Gran Turismo HD for PS3 Impressions

fistfullast33l writes "On Christmas Eve, Sony released the Gran Turismo HD demo to the U.S. and Japan Playstation 3s. The downloadable demo is about 650mb in size and I let it download while I was at church for Christmas. The following are my own impressions.

Visually, the game is by far one of the best for the PS3. The graphics really are top notch including some extremely visually impressive effects like the sky reflecting off the roof of your car. The crowds are a little static, but look alive enough to be believable. There are no weather effects, but the shine of the sun off the road is realistic as well. All in all, this is arguably the pinnacle of graphics on the console at this moment, and it sets the standard pretty high." Read on for the rest of this concise review -- and chime in below with comments on any other games of this season that you'd like to praise or pan.

"The game is integrated right into the Playstation network, but sadly does not allow you to race against other drivers. Instead, you are limited to time and draft attack trials. However, the gameplay will keep you busy. You are allowed to save your replays and upload your times to the network, but only the top 10 or so are viewable from the track portion of the game. On the main menu there is an option to view where you rank per car. Not surprisingly, the U.S. version definitely had some large gaps between times as of December 25th so if you're really competitive there are some great opportunities to make a name for yourself. I think I was ranked as low as 4000 on some of the tracks as I was just trying to unlock the cars, so there are a lot of competitors out there.

There are 10 cars in all. The IGN article above links to the list if you're interested. You start with the Suzuki Cappuccino and work your way up by beating goal times for each car on the given track. There is only one track, but it's challenging enough that it might take you a few tries initially to beat the times. IGN says it took them about half an hour to unlock the cars, but I turned off a lot of the driving aids such as stability control and automatic shifting so it took me closer to a few hours. Plus, I'm a horrible driver.

From a control standpoint, the game is pretty standard in that you use the buttons to accelerate and brake and the L1 and R1 buttons to shift. The left analog allows you to steer. Contrast this with the F1 Championship Edition demo which uses the Left analog to steer and the Right analog to accelerate and decelerate. I actually prefer the F1 method better as it gives you a little more control over the pace of acceleration, similar to a gas pedal in a real car.

Overall, the game is a lot of fun when you've played out the launch titles and want something that you can show off to your friends. It might not be the most exciting title but it's definitely a challenge for casual gamers and experts alike, and the ability to record your times online adds a bit of fun to the title. Hopefully it will satiate those who need a GT5 fix and there is a rumor that more content will be released later on.

As a side note, my parents wanted to try out the PS3 so I let them play the F1 Championship Edition, Motorstorm, and GT HD demos, and they preferred F1 because it was easier to drive. GT was second hardest and Motorstorm totally confused them as the tracks aren't well defined."

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Thanks to fistfullast33l for this review.

On control schemes

[drinkypoo]

From a control standpoint, the game is pretty standard in that you use the buttons to accelerate and brake and the L1 and R1 buttons to shift. The left analog allows you to steer. Contrast this with the F1 Championship Edition demo which uses the Left analog to steer and the Right analog to accelerate and decelerate. I actually prefer the F1 method better as it gives you a little more control over the pace of acceleration, similar to a gas pedal in a real car.

The reason the default changed, which IIRC happened with Gran Turismo 3, is that having accel and brake at opposite ends of an axis precludes heel-toe braking, which is a necessary technique out in the real world, and thus useful to get the best possible times in gran turismo.

I can't heel-toe in the real world (feet too big, legs too long) and I can't drive worth a fuck in computer racing games (no buttometer makes it much harder - I need the ass dyno for assistance) so I've never employed it myself. I find that preloading is usually enough. But it does make sense.

Re:It's good to know...

[KingNaught]

No crash effects in this game, I rammed my car into a railing at top speed and it just came to a stop.

Same ol' GT

[Nfinit]

I love GT, GT4 is the reason I finally broke down and picked up a Slimline PS2, but until a working car damage system is implemented-- something Sega GT on the Dreamcast holds to this day over the Gran Turismo games-- it's really hard to take GT HD seriously anymore. And that's not even getting into other advancements made such as driving lines, more than six cars on the track and working driver AI.

Re:Did I see it right?

[Kirin Fenrir]

Gran Turismo HD is a FREE product to show off the GT5 engine; considering that, "10 cars/single player only" isn't too shabby.

Re:On control schemes

[Bastian]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought heel-toe braking was a technique for downshifting while braking where you brake with your heel, take the car out gear, tap the gas a little bit (while braking) to get the engine speed matched with the wheel speed, and downshift. (It allows a smooth downshift so drivers can keep better control of the car.) Given that Gran Turismo doesn't do anything like simulating a clutch pedal, how could it possibly give you a way to do heel-toe braking in the game?

My guess on why they wouldn't have analog control for the gas/brake is that it simplifies the controls for players, and if you're going for the best times then ideally your only three "speed settings" should be full brake (before turn), nothing (in the turn), and full gas (the rest of the time), so analog control isn't really necessary. That and with the analog buttons on the PS2 (and, I assume, PS3) controllers, one doesn't really lose the ability to fine-tune gas and brake without the analog stick.

Re:On control schemes

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, heel-toe is used for downshifting under braking. Your left foot is dedicated to clutch operation, and your right foot has to handle both brake and gas. The heel is used for braking, while the toe is ready to blip the throttle, to match engine speed to transmission speed, at the moment of downshift.

Since GT handles matching engine speed to transmission speed for you, there is no need to attempt heel-toe techniques in the game.

The technique you meant, perhaps, is left-foot-braking. In a non-shifting situation, your left foot is free to operate the brake, potentially while your right foot is on the gas. This can be useful in trail-braking situations, at the entry of a turn, after any shifting has already taken place under straight-line braking.

Basically, a small amount of brake applied at corner entry can help get the car turned, or pointed, toward the apex of the corner. It is choppy and slow to try to use your right foot entirely for the maneuver. Additionally, you want to keep your right foot on the gas, at least minimally, to avoid driveline lash from the sudden appearance of engine braking if the throttle is completely closed.

Thus, it can be useful to have both gas and brake applied simultaneously, but only for around 1% of the time taken to complete a lap.

Re:Realisitic

[miyako]

I'm not sure that you can completely pin this problem with the game designers though. As I understand it, most car companies will only license out the rights to use their cars in games under the condition that the car is basically shown only in pristine, un-wrecked condition.
I've never been a fan of the GT games, but I think that for a lot of people one of the biggest appeals is the wide variety of cars to choose from, so it's not like the designers can really just say "well screw you car companies" and go with fewer cars, or made up cars, since having the wide selection of real cars is what gets a lot of people to buy the game in the first place.

Re:On control schemes

[Bastian]

The entire explanation he provided actually explains exactly why you don't need it in the game. Have you ever had a poorly-executed downshift in the middle of a turn throw your car out of control while playing GT?

It's not that there's no gears or shifting in the GT series. It's that there's no clutch, or any of the interface complexity that comes with operating a real manual transmission. Not only is the phenomenon that heel-and-toe is designed to handle not simulated in the game, but one of the key controls necessary for executing it (namely, a clutch pedal) is also absent.

Re:On control schemes

[samkass]

The real point of heel-toe is not the possible loss of control, it's having the engine at the top of the power curve at all times. (Most gasoline engines have a fairly narrow range of RPMs where they produce the most horsepower and torque. Diesel doesn't really have this issue, which is one reason why some drivers hate them.) Anyway, since you're braking into a turn you're slowing down (and also giving the front tires more traction), so to keep the engine in the power band you have to downshift. Which means using all three pedals at once.

In most modern cars, at the speeds and conditions on most public roads, you could probably just downshift without matching RPMs and let the synchros pick up all the slack. But for real control at top performance through a turn in a car with a standard clutch and shifter, you need to toe-heel. (My old Alfa Romeo roadster basically had no synchros, and any time you downshifted you essentially had to match RPMs carefully, so it was a great car to practice on.)

Incidentally, most production cars' gearboxes are such that to do the first downshift, just press the clutch without lifting your foot from the gas... the resulting RPM jump should be just about right to go one gear lower.

GTR 2 Realisitic

[Anonymous Coward]

GTR 2 [wikipedia.org] doesn't have that problem.

Re:On control schemes

[smash]

The real point of heel-toe is not the possible loss of control, it's having the engine at the top of the power curve at all times.

Incorrect. It's about keeping the car under control. If you're turning slightly while braking and don't heel+toe when you downshift, depending on how aggressive your clutch is, you can unsettle the rear wheels and cause the car to spin (in a rear wheel drive car at least).

To obtain your level 3 CAMS license in Australia (not sure what the equivalents are over seas), you need to be able to heel+toe for this reason.

If you are in teh correct gear for the speed you're doing, your RPM will be in the torque band regardless of *how* you put it into that gear :D

Re:Realisitic

[iainl]

Substitute "most car companies" with "Honda" and you'll find the actual case. Polyphony consider them to be too important in their native Japanese market to leave out, so everyone else gets pristine equipment, too.

You'll notice how most other manufacturers you'd want in a racing game (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus, Ford, RUF (as the standard Porsche cheat), Aston Martin, Jaguar, Pagani and so on and so forth) get the merry crap beaten out of them in the Project Gotham Racing series.

Re:On control schemes

[Ender Ryan]

Bigger feet should actually make it easier to execute a heel-and-toe shift if you use the side of your foot on the gas instead of actually using your heel to blip the gas.