100% Review of Gran Turismo 5 exclusive for the Hug a Gamer community

Do you wonder if you're going to buy Gran Turismo 5 or not? Well, then you've come to the right place. I'm going to give you a 100% Review for you because i'm pretty well at multitasking during B-Spec races in GT5. After reading this review you should know what you are going at if you don't already have it in your posession.

Intro

I didn't know what to expect when i first got it 2 weeks ago. I just went to the store, bought the Collectors Edition of the game and shut it into my PS3.

The first thing that got my attention was the graphics. The opening movie was awesome and i got into the right atmosphere. I proeceed to put the volume to a certain level that would definately bother the neighbors. But that didn't matter at all, it's time to play Gran Turismo 5.

I took a look at the menu and went strictly to ''GT Mode'' and ignored the Arcade mode and Course Maker along with Settings etc.

GT Mode

There's two different ways to play this game; A-Spec and B-Spec. The A-Spec mode lets you play the game as a driver and drive through different stages competing with other cars as you go on. The A-Spec mode is definately what you want to aim for if you're a beginner.


A-Spec
You start off with a little bit of money. Before you can start driving you need to a car. What you want to do now is to click on the ''dealerships'' or ''Used Car Dealership'' image and find a car you can afford that is decent.
You get to choose from 51 different brands. From Volkswagen to Ferrari and their own fictional set of Gran Turismo cars. Each car has a description attached to them that you can view if you want more information on the car you are buying and that is a goddamn well done feature considering there's slightly over 1000 cars in this game!

Okey, you've chosen your car and you want to get into a race. You click A-Spec and go to Beginner Series. The first thing you notice is that there's 9 different races you can choose from and that you have to be at a certain level to enter some of them. At this moment you can only enter 2 races because your level isn't high enough to enter the others yet.
As you play through the races and win you gain more money and experience points. When you've collected enough experience points you will go up one level. When you level up from a race you can enter more races. Some races got rules to them, for example the Yaris race. You can only enter the Yaris race with a Toyota Yaris car. This means that you might want to finnish some other races, gain experience points and more money till you can waste some cash on the car needed to drive the race. I got to admit, some of these specified races are kinda cool!


B-Spec
The B-Spec mode lets you create a new different driver starting at Level 0 and you have to guide him through the different races in order for him to win. Click through the different drivers and find one with a personality that suits the driving style you want him to have.

In my opinion this is the most boring part of the game. While he is driving you got 4 different options to click. The option you choose to click determines wich actions he will do on the road. These are; ''Decrease pace'', ''Maintain pace'', ''increase pace'' and ''overtake''. The cool thing about this mode is that he will use the car you are using, so if you watch a movie on your laptop (like i did) you can just turn off the music on the television and click on ''overtake'' when the race starts so he's in the lead and proceed to keep clicking on ''Maintain pace'' and he'll win if your car is decent. At the moment im actually writing this review while doing B-Spec races..

Allright.. Lets proceed to the other options you got in GT Mode.


Special
This is a really awesome feature to the game. Apart from B-Spec and A-Spec modes you can still play through different types of races in other modes. Each level that you get you'll be able to take part in different Special events. The first level let you race with Go-Karts. Yeah, you heard me, freaking go-karts. Those small turtleshell looking speedfueled racecars. You got a nascar school with Jeff Gordon at level 2 and a race with VolksWagen vans in the Top Gear Test Track.

Beside of that you got driving academies and Rally events. And yeah; these can be challenging and some of them got 3 different modes ranging from Beginner to Intermediate and Advanced if you think the other two was too easy. In order to play the Intermediate and Advanced races you need a higher level.

You get a decent set of cash the first times you get gold on these events. I got admit it, as frustrating some of them are, they are awesome!


Licences
This kinda speaks for itself. You can earn car licences in 6 different modes. National B Licence, National A Licence, National C Licence, International B Licence, International A Licence and Super Licence. And yeah. These are challenging if you go for gold in each of the challenges.

The National B Licence got for example a 200m stopping challenge. You got a timer and you got to break and stop on the marker at the end of the course within a certain time limit to get gold. And the stopping challenge is just the first challenge, in total there are 10 in the national B Licence.
In order to play the other licences you got to play A-Spec to get more experience points and up your level ranking.

And yes.. Just like the Special events these can be pretty frustrating and i once screamed for 20 seconds when i was 0.005 seconds from getting gold in a national A Licence. But when it all boils down these are freaking awesome as well.

Practice
Yup.. If you want to drive some races on a track and practice your skills on them before entering a race in A-Spec mode this is the place to do it. You can also play the tracks you created in course maker.


GT Auto
Aaaaah... The piano music in GT Auto make you instantly lol and throw out a WTF even if you are playing alone the first time you enter it. You can wash your car and change the oil as well wich obviously costs a little bit of cash.

You can paint it in a different color but this cost one paint item. You recieve one paint item each time you buy or win a car from different races. The paint items you recieve is determined by wich color you chose for the car you bought or the color of the one you recieved.
You can also paint your wheels.. But this makes it a pain in the ass if you want the color to be the same as your car if you've already used the paint item for another car. Yeaaaah.. I think it is pretty stupid that it doesn't cost like 1000 Cr. (GT money) or something to paint it in the color you want at that specific moment.

This is also the place to change your wheels, purchase and exchange aero parts, overhaul your engine to restore it if you have been driving alot, restore body rigidy and do minor racing modifications to your car.


Parts:
Since this isn't your typical Need for speed Underground atmosphere you aint able to style your care with tribals, shiny glitter or cover it with ugly pink neon all over. I enjoyed that game as well but GT5 is a little bit more advanced. You get to buy parts for your cars, suspension and whatnot in order to tune it and fix it the way you want it to behave on the road. This is essential if you want your car to be more than just a piece of beauty. Also make sure that you got your car selected before buying new parts so you don't click ''Install this part to your car now'' by mistake.

For example, if you buy the Fully Customisable Transmission you can fix the levels of when the car switches gear in order to improve top speed. Of course, when you do this the acceleration will either decrease or increase, it depends on how you fix the settings of it. I try to aim for the perfect balance.
The same thing goes for suspension and how the wheels works on the road, how your car will react when getting a little bit of hangtime. This is a trial and error process unless you google up some answers.

You also got Body/Chassis modifications wich let you remove some weight of your car. This is also important if you want your car to turn more easilly. Also take notice that the lighter the car is the easier you'll fail to make a good turn and drift to the side of the track. I believe in a good balance here as well.
Also! Some of the A-Spec events got a lightweight race challenge wich means that if your car exceeds the 1200 kg. limit you will not be able to enter. Do some Body/Chassis modifications to an awesome car and you're destined to win!

This section got so much more i could comment on.. But, buy the game and check it out for yourself.


Photo travel
Last but not least you got the photo travel feature! You get to choose from different locations you can take photos of your car. And the camera in this game is truly one of its own! I have used alot of time trying to figure out this camera and taken alot of awesome pictures and copied them to the XMB in PS3 and made some awesome personal wallpapers for my PS3.

You can also get access to this camera during replays. This also makes awesome pictures from your gameplay. I'm not going to say more about this, but if you want a 100% guide on how it works check this out this link:

http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=137684

Profile and extras

Okey, to close this section about GT Mode i'll tell you a little about the menu to your left.

In the Profile section you can check out your overall Game Progress, current credit and the level of your B-Spec driver and the cars you've set as favorites and how many trophies you've earned.

Then you got Items. In this section you can take a look at what extra parts you got in your possession. This is also a good place to check out the number of paint items you got.

You got the Garage next to Items. In your garage you can change your car, set them as favourites and sort them out by car names, use the search function so you can look for a car by name, wich country they are from, brand names and drivetrain. The search feature is useful if you stumble upon a race that needs a car with FF drivetrain for example.
You can also see wich cars that are set as ''standard'' and wich of them that are ''premium''. I love the cars i've set as ''favourites''. I got about 10 cars set as favourites at the moment so i don't know if there is a limit on how many cars you can put in this group.

Then you got Photo Album. All the pictures you take will end up in your album. You can also mark your most precious pictures as favourites and search for pictures by location.

Then you got your drivers list. This one speaks for itself, this is where your B-Spec AI drivers are stashed wich shows what level they are on and other information according to this subject.

Replay theatre. Oooooh yeah! After a race you can watch the replay. If you like the replay save them and they will end up here. Similar to the photo album you can set them as favourites and search for replays by track and event.

Then you got the music library, here you can set up a playlist of the music in the game. Change the background music in your menus, slideshow music etc.
The only thing i felt was lacking was the ability to play your own music during gameplay. I found out later that it was possible, but it was definately not a great solution to work it out. I will get back to that later on!

Now we've got to the part about the Museum. When i click it it says ''This feature is not available in this version''.. Well, DAMN YOU! No seriously, this bothers me. It might be because i am not able to log into my PSN at this moment though.
Hopefully this is another great feature and i pray to our saviour that it is because i'm not logged on that i can't access this feature and not because of the fact that i bought the Special Edition of GT5. I get the same error message when i try to enter the ''Community'' section so i guess that's why. I will most probably write about this on a later notice

Last but not least

I have already covered the main things in GT5 and it's now time to say a little bit about the remaining things about this game.

Arcade Mode
First off we got Arcade Mode. It lets you play the different tracks in 4 different modes. Single Race, Time Trial, Drift Trial and 2 player Split Screen.

The Single Race let you play on different tracks against AI Controlled cars in 3 different levels. Excellent feature if you like chill out with a race.

YEAH!!! Time Trial! Yeah, that's what i thought as well. I was hoping for a Time Limit and that each checkpoint would give you more seconds to the limit in order for you to make it to the finnish line, but no. It's you and you alone on a track to beat your personal best.
A ghost of your best lap will appear after your first round so you can race yourself. That is kinda awesome, but i'd love to see a Classic version of Time Trial!

Drift Trial. Yeah, this one is kinda cool as well.. It looks like they copied the newer Need for Speed versions on this one. Allthough you don't have a single Nos expansion to your car in the entire game you can still drift on oil fueled tracks. You go through ''checkpoints'' in each corner and when you start drifting you recieve points according to how well your drift is.
This is actually kinda fun and if you let your camera go wild on this you can take some incredible pictures!

2P Split Screen. Yeah, this one speaks for itself. Race against your friend and make him rage as you win every round he participates in.

Course Maker
I was hoping to see something similar to the Map Editor in Trackmania Nations but no. You get to choose from different Themes ranging from Dirt and Snow themes to desert landscapes and Circuit racetracks.

When you choose the theme of your liking you basicly just fix some settings between each checkpoint.. Yeah, you choose number of sections and how wide the road will be in each of them, the time of the day and if it's going to be sunny or not. Not really spectacular when it comes down to it, but its an feature to the game. Nothing special to be honest.

Gran Turismo TV
When you play through Gran Turismo 5 in the GT Mode you can achieve different videos that you can view in this feature. I don't have internet good enough to use on my PS3 system but it seems like you can buy or download different videos that you can view in Gran Turismo TV.

Because of the lack of internet access i got to get back to this feature on a later notice.

Manual
Yeah.. Another thing that speaks for itself. Guess what it is? You're right, it's the manual of the game. If you need to know something special about torque and how things work, this is the place to check it out.

Options
Yup. This is the place to change your settings. Fix everything to how you prefer it to be when it comes to race and arcade settings, units and languages.

Oh yeah.. If you've read this entire review you probably wonder how to play music stored on your playstation system. This is actually the place to do it! Holy macaroni and potatoes with sugar on top. Why did they have to make it this difficult? I sure as sweet mother of earth don't freaking know. (Btw, did you guys notice how well i did with not swearing?)

Go to the ''hardware'' section and then proceed right till you see audio settings. Click on that sweet little thing and browse through the options till you see User BGM. Then click on ''Select User BGM (Race)'' and select the song you want to be played during a race. Oh yeah, don't forget to click on the thing that says ''enable user BGM (race) in order for your song to be played.
I created a playlist before i did this as it will play the next song in your playlist after the song you selected is finnished. And now you're set, you can finally play your own music in GT5...

Final conclusion of the game

This game is without doubt an amazing work of art. All of the modes combined, the set of settings and parts, the wide range of cars makes this game one of the best racing games to ever touch a game console.
The custom music in the game is decent and works well to the theme they are going with. The graphics are really amazing and you can't help but to play just another race before you go to sleep. Of course, when that race is finnished you forgot that you was supposed to sleep after the first round and just keep on playing.

It get minus points for the solution of how you get to play your own music and a few insignificant bugs that you barely notice. The bug i came upon was when i was racing in a tunnel and i did a turn close to the edge. If you've ever taken a look at how wallhacks in FPS games looks like it was exactly like that. But it only lasts for about 1 second so you don't really care when it comes down to it and its the only bug i've stumbled upon so far.

All in all i got to give it 9.5 out of 10 Lamborghini's. If you got a PS3 system, enjoy a well crafted racing game and don't got it yet i'd suggest that you go and get it right now. =)