Gran Turismo 5 Manual is Disappointing

Hi cats and kittens, sorry I haven’t posted in a week I’ve been trying to make plans and I had a little time off and so on down the list of excuses but in my defence; your face!

So I won’t own GT5 for another month but I know a man who does and instead of a 200 page colossus flopping out of his package (is it ever impossible to insert a dick joke?)(Heh-heh….insert a dick heh heh heh.) he was greeted with a ten page misery.

I love game manuals, it’s part of the ritual; the smell of it, the quality of the paper, the blurb. The game manual though is on its way out. Why sure I can see why. For one it’s much cheaper to do without in terms of materials cost. For another games are much more accessible these days and so the general audience can easily pick up a well designed game just from playing the opening levels. More games use the method of “show don’t tell” and include tutorial levels, even if they aren’t named as such. Most people probably just don’t read the manual, preferring instead to just jump right in, and I can respect that.

For me the manual was what I had to cherish between getting the game and playing the game. Be it christmas or birthday mornings where I’d have all the presents unwrapped but not access to the machine, or getting bought one in town and needing to interact with the game in some way on the journey home. Like I say; ritual. I guess we as a gaming audience grew up and were able to buy our own games and even play on them whenever we want (whenever we want ladies, that’s right I set my own bedtime) so the manual becomes an obstacle.

The game manual just has less to offer, control schemes are by and large intuitive and similar across a genre (any FPS will handle more or less the same), nobody cares about the warnings and concept art is a whole other thing and can get more money as Special Edition addendums or art books in their own right. The one for Okami is fucking lush by the way.

The games which would be well served by a manual tend to go a different route. Civilization V is one of the last games I bought and contained a couple hundred paged PDF. They cited the reason of saving paper for this delivery method and as they had clearly put a lot of work and a healthy dash of charm into it, I found no reason to argue that this was the correct decision. I was going to be on a computer anyway, right?

So it’s just one of those things that gets left by the wayside when progress is made. I don’t disagree with it, it’d be stupid to include a useless manual for nostalgia alone. I guess I’ve got plenty of old ones hanging around though. And at the end of the day it’s ultimately the game itself which inhabits the memory. It’s just a shame that a habit dies.

Gran Turismo 5 Intro Movie Question Mark

I’ve only ever gone for arcade racers but growing some love in the lead up to Gran Turismo 5 and having played it at Eurogamer I can exclusively reveal I am very moist for this title.

In my underpants.

So even though the game has just gone gold, somehow, some people already have a copy and are being asked by Sony to take down their YouTube posts of screen caps. Because god forbid they should get free advertising.

So mooching around some I found this poor quality video of the game’s intro sequence.

It looks pretty legit but I will have to confirm its authenticity via my network of industry contacts.

*puts porn on continuous loop. screams at garden furniture mail order call centres. fails to realise phone is unplugged*

I guess the jury will have to remain out on this one until Sony forwards someone their review copy.

Ahem.

Gran Turismo 5, also in 3D

Expectations are high. After more than 4 years in development Polyphony Digital need to produce the gaming equivalent of finger banging the audience to a post orgasmic climax. I like to think of it as a sexual finishing move.

But enough about your mum.

This pretty much needs to be a benchmark for quality. It wont be so great for a party time fun bash like you may think Burnout or Need for Speed is, but let’s be fair, it does have kart racing. What they’ve done with karts is let you know they don’t take themselves too seriously while still not making a popcorn racer, and keeping a game design pedigree.

It is painfully detailed and it pays off. All the little details that you perhaps cannot identify individually without some effort, collude to beam directly into your brain the feeling that you are watching something very realistic.

The lighting, the physics, the reflections, the dirt, the focus blur, the motion blur and the sound.

The sound.

I started off having accidentally chosen a manual gearbox. Now when I start off something like this, the most recent similar game being Forza 3, I like to get the feel of the cars and so put on an automatic gearbox to avoid having something else to think about. On a related side note the most annoying thing about a racing “simulator” is the propensity to completely misjudge your speed and turn into a corner only to oversteer dramatically going, in fact, in a completely straight line and crashing.

So I’m on the start line fully aware that I’m going to have to gear manually, also it’s a new game to get the hang of and I’m supposed to be paying attention so I can hack together some bullshit preview for my un-viewed blog.

Fucking love the R8

I hear the car rev and I nearly shit. I don’t care how prototypically blokey this makes me appear, how adolescently loutish but when I hear a big car engine roar it is heaven. Makes me feel ten years old again with models of Lamborghinis on my windowsill and pictures of Lotuses on the wall. From an intellectual standpoint it is the wonder of the progression of engineering genius that has led to the current range of motors. And personally I’ve almost come to accept the fact that I will probably never own a supercar, so this game is in all likelihood the closest I will ever get it.

So now all my points come together like a bukkakke money shot. (Four Ks in bukkakke, right?)

I’m off the line and I realise I would probably buy this game for the sounds alone. If the game has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is racing noise I will not be disappointed. In fact I’ll probably play it in my car while I’m driving. Anyway, I clumsily start to get the feel of shifting the gears for which you must rely on engine noise and in the beginning, the briefest of glances at the rev counter. Oh shit there’s a corner so now where I’d usually hammer the breaks, try to gas through the turn and slide into the barrier what happens is I drop shift to a gear below where I need it out of panic pressing, slow right the hell down then advance a gear into the turn, my revs drop and I power out.

Turns out I should always have run a manual game, and you should too and I’ll tell you why. If you want just an arcade experience and that’s all you ever want then you can drive an automatic but to be fair, if that’s what you want there are a ton of other games you should be playing. If you want to be involved and get your teeth into this then play the manual setting from the start. It may be tougher at first but you will get better faster and more comprehensively.

When I was learning to play bass I decided to exclude using my little fingers because it was easier to just leave them out as they are naturally not as dextrous. This was a mistake because when it came time to play more complex licks I really needed to bring them in and re-learning to include them was a bitch. I still don’t use the pinkie of my plucking hand because it is ridiculously, disproportionately small but that’s another matter.

Please enjoy another screen to break up the article

So I’m riding pretty high throughout my lap. I’m taking corners better than I could have ever expected, the scenery is gorgeous, the car is absolutely pristine and the noises primal. The revs, the sound of the road, the bumps (you know, the red and white bits, what the hell are they called again……..?) everything just kind of marries up and satisfies you. Very impressive stuff.

3D

Right so exactly the same set up but in 3D. The 3D demos didn’t last a full lap even but I assume it plays the same.

The car was an image to behold. The way the glass and metal gleamed together with how the rear of the car was very discernibly closer than the back window showed how clear the 3D is. They obviously have put a lot of work into getting the dimensions of the vehicles just right. The environments move to fast to work in 3D though. It’s the same in even the best 3D movie. Quick scenes just don’t cut it, they appear choppy and jittery and it does not work. Which is a shame because the car in 3D looks near as perfect as  I can imagine.

So to summarize, you can keep your fancy third dimension, I’m happy to cream it on the sofa with my two thank you very much

TGS Happened

Actually it’s still happening. For some reason I thought this was going to be in October so it’s caught me with my proverbial pants down. Also, my literal pants.

The shame of being seen with one’s legs over one’s head attempting to auto-fellate is nothing compared to the shame one feels at never having been to Japan. I mean, I’ve heard that’s the case. I want to go but am acutely aware that I will not have the resources to do so at any point in the next 15 – 20 years.

Because I know you want up to the second coverage I’m recommending you find another site, because you’ve come to the wrong place, it’s only fair.

Here’s what would have made my underwear tight if I were wearing any.

Gran Turismo 5 E3 Trailer

They simply have to release GT5 this year. It’s been in development since about April 2004. Yes, more than 6 years, and has cost in excess of $60million to produce. It seems unlikely that it will recoup its cost but it will be a trophy game, by that I mean a showcase for Sony’s first party publishing and PlayStation processing prowess.

To be fair though, most of those images look real. Actually real.

The song is Big Bad Wolf by The Heavy.

The Top 14 Games For The Rest Of The Year – 9

Part 8 here, in case you missed it.

9. Gran Turismo 5 – PS3

This has been in development 6 years (in April) and has cost north of $60million to make.

All I can think is; It’d better be fucking worth it. It certainly looks very pretty and you can fully customize your game to be as much like an arcade or simulation experience as you like.

Pretty much my only caveat for buying is whether or not it has a Caterham 7 in it. If I could own one car it’d be a Caterham 7, I goddamn love that car. I am actually in physical pain right now because not only do I not own one, I can not see any point in the future where it will be financially possible for me to own one. And that burns, man.

Sony has confirmed this will be released by the end of 2010 and they really need to get it done. There’s a point where fever pitch abates and your audience just gets apathetic. Nintendo have their socks pulled up as they now only announce up to 6 months in advance. Partly so as not to fatigue the buzz and partly because their intended casual audience who don’t read the gaming press wont know about it anyway.

Part 10 tomorrow.