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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." Thanks to fistfullast33l for this review.
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." Thanks to fistfullast33l for this review.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You must be a Unitarian. Fucking Catholics have no wireless access and the powerstrip situation is abysmal.
Are there any plans to release this for other hardware and OSs? Speaking as an Amiga OS 4 user it's one of my concerns.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
I can't believe you're bashing, of all games, Gran Tuismo for lack of gameplay.
some extremely visually impressive effects like the sky reflecting off the roof of your car.
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.
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.
A few impressions ... GT:HD is decent, but I don't know if I'd call it the best-looking game the PS3 has to offer, but I can't comment too much on this as I'm still sadly playing in standard def. However, people previously commenting on how this was a high-res GT4 need to take a closer look. Any criticism directed toward it is rather silly, though; it's free, it's fun, and it looks good. You may want more, but come on, it's free.
That said, Resistance has been my main focus. I don't even like first-person shooters, normally. The polygon count is nice, but since I'm playing this in SD it's not really of primary concern; a really solid Insomniac shooter is. If you've ever played Ratchet and Clank, you know how Insomniac can put together a level and pace things: though far different than R&C, their style and skill is very evident. They toss lots of things to shoot at you, and give you lots of stuff to shoot with, which are the two fundamental things a shooter needs; they did this in R&C, and they did it again in Resistance. It's not some fundamentally different, revolutionary game; but it is a very fun FPS that has kept even me, who gets bored after minutes of play with other FPS's, interested enough to keep playing. I guess it gets a lot of the little things right.
The other game I have at the moment is Full Auto 2. This is a blast, too, pun not entirely unintended. To summarize, the game is basically the bastard child of Need for Speed and Twisted Metal. The races can feel intensely fast-paced, and the battle arenas play out much the same way as TM. The story is ignorable; I have. The one noticeable annoyance is what seems to be stuttery audio/video ... but strangely, this only occurs during menu sequences and cutscenes. If it's an intentional effect, it's not a good one. Fortunately it's not a nuisance when you actually play the game.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
while every version was in its development stage, they would always say that it was going to include damage. Then when it was released, of course it didnt. This is my biggest problem with the game.
Gran Turismo HD is a FREE product to show off the GT5 engine; considering that, "10 cars/single player only" isn't too shabby.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
What part of "DEMO" didnt get into your tiny, preoccupied with "back then games were better", mind?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I heard someone talking about the guys from Bizarre(Project Gotham Racing) got their first look at the demo and are despondent. Not really surprising when an early demo comes out and your own fans are going nuts over the driving model and graphics.
...
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.
I guess I'd assume he's saying the download took about the time it takes to go to church for Christmas.
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.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
So mentioning that he went to church is shoving it down your throat? Would you rather he lied? I think he was just providing context for the story. Why should he have to hide what he did? Really if he would have mentioned that he went to temple or went to his local mosque or to the new Rocky movie it wouldn't have made me feel any different. I guess I'm just not as sensitive to people mentioning religious activities as you.
In Republican America phones tap you.
Not everyone goes to church for christmas. Some christians don't go to church at all! And surprise of surprises, some people aren't even christian and have never even been in a church!
He might as well have said "by the time I finished churning one quarter of a hogshead's worth of butter, the download finished"
That's why the GP asked why it was relevant.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
> Yeah, mod me down as a troll. That's what all you believers do isn't it? La la la, I can't hear you...
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.
My other car is first.
Even if sinners who are condemned to eternal damnation knew how long church lasts these days, how do they know much time to add on for travel? The poster could have driven for three hours to get to his church to drop off some dry cleaning, and then stopped off on the way back home to help a friend resurface their driveway for another hour or two. Or maybe the church is right next door, in which case it only took a few moments to download two thirds of a gig, which is pretty damn impressive if you ask this goat lover!
This is by far the best driving game I've ever seen or experienced. If you live for driving games and have an HD display the free demo is worth the cost of a ps3. Nothing comes close. Keep up the good work Sony!
While you're here, do you have any tips on how I can get my parents to buy me a PSP?
It's relevant to people who know. Just like how it would be relevant if he indeed did mention it took as long as finishing churning one quarter of a hogshead's worth of butter. If you don't know what the writer means, then it's your responsibility to figure it out, or ignore it all together.
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.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Coincidentally, I'm in the midst of playing GT4 right now on the PS2. I'm trying to complete the 24hr Nurburgring event and for those of you not familiar with the series, this really means 24 hours. You can't save and come back to it later. You *can* pause the game, so it's not like you have to sit there for 24 hours, but still. My PS2 has been on for 3 days straight and I'm only 12:32:28:250 in.
Which illustrates, I think, where the GT franchise has gone wrong. I've been a huge fan of the series since the first edition, on PSX. It's made a wannabe riceboy out of me, in particular my fascination with the beast of a car called the Skyline. I even own one now, albeit the North American domestic market version. I don't play games as much as I used to and really, my PlayStations have become Gran Turismo machines. I bought my PS2 only after GT3 came out; I bought GT4 shortly after release more than a year and half ago.
And as I sit there, circling Nurburgring over and over and over (on lap 102 now), it's clear to me that this isn't fun anymore. Polyphony Digital lost sight of the "fun" aspect in GT3, I think. Endurance races existed before then, but in GT3, they got ludicrous and now, it's just completely insane. 24 hours??? For a single race??? And this is not the only one- there's another 24h hour one, plus a bunch of 8 hours. 2-4 hours was bad enough in the earlier versions.
I enjoy the technical aspects of the game - finding the line, the brake points, the differences between cars. But I can't also help think about all the things I don't like about the game while mindless doing this event. Like the utter shit AI in computer controlled cars. They drive like you don't exist, ramming you from behind as if you were invisible. And they make the same mistakes over and over. The lack of balance in the races - very few are actually challenging when you take a LM Fairlady against tuned production cars, or as in this case, a Minolota Toyota race car against LM cars. You could argue that I should pick cars that are more competitive and sometimes I do, but they don't make it easy to figure out what you are up against and with the potential "penalty" to have to do another 24 fucking hours if I lose, no, I'm not going to pick a competitive car.
Polyphony's strength, obviously, is their graphics wizardry- each new version takes your breath away. But they really need to rethink gameplay. Lose the ridiculous endurance races. Pare down the total number of events - it's ungodly and without the sense of satisifaction of "completing" a game, I feel less anticipation for the next one. Do something to make races more competitive - perhaps chose the opposing field based on the car the player brings in. Make the computer controlled cars mercy to the same physics as the player. Create bigger penalties for crashing (much has been said about how the auto manufacturers won't allow damage to appear on their cars, but there are other ways). And so on.
Buying the next GT edition has always been an automatic for me, but after this, I'm not so sure. When a game is more work than fun, what's the point?