Gran Turismo 5 is launched in a car park

I went to the launch of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in London last night. It was held in an underground car park in Marble Arch and all of the cars featured in the game were there for people to have a gander at. It was an impressive set up with lots of chequered flags but, bizarrely, there were only four gaming booths for the 150-odd people there.

To play, you had to queue for 20 minutes or so and, as many of the folk there were proper game journalists, if you weren't very good there was all sorts of heckling from the waiting masses. Did you know that the game view where you are above and behind the car is called the 'angel view'? I didn't, but using it rather than a first-person perspective will get you all sorts of disapproval.

I took along a friend called Chuck who does various bits of TV production and directing. He's not much of a gamer but he has had training on and driven a Renault Formula 1 car for some filming work he did. A nice bloke set him up with what he believed was an automatic car. After burning round the track and crashing a lot less than the guy who played before him – and bragging loudly – it was pointed out that he was in fact in a manual car and 'burning' round the track in second gear. He wasn't so good when he went up to fifth.

If you are a fan of driving games then Gran Turismo is a very pretty game with beautiful graphics. You will crash though. A lot. If you have read any of my other articles you may have noticed the point of me writing about games is that I am an average gamer. I love games, but I'm just not an alpha male when it comes to furious button pushing. Proper game journalists may think their witty comments are funny, but being told I drive like a trained monkey can be very cutting.

I did meet a nice guy called David who is one of the PR folk at Sony and we had a chat about my previous post about Blu-ray and HD movies on the PS3 and whether it would be a big selling feature in the coming year and he had some interesting comments. Essentially, he sees the ability to play HD movies a nice plus but the big point of having Blu-ray going forward is being able to put out huge games that would take five or six DVDs. The push from their point of view is getting companies to develop games that will really take advantage of this. Looks like it's going to be an interesting year for Sony and Microsoft as the formats up the ante.

Comments

[mrshev]

I played GT5 out in Singapore at Takashimiya (sp?) and though it was great to look at and you could practically touch the blades of grass as you whizzed by...I felt a little underwhelmed and switched over to GTR on the 360 next door, which though not as accurate or perfectly simulated felt a little more visceral and involving.

I do respect the enormous attention that has gone into replicating the handling and characteristics of each car but I think that it is important that if you hit a tire wall at 200mph you should count yourself lucky to be alive and rue the fact that you are going to have to spent another 1/2 million to replace the car you lovingly built rather than say: oh well, I can catch up...

GT needs to move on I think, most other racing games seems to have done...

[The Judge]

David - great article - nice to read you actually reporting on something and not just hacking out some uninformed tosh.

[Foxychick]

Wow this Chuck guy sounds amazing. Where can I see / meet him. Is he single?

[Philip J Fry]

The Judge - Great comment - Condescend much?

Foxychick - Are you Chuck or just a lady that like a slow driver?

[Chuck]

PHILIP J FRY - Okay, you caught me.
How's bender by the way? Tell him he still owes me money.