Gran Turismo 5 is one of the PS3’s most-anticipated games of the year, and it’s certainly the most-anticipated racing game, so gamers everywhere are curious to read the first Gran Turismo 5 reviews to see whether it’s been worth the wait. With the embargo lifted for publishing Gran Turismo 5 reviews, we’re now starting to get a picture of the first reviewers’ impressions of Polyphony Digital’s fifth chapter in the series.
The Gran Turismo 5 reviews so far are a mixed bag, which is good and bad news for PS3 owners. The bad news there is that it’s not the “end all, be all” perfect racing game folks had been hoping for. The good news, though, is that by calling out some of the small faults with Gran Turismo 5, the reviews show that they’re relatively well thought-out and not just posted by fanboys who want to gush about all things Polyphony.
Jeuxvideo.com was the first outlet to publish their Gran Turismo 5 review, and they largely said GT5 has gotten a bit too big for its britches. Their GT5 review asks rhetorically whether the developers are guilty of burying a lot of obsolete ideas in new code or just avoiding risks altogether. Their answer: “Probably a little of both.” The outlet’s Gran Turismo 5 review concludes by saying “If Gran Turismo was ‘The Real Driving Simulator,’ [that] is no longer the case. By not challenging any rigid mechanisms and [old features] in the series, Polyphony has developed a game for GT fans and just for them.”
A Norwegian site, Pressfire.no, had the next GT5 review, and gave it high marks while cautioning readers about a few elements, calling Gran Turismo 5 “the most ambitious, most beautiful and complete racing game to date … that probably nobody will be able to outdo the next five or six years. … But, [it] is actually still not quite finished, and does not correct all that we [had predicted would be fixed due to] the long development time.”
JustPushStart, meanwhile, says in its Gran Turismo 5 review that “the graphics are not that good” and the game suffers from “boring multiplayer modes.” That’s basically blasphemy to PS3 fanboys’ ears, and the former is particularly hard to believe. The multiplayer aspects, though, even if they are boring (and we have no first-hand knowledge of this claim) are still welcome additions to the series, as no full Gran Turismo game prior to GT5 has included online multiplayer.
As other early Gran Turismo 5 reviews start to trickle in, it will be interesting to see whether GT5 continues its pace of 8/10s or sees a boost or decline in review scores. Regardless, it’s a safe bet that this Thanksgiving will see plenty of people fighting the effects of tryptophan while racing around the track on their PS3.