Eurogamer posted a very postitive hands-on impressions of GT5 at E3 2010.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gran-turismo-5-e3-2010-hands-on
A few snippets from their impressions..
On the track, Gran Turismo 5 is a dream to drive: the cars have distinct personalities, the skyboxes are huge and dramatic, and the handling can take in anything from arcade racing to simulation stuff so exacting I struggle to travel in a straight line. Today's not about getting another demo, however - there have already been enough of these, along with the little matter of a Prologue to get players accustomed to the basics. No, today Yamauchi wants to explain a bit about just what he's been making all these years, starting, as ever, with the cars.
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There are two types of car in Gran Turismo, apparently: premium cars and standard cars. The latter, it's worth noting, are only standard by Yamauchi's exacting principles: there's over 800 of them, they cover the majority of the vehicles included in all the previous Gran Turismo games, including the PSP version, and they've been optimised and upscaled for the PS3.
If that bothers you, a show reel of standard cars - Dodge muscle numbers, streamlined F1 concepts, and something that looks to my untrained eye like a Mini Clubman with way too many rallying headlights - hardly makes them seem shabby. They're glossy, finely detailed, and a fair match for anything you might have seen in Project Gotham or Forza.
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The 200 premium cars that take the final count past the 1000 mark are something else, however. The premiums have been lavished with a slightly worrying amount of detail - every single screw is visible in the hubs, the interiors have been recreated down to the stitching (standard cars won't have interiors, which is a bit sad, but there are, like, 800 of them), and their undersides have been comprehensively modelled to take into account a new physics system which, along with allowing for dents and scratches, can sends your ride flipping through the air during collisions.
Included in the premium garage will be nine NASCAR models, including those used by superstars - in Middle America, at any rate - like Carl Edwards and Brian Vickers. Brian Vickers! I know. GT5 allows you to race by the NASCAR rules, as well. Seeing it in motion seems a bit too brutal to fit comfortably into the rest of the game, but it's an excellent opportunity to enjoy that new physics deformation system and some truly epic crashes - although, typically, even fender benders look rather pretty and artful in Yamauchi's universe.
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Yamauchi turns his attention to the online suite, as this is the first Gran Turismo game to include extensive PSN functionality. GT5's actually become a rather social game over the course of its development, and the current build supports BBS, personal logs, mail, and something called My Lounge. That turns out to be a friends network of sorts, where you can gather with other players and chat, or check up on their progress in the game, alongside the nifty stuff like setting up races and spectating on events that are already underway.
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Dozens of other details spill forth after that: the day-to-night transitions that can take place during a race, the 3D visuals and face-tracking in cockpit view (combine those last two and the results are astonishing as the horizon line disappears into the distance), classy visual effects like smoke illumination, collision sparks, and kicked-up debris. Whatever Polyphony's been doing for the last few years, its staff probably hasn't been clocking in at the office and then juggling Pop-Tarts all day.
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It's not just a racer, really: it's a Noah's Ark for cars, a haven that will never be touched by rust or sky-rocketing fuel prices. And although while GT5's been in development the driving genre has gone through plenty of transitions of its own, if anything, the explosive excess of contemporary titles has given Yamauchi's game even more of an air of class, as it ditches the dynamite and the levelling up to rely instead on simply being comprehensive and beautiful.
I am excited!! November cant come soon enough.. i need to rent a hibernation chamber or something to pass the time until then.
