Gran Turismo 5 Review Round-Up: A Mixed Bag

Polyphony Digital's latest labour of love, Gran Turismo 5, is finally out after six long years of development, and reception across the industry is decidedly mixed. Despite some damning comments, the game is getting some unprecedented high scores.

IGN's Martin Robinson marked the PS3 racer an 8.5 out of 10, and wrote that the balance of the game was more heavily weighted towards the simulation aspect rather than the game itself; "Gran Turismo 5 is a 10/10 simulator wrapped up in a 5/10 game... its brilliance on the track is matched by its sloppiness of it, and there’s a lack of polish that would at one time have seemed sacrilegious to the series."

Eurogamer published the most glowing review with a 9/10, with reviewer Oli Welsh noting that the game is "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."

Despite some final comments that would leave Kazunori Yamauchi wincing, CVG's Andy Robinson awarded the game with an 8/10, stating that "This is a good game. But, it's not a great one. 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."

VideoGamesDaily (formerly Kikizo) supported its 8/10 review with a high amount of praise for "what it gets right." Writes Rupert Higham, "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."

A mixed bag of opinions with a distinctly unmixed scoring range, then.

Which leaves us - SPOnG - with no formal review and no score published just yet. That will come later today, when we've properly collected our thoughts - but our impressions feature has more GT5 information than you can possibly stomach, with opinions from several different viewpoints.

Editor-in-Chief, Tim, felt that "GT5 offers plenty of bang for your currency. By this I mean that there is lots of content. It's simply that none of it lives up to the hype. Lots and lots of “things” have been shoe-horned in at the expense of one, majorly important item: enjoyment," noting a severe lack of tuning options.

Racing simulation newbie and Senior Writer Mark didn't mince his words. "It's a bit boring, really. The real failing for me, though, is the disconnect between the speed you see on the speedometer and the speed you feel you're going at. I get that this isn't Burnout, and I even got into the more technical driving a bit as I played for longer, but any sense of speed just evaporates at way higher speeds than it ought to."

Meanwhile racing nuts Gavin and Marcus had nothing good to say about Polyphony's latest at all. Gavin wrote that "I can't see myself playing GT5 for very long at all since the rest of the game is just as disappointing. The cars handle so badly that I can hardly keep them on the track, or slow down for a corner without hitting the barriers," while Marcus added the game is "almost unimaginably bad.

"Whereas earlier Gran Turismo games trod a fine line between arcade driving games and sims, Polyphony have become increasingly obsessed with the latter, while trying still not to close the door on fans of the former. The result is a dead husk of a game, all the fun sucked out of it by the accuracy vampires." So, Marcus didn't like it, then.

Have you bought GT5 yet? What do you make of it? Let us know your thoughts - and if you agree with any of those posted here - in the forum below.