viernes, 8 de octubre de 2010

Gran Turismo 5: One Last Lap Before Launch


Gran Turismo 5 was announced in 2006, a few months before the PlayStation 3 was even released. It was before I worked in the videogame business. I've moved three times since then, fallen in love twice, had five different jobs, grown my hair halfway down my back, and then shaved it all off again. I've been to seven weddings, including my brother's, witnessed two funerals, and got to explain my Metroid Prime opus theory to Shigeru Miyamoto in a top floor suite in a Manhattan skyscraper. And that's the short version.

After all that time Gran Turismo 5 is almost here. If it hasn't already been certified and sent off to the disc-pressing factories, it will be imminently. As the November 4 launch date nears Sony came to New York with a demo build to show off GT5. For old time's sake. The demo was lovingly setup in a sturdy bucket seat with Logitech's officially licensed Gran Turismo wheel and 3D mode enabled. The demo was limited to two modes: Arcade, and Time Trial. There were two other options available in the menu—Drift Battle and 2 Player Battle—but both were crossed out with a forbidding red line. There was nothing in the demo that hasn't been shown before, but it provided one last look at the product of Kazunori Yamauchi's half-decade of love, labor, and car parts.

More Gran Turismo 5 - (PlayStation 3) Videos

The most exciting thing I experienced was driving in Toscana, a dusty rally track set against the orange sky of a setting sun. I was racing with the traction control turned on but the feeling of sliding on the loose sand with the rumbling wheel pulling one way and then the other was fantastic. Completing a lap on this track in my Ford Focus RS WRC 07 '08 was a genuinely physical experience. My shoulders were tense the whole time and my forearm muscles were constantly trying to counterbalance the unbridled steering wheel. As I made it into the second lap, the sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky dark blue and adding a small touch of eeriness to the race. The atmosphere was dramatic, a driver cutting through the desert in the middle of the night, relying on his headlights to keep him from catastrophe. 

For the next race I took a tiny Fiat 500 1.2 8V Lounge SS 08 onto a city track, Tokyo R246. The aesthetic contrast with Toscana was immediate; the shifting desert sky traded for a changeless blue Tokyo afternoon, and long shadows crossing the asphalt. The feedback from the wheel provides a great sense of speed, pulling more as the speedometer climbs higher, while rumbling at different intensities when I drifted onto a patch of grass or one of the red and white safety runners. The car accelerated slowly and lost even more acceleration ability in higher gears, which felt about right for a small two-dour coupe shaped like a lunchbox from the future. 



I've come back for you.

The last track I tried was the Super Speedway in Indiana, home of the Indy 500. I took a Zonda R '09 onto the track and got to let the engine roar into 6th gear with the accelerator floored for a few exciting seconds on the long straightaways. On a couple turns I'd let my speedy thrillseeker override caution and consequently went slamming into the barrier walls. This experience was disappointingly muted. After playing Need for Speed: Shift last year, I'd grown attached to the violent sense of disorientation and full body shake in that game's collisions. Going 110 miles per hour and slamming into a cement barrier only produced a small rumble and no real visual disruption. Yamauchi has reluctantly included a damage system in Gran Turismo 5, but it doesn't feel damaging. It's mechanical and detached, the product of a man more interested in the small differences of peak performance than the visceral consequence of failure. 

It's easy to forget that games are built for our benefit, to give us experiences we couldn't have had on our own. The hype cycle of announcements, first trailers, and first hands-on sometimes give me the opposite impression: that we exist first as servants of the videogame industry, and as self-sacrificing buyers who funnel money into the ever-increasing pyre of visual splendor that remains so cherished in the game world. 

A lot has changed since Gran Turismo 4 came out. I'm far removed from where I was the last time I sat down to tinker in Yamauchi's garage, pushing myself forward by half-second increments, fueled by millimetric tweaks. Playing Gran Turismo 5 one last time before it jumps the nest, everything felt remarkably familiar. The game has an exceptional physics simulation, bright and photorealistic visuals, a genuine cockpit view, and, at long last, car damage. Yet, it still feels the same. Or rather, the part of me that this kind of simulation appeals to feels the same. I haven't given it much attention over the last several years. GT5 reminded me it's still there. You could call that a lot of things, but one of them would have to be a gift.

Read more: http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/112/1126663p1.html#ixzz11lvqktwx

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