but it seems that these have not been meet, mainly by a need to get the game on the shelves in time for the busy Christmas period and whilst GT5 does still provide an excellent driving experience with probably some of the best vehicle performance and handling to grace a videogame, certain aspects simply don't feel like a Gran Turismo game should, which may leave some feeling a little disappointed.

GT5 lives up to "the real driving simulator" tagline, but in almost every other respect, there lies a sense that the grandaddy has been lapped by the competition.

If you're one of those car nuts I mentioned earlier, here's your game. Have fun, we'll see you in a year when you finally leave the house. If you're not in that group -- you like, even love racing games, but care less about tuning and more about the thrill of the race -- GT5 is like walking in on a group of physicists discussing string theory and asking who wants to go toss around a ball for a bit. You're looking to have fun; they're only interested in studying the math behind how it bounces.

What PD have delivered is unquestionably a phenomenal achievement and will represent countless lost hours for petrolheads the world over, but the GT series is no longer the gold standard for driving games. If it takes Yamauchi and his team another five years (or more) to better GT5, the brand runs the risk of being left in the past.

Fans are unlikely to be too disappointed, and the developer's automotive obsession is always evident, but this is definitely a refinement not a revolution.

Judged purely on how good the driving is, GT5 is top class, perhaps even king - but as a game it could and should have been a whole lot better.

But it has a sheer appreciation, and love, for cars and driving that is difficult to resist. At times it feels less like playing a game and more like indulging in a hobby.

GT5 pushes the realism of the race even further and has very, very rich content, with classic races and also new additions like Karting and NASCAR. We also warmly welcome the cockpit views, the new race circuits and all the 1.000 cars. But above all, whether with the wheel or the controller, the driving sensations are really, really fantastic. Unfortunately, some stuff remains committed to values that could be described as "outdated", particularly in terms of AI, sound effects, collisions and damages. We would also have expected much better weather effects, and we regret that only 200 Premium models feature cockpit views and high poly-count. Frustrating. Graphically uneven, GT5 seems to have been finished in a hurry (same with the online mode). Of course it remains a safe bet that it would be a shame to ignore, but as early as now... we can't wait to play GT6!

The game is a triumph for pure racing aficionados, and is without doubt the best racing simulator available on the PS3. The only real disappointment is that we knew it would be, and hoped that the wealth of new features long touted by Polyphony would be produced with the same level of dedication and perfection shown in the heart of the game.

This accessible but realistic driving simulation is both sublime and subpar.

A great racing game wrapped in a series of bad design decisions.

Considering the time it took Polyphony to complete what we believed would be a masterpiece, we really can't hide our disappointment. Although the number of cars, events and play modes on offer is surely impressive, Gran Turismo 5 is far from that level of perfection that the development team promised us during the last four years.

Too much of GT5 relies on past glories, building on the success of the series without shaking free of the design quirks that are holding the series back. High expectations are justified when a game has been in development so long and GT5 has more than a faint whiff of disappointment about it.

Gran Turismo 5 is without doubt a superlative driving simulator and there is so much within the game to do that it could easily take up as much as a hundred hours of your gaming schedule.

We love Gran Turismo dearly but it isn't the game we hoped it would be. [Feb 2011, p.72]

The arcade version/part of the game offers more cars than I've ever seen in an arcade racing game ever, although you probably won't giggle like you did when you crashed while playing Burnout.

Conservative, messy and patchily designed, GT5 only intermittently excites. [Jan 2011, p.79]

Gran Turismo 5 is in many ways a fantastic racing game, but it suffers from relatively severe deficiencies. The damage model is unforgivably weak, 800 of the 1000 cars are of low quality and the sound is too cheap. The handling is impeccable, however.

It'll probably be years again before Polyphony Digital delivers another Gran Turismo, but I think it's pretty clear what they need to work on: treat all the cars with equal love, give players more options to fine-tune the AI, make driving something to be enjoyed rather than endured, improve all aspects of the online functionality, and re-prioritize all those features into something more focused on fun than a back-of-the-box list.

Gran Turismo 5 is like a restored classic car: beautiful on the outside and it drives like a dream, but in time you'll miss the modern parts that new cars have.

Ultimately, fans of GT4 are going to find a great deal of value in GT5. Just don't expect to see the same advances that have been made in racing games over the last three years.

So, if you've already sat through an excruciating wait for your next fix of this hugely popular franchise then strap yourself in and prepare to play long into the coming year. For everyone else, there's always Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.

Started in 2008 with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, the High Definition corner for Gran Turismo ends in a somewhat chaotic way with a Gran Turismo 5 disappointing at almost every level, moreover proving that Polyphony Digital didn't put itself in question.

Gran Turismo 5 feels old and confused. There are glimpses of amazing stuff hidden under the muddy menus, but there are also some truly bad design choices. Give it time and it will open up. But perhaps not as much as you had hoped for.

Sometimes great, sometimes just a mess. The disappointment of the year.

Gran Turismo has lost its mojo and become a dinosaur among modern racing games. It still drives brilliantly, but it's also bloated, scrappy, unbalanced and majorly dull for prolonged periods of play.

While Gamestyle loves the on track handling, the pursuit of new vehicles and driving excellence, Gran Turismo 5 fails to achieve its goals or address its bad habits. Full of distractions and pretty eye candy, beneath the bonnet, the chassis is in serious need of attention.

But this is a production that feels increasingly aged in the face of modern game design. The creeping and eventually overriding feeling is that this meticulously precise simulation, and its lovingly constructed catalogue of automotive history, deserved a little more game to come along for the ride.

It requires a significant investment of time before players will begin to enjoy themselves. It has loading times which are pretty bad at best and unacceptable at worst. Oh and for a lot of the game the only thing you'll be racing is your own PB time.

The developers seemingly reside within a bubble where no other recent simulation racing games have been released (including, apparently, Gran Turismo 4). Thanks to studios like Codemasters and Turn 10, a revolution may be occurring within the genre, but it has nothing to do with this obsolete franchise.

Years of waiting, and we're presented with a title that still feels unfinished. Gran Turismo 5's main frustrations come from the fact that, at times, the game is entertaining and a joy to play. At other times, it had us questioning if Polyphony understand what the current generation of consoles are capable of.