Gran Turismo 5 Promises Collision Damage. Still.

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

Yes, it’s a post about something other than the feds getting the US taxpayer to squeal like a pig to save Chrysler and GM from the uncomfortable lesson that actions have—OMG—consequences. In fact, the closer we get to the Big Kahuna of GM’s C11, the more determined I am to provide car-related posts. After a regrettable hiatus, car reviews, both large and small, are back. “Piston Slap” and “Hammer Time” continue apace (thanks, guys). And I’m bound and determined to get some more product reviews headed your way. In that spirit of “Oh, yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone,” here’s the inside dope on GT5, via escapistmagazine.com, after le jump. Spock! Damage control! It appears we are not digitally configured for damage, Captain. That’s a relief. Indeed. Bones. Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a videogame producer. I can’t just add source code like that! The whole game could lock up and crash. Do what you can.

While discussing the dynamic weather effects in the game, [GT5 producer Hymie] Yamauchi also hinted upon GT5 including night time racing. The talk of model damage is the most interesting bit though, as the franchise has notoriously been promising the feature for years and was planning to include it when GT 5: Prologue was released over a year ago. Rumblings of a collision damage patch for Prologue have been empty as well. It still remains unclear if the car model damage will in any way affect the car’s in-game handling. Amongst the major racing franchises, Gran Turismo is the only one that still does not feature any degree of car model damage.

Robert Farago
Robert Farago

More by Robert Farago

Comments
Join the conversation
4 of 18 comments
  • Lowmanjoe Lowmanjoe on May 12, 2009

    Meh +3. I was hoping that the full version would have been released by now (which is a thought I recall having last year) so I can have an excuse to get a PS3. I'll probably have bought Forza 3, finished the single player career and be well into the second or third racing season online with the league I'm racing in before GT5 is released. Might as well wait for the PS4 at this point and make it a launch title.

  • Samir Samir on May 12, 2009

    PS3: The world's 1337est blu-ray player.

  • Alex Nigro Alex Nigro on May 12, 2009

    BTW, OutRun Online Arcade is awesome. That is all.

  • Niky Niky on May 13, 2009

    GTAIV's driving model is like driving dune buggies on ice... realistic, it is not. GT5P has cured some of the low speed glitches of the GT4 engine, and physics are actually pretty good, even compared to the current Forza build. GT4's issue was never about oversteer or understeer... the understeer and oversteer were realistically modelled based on the real cars. (Like we say on the track... if you think your car doesn't understeer, you've never driven it hard enough...) The problem is that the patch that keeps cars from flying off the track and flipping over was severely limiting oversteer due to tire-skipping (thus beefy rear anti-rollbars, hand-brake usage and threshold braking could not initiate oversteer). GT5P's engine now allows somewhat realistic hand-brake turns and allows more neutral-steer and oversteer for non-mid-engined cars. It's still not perfect, and I wish GT5 would eliminate the anti-roll-over script completely, but it's 100% better than GT4. Too bad there's no Sarthe (LeMans) track bundled with the game, as I'd like to see how high speed bumps are implemented here (high speed physics have always been a GT strong point). The AI is also much, much better now. Still not perfect, but they react to you, don't always barrel into you at a corner (only sometimes) and really dice with one another. I just wish they'd add a "bravery" modifier that would elicit random apex-cutting dives from the AI drivers, to make it feel more like an actual track-day or weekend commute. And they should add horns. We need horns and flashers, and possibly black flags. Hell, add oil slicks and bits of broken glass and bumper on the track, as well. Damage... meh. I'd rather they just finished the game first. It's quite easy to put in damage, but to do it in a realistic manner while not overloading the physics engine is another story altogether.

Next