Gran Turismo HD for PS3 Impressions 257
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.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.
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."
Thanks to fistfullast33l for this review.
Wow So Next Gen OMG (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha, well I guess we shouldn't mention that the sky has been reflecting off cars' roofs ever since Gran Turismo on the PSX? Ahh, hype, gotta love it.
Re:Church? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you scared that someone went to church? Does it bother you someone mentioned church?
I find it perfectly relevant as it gave me a range of time it took to download the file, but then I can think in the abstract.
Re:It's good to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Did I see it right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I Hear The Guys From Bizarre Aren't Taking It W (Score:5, Insightful)
I simply don't believe you
As a general rule, anything an Anonymous Coward says on Slashdot which doesn't have a source is a lie.
They had to run PGR3 in low rez(1024x600) just to get the game to run at 30fps and now GT is running at 1080p and 60fps and graphically blows it away. That's over three times the resolution for GT.
I don't know too much about PGR3 specifically, but I do remember that up until the final month before the XBox 360's launch most developers were still using their "Alpha Dev-kits" (PowerPC 970MP dual core and Radeon based GPU) which would compile the same code but were very different in performance than the XBox 360; being that PGR 3 was a launch game it wouldn't surprise me to find out they didn't have the opportunity to optimize the engine to the system before it was released (meaning it underperformed by quite a bit).
It is scary to think what PS3 games are going to look like a year from now.
We have hit a point of diminishing returns in graphics, even if you had a system that was 4 times as powerful as the PS3 you probably would not notice a dramatic improvement in the graphics of games being released for it. The PS3 and XBox 360 will have games which look (basically) identical on both systems because neither system is that much more powerful than the other.
Re:Church? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and, more importantly, that you can't do anything else with a PS3 while it's downloading, unlike the Xbox 360, which will download non-disruptively in the background while you play games or something.
Re:Church? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Same ol' GT (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Church? (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, I don't have any ties to organized (or disorganized) religion, and I would have modded you down. Your entire post seems to have been a rant about how you're better than everyone because you don't believe in God. That's great, but as you say -- keep it to yourself. Nobody cares. (i.e. keep your non-believing in private. believers and non-believers are equally annoying).
As for the troll mod, it was the best substitute for -1 STFU or -1 You're An Idiot.
Re:On control schemes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Same ol' GT (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's good to know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Church? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't know what this is and it's important to you then look it up. I don't go to Christian church (or any "Church" for that matter) but I've driven by 1000910291290 churches in my life and have seen the times masses are and it seems like it's about an hour or an hour and a half. If I really cared I query for the average time of Christmas masses or something to that effect. I think Baptists go for hours actually as I remember someone telling me that when I worked in a restaurant when I was a kid and on Sunday you would get a large group around 3:00 of people dressed nicely and referred to as the "Baptists" (not in a negative manner either) by some employees. I then learned that they often go to church for 3 or more hours. But the average Christian is around 1-1.5 hours from what I've learned
But then, I'm curious of the world around me and not just self absorbed. I like to know about things I don't know about because I was born with a curious mind, which you've eluded to you have not. I guess I feel bad for you that you need direct exposure to something to feel like you know anything about it. I guess with my apparent unique ability to think in the abstract, I also have a natural curiosity that lends itself to discovery and knowledge about non-sequitor things.
But back on topic, this isn't why the parent made the comment he did. I know this and you know this.
He did it because he's intolerant of anything "God" related and believes he has a certain right to not be exposed to the ideas or print of this God. He's intolerant much like some people on the other side of the coin are intolerant.
Re:Realisitic (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, Aston Martin in particular probably don't mind seeing their cars wrecked. Their top bit of product placement has always been James Bond, and 007 has never been an especially careful driver...