Reviews// Gran Turismo 5

Each of the six licences are composed of 10 individual tests. Each test has been designed to develop your driving skills as you progress through them all. If you drive into cones, leave the track at any point; are too slow or hit an opponent’s car too hard – you fail instantly. The tests are not easy, so don’t expect to breeze though them. I found myself on more than one occasion repeating the same test as I was one or two thousandths of a second off the target time.

If nothing else, they are great ways of gaining experience, money, and they provide great opportunities to drive a nice array of cars. You also learn the racing lines through parts of the most challenging race tracks in the world. When you finally get to taking your super licence, all the individual tests are one or two lap shoot-outs during which you have to overtake as many cars as possible. Disciplined driving is essential. If you overshoot just one corner and run off the track, it’s game over!

If there is one aspect of the Gran Turismo series that sets it apart from other driving games, then the licence test is it. My Burnout driving skills were simply not precise enough for many of the tests, especially anything involving cornering. Power sliding is not the quickest way around a corner, however much fun it is. Accuracy, control and discipline are essential skills that you must learn to pass. Also it makes the rest of the game easier if you do.

Finally, a driving game
After several hours of crashing, restarting, loading, saving and installing, a transformation happens. A decent driving game emerges.

I’d learnt to control some of the most powerful and expensive cars in the world on tracks ranging from the fictional Cape Ring, with its completely bonkers spiral bridge, to the lifelike and historic Monza Grand Prix circuit. More importantly I went a whole 15-20 minutes sometimes without seeing a single menu screen or the game having to install.

All I had to do was focus on driving. With the luxury of a humongous bank balance from completing the licence tests and several of the special events (like the far too easy karting races) I could buy almost any car I wanted. I chose a McLaren MP4-12C supercar. Not a cheap purchase by any means, comparable in price with the equally alluring Ferrari 458 Italia ’09, but small change for me.

I spent a surprising amount of time deciding on the bodywork colour and generally admiring the car in front of the changeable backgrounds (studio, daytime, sunset and night) before hitting the parts shop and tuning the car to within an inch of its life.

Upgrading the exhaust and intake systems and adding a sports engine control unit (ECU) give you a lot of horsepower for not very much cash. These are recommended first steps in any car upgrade. Then I really splashed the cash to fully upgrade the engine and remove any unnecessary body weight, plus a little rigidity enhancement. All this turning produced a 804 break horsepower (bhp) monster of a supercar with more torque than a Pagani Zonda ’09. This car is going to go like stink. Yeah, baby. First stop Nürburgring, Germany.

Flip-Flopping salmon
The Nürburgring Nordschleife is a 20.8km track with about 100 corners. It is one of the most famous and challenging tracks in the world and one that you can drive around in real life. It was the perfect track for testing out my spanking new McLaren. After checking out the wonderfully detailed in car view - which is available in all of the premium cars – I floored the accelerator and the engine screamed into life.

One of the big selling points of Gran Turismo 5 is that the cars look, sound and handle like their real-life counterparts. Whilst I can believe the first two bits are true, I would question realism of the in-game handling. Many of the in-game cars, particularly under heavy braking, suffer from the rear end flip-flopping around like a salmon in the mouth of a grizzly bear. Whilst in real-life I’ve had a Ford Mondeo fish-tailing on a dirt track in New Zealand under heavy breaking and I’ve had some dicey moments on snow and ice in Yorkshire, I’ve yet to experience that type of behaviour on bone-dry tarmac.

After a quick lesson with the nuances of this particular McLaren’s handling, I finally got to experience the driving game I’d been waiting for. I’d chosen the change weather/time version of the Nürburgring. My lap started in early morning pouring rain and dark grey clouds. Thankfully my trusty headlights (on full beam) showed me the way for the first half of the track until the weather improved and the sun began to break through the clouds.

The track looked utterly stunning bathed in a warm yellow/orange glow of sunlight. As I reached the end of the lap, the track dried off allowing me to pick up the speed. As I blindly powered over the crest of a hill hunting out the finish line, I did get the odd heart flutter. One mistake can ruin the whole lap, especially at 350 km/h and I didn’t want to make a single one.

After this exhilarating experience, I wanted more. Next up was the Pagani Zonda R ‘09 around a wet/sunny High Speed Ring. The wet track coupled with the 739 bhp of the Zonda made handling it a real challenge. After completing a few laps and seeing a steady improvement my times I decided to check out the data logger.

Data Logging
The data logger allows you to analyse in detail your performance around your fastest recorded lap on each track. You get to analyse a number of metrics such as longitudinal and lateral G-force, throttle, gear and brake usage as well as engine RPM and speed.

This data coupled with a live replay of my lap allowed me to pinpoint where I could improve my time even more. I’d love to be able to download and analyse other people’s laps using this tool; say the top 10 times in the world. That would be cool and help improve my driving too. Then again, that’s the professional data analyst in me.

Special Measures
If 1000+ cars, licence tests and A-spec races weren’t enough, Polyphony Digital have added in special events like karting races, rallying, NASCAR as well as a track designer and online racing. Adding the special events was possibly the best thing to happen to Gran Turismo 5. I spent most of my time really enjoying most of these at the expense of the A-spec races which are really quite dull in comparison.