[PS3] Gran Turismo 5 (Prologue) UPDATE HAS FAILED

I should clarify, incidental detail that makes the newer tracks feel more alive, since the old tracks feel more or less the same. OK, so there's not masses of life to the tracks on the whole, but they feel more alive in Prologue than they have previously. But hey, that's just my opinion.

Out of interest aesop, what racing games do you consider to have good AI? From what I've seen, and I've only just started on the B-class events, Prologue's AI seems a lot better than GT's previous efforts.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I’m not sure, truly. I mean the racing games I’d play most often (Wipeout, Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo), they’re all at different corners of the table, and I wouldn’t say any of them have particularly good AI. In this case maybe I’m just expecting too much from the simulator.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by OmagnusPrime

One noticeable improvement I'd point at is the opposition AI. There's still an element of them sticking towards the racing line, but not if they want to overtake, they actually seem to jostle for position now. And with up to 16 cars on track as well, there's often a bit more of that going on.

Haha, that reminds me of another thing: If you restart a race, don't expect your opponents to drive differently. Like IGN said "Also, when grinding an event, as necessitated by the game's archaic structure, you can't help but feel a serious sense of déjà vu overcoming you, as the same Nissan Skyline spins off on the same corner and obstructs the same piece of tarmac.". So after all, we still have a somewhat redundant AI of opposition drivers.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I'm not sure if it's the same as what you meant, but I just can't play this series anymore either. I could only play it to a limited extent anyway... because I don't really find the tuning part to be interesting. I like the driving, but you need to tune and modify your car to win. If it were a bit less complex, I'd be cool with that... but they would lose their core fanbase.

How don't you 'get' the tuning element in a racing game? Think of the currency you win from races as though it were experience points from a battle in a RPG. You just go and pick your stats boosts (Car upgrades) to make your characters stronger (Cars faster). I'm sure some people don't care for level building in a jap RPG, but I really enjoy the element of strengthening my characters.

Speaking as someone who enjoys racing games, I found the fiddling and tweaking element to be very entertaining. There is something so cool about taking a production car that drives like one, and modifying it until it turns into a full fledged race car. As you modify the vehicle, the changes that are made are discernible in the way the vehicle handles, and I find that to be a really rewarding / interesting element of the gameplay. It is also really cool how different vehicles all behave differently on the racetrack, so when you drive a Porche, you feel like you are actually driving a Porche, not just a car that happens to look like one.

By comparison, I have always found that the arcade style racer lacks the dept that a racing sim has. I find just driving a few courses to be boring since the experience becomes stagnant very fast. With a sim, the fact that you've driving a match three times on the same course doesn't nearly matter as much because it can be a different experience each time depending on what car you decide to pull out of your garage for that particular event. I guess for me, the whole experience is as much about owning and modifying vehicles as it is about driving them.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Sadly, the more I play this game, the more obvious the cracks become (the AI seems better at first, but on repeated plays it's like watching replays), and the more true this statement becomes:

Quote:

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue features 70 vehicles. Six tracks. Online play. On paper, it looks like a robust experience; supporters of the game bristle when it's called a demo on message boards. Having played the game for the past few days I can tell you... it's a demo. I wanted to avoid calling it that, and I didn't think that criticism was fair when it was being leveled against the $40 release, but after spending a significant amount of time racing around the game's six tracks and collecting those cars, a demo is exactly what this is.

[ source ]

I'm still against people calling it a demo as some sort of attack, but yes, it does boil down to being a demo, plain and simple. There's a lot of work for them to do before Gran Turismo 5 and I seriously hope they take on board any feedback coming back from players.

Skills will cite the UI as an area of weakness, and with good reason. It's a bare-bones affair, which I have nothing against, but some elements are just plain counter-intuitive. In order to see the events you have to buy your first car, but then you see the events and realise a lot of them require specific cars, or types of cars, so you'll be blocked from most races from the off. I'm still not sure why you can't tune cars from the off either.

It shows glimmers of promise and hints at what could make it into the full game. Unfortunately I think too many other games have come along and overtaken the Gran Turismo series in so many aspects that it starts to feel somewhat dated. There's very little excitement to the races, and very little feeling of competing in a race event. It remains an exceptionally pretty game and a good showcase of the PS3's capabilities on the graphical front. Would be a lot more impressive if there were damage.

However, the biggest disappointment so far has to be the complete inability to set up an online race with friends. You can't do it. It's just not possible, which is completely rubbish. It's not terrible, and split-screen could be quite good fun, but I can't help but feel more disappointed the more I play.

How ya doing, buddy?

I wouldn't worry too much about the anything other than the physics model being indicitave of the full version of GT5. Did you ever play GT:Concept? There was fuck all in the way of menus or options, no tuning at all and not even any other cars on the track. It was just you driving round and round the beautifully rendered tracks in a bunch of concept cars. The one thing it did have though was the updated physics model which at the time had been significantly altered from the previous games and took a little getting used to.

I won't argue with you that GT isn't the most white-knuckle thrill ride of a racing game but I don't think it's ever tried to be. For me at any rate, GT has always been about improving your lap times rather than beating other racers. The tuning system lends itself to tweaking, adjustments that gain you a fraction of a second a lap rather than winning you races. The AI cars are there to provide the occasional challenge of getting off-line and passing, rather than to jostle and bump in a battle for position and for me the lack of damage has never been an issue because if you're hitting things, you're playing it wrong. The game pertains to be a driving simulator more than anything else and in high-spec sports cars, if you hit anything, even a nudge on another car it generally spells race over. Obviously in a racing game this would just be annoying and nobody would want to play it but the introduction of time penalties for crashes has added another reason not to drive into things and any race where I crash heavily into something isn't one I'd want to watch the replay of.

I have great faith in Polyphony to produce an amazing game in GT5, less faith in them managing to do so before 2011 (GT4 was supposed to be a launch title on the PSP, lol). Gran Turismo will never be an exciting racing game but then it never has been. It panders to people who love cars and want to compare the driving characteristics of cars they'll never get to drive in real life and appeals to people who get more enjoyment out of breaking their personal best lap record than from smashing a bunch of other cars out the way and winning by half a length. There are numerous other games that do that very well and I suspect that the GT team aren't really too bothered about trying to compete with them.

FELIPE NO

the problem with the way crashing handles and contact between vehicles in general is really an issue for GT(at least in GT4 it was). Remember all those "overtake during this turn" missions or something? that you have to take certain line and pass an AI opponent? you can just win all of those by crashing the AI from behind while it is braking, it will go flying outside of the track and get stuck there and you can just get back into the track and finish the mission with no effort whatsoever. Sure if you crash into something you are not driving the best you can... but if it can reward you like that it really needs fixing.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by juanzen

the problem with the way crashing handles and contact between vehicles in general is really an issue for GT(at least in GT4 it was). Remember all those "overtake during this turn" missions or something? that you have to take certain line and pass an AI opponent? you can just win all of those by crashing the AI from behind while it is braking, it will go flying outside of the track and get stuck there and you can just get back into the track and finish the mission with no effort whatsoever. Sure if you crash into something you are not driving the best you can... but if it can reward you like that it really needs fixing.

That's true enough but just because you can win a race like that, doesn't mean you should. Also, on the harder setting races, bumping into the back of someone knocked you down to 50mph for ten seconds which can pretty much fuck your race.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The only thing I'm not really liking about GT5: Prologue is the lack of any real tuning options and parts. Sure GT5 will have it, but the lack of those parts means the only way to win a tough race is to buy a faster car. I had to step up from the Lancer X to the Viper! Almost twice the horsepower because I couldn't upgrade anything, and then I had to learn how a new car drove all over again.

That's really been the only frustrating thing I've come to since I bought it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.