Gran Turismo 5

I've never been a huge fan of driving games, mostly because I always had trouble reaching the pedals in arcades and because I was never terribly interested in cars as a teen and young adult. For the last few years, however, I've become a huge fan of the BBC's Top Gear program. I watch it primarily because it's entertaining, hilarious and clever. But I have always held a great admiration for things that are well made and beautiful, and well manufactured vehicles are no exception. I still know very little about my own car, but I have recently become much more curious about cars. They are one of the great modern inventions and it's fascinating to learn about how they work.

My first impressions are good (though, it would be nice if they'd created a female shaped racing driver). There's a bit of content to install, a few settings to set and then you're off. I decided to start with a trip to the used car dealership, where I purchased my stunning first car - an unbelievably bright lemon yellow Toyota Celica. From there, I decided to work my way through the basic licenses to get a handle on the controls. It has been years since I've played a console driving game, and even then I am accustomed to using racing wheels so there's a lot to adjust to with the controller. Not knowing what speeds to use in different cornering scenarios began to hamper my license exams, however, so I decided to learn by emulation and entered my first race. This proved to be the right decision, as I was able to take the first few laps of each track in the pack as practice. Using the other cars as "bumpers" to keep me on the right track helped refresh the broad strokes for me, and even after just 3 races I saw a huge level of improvement in my consistency.

So far I am really enjoying the game, and can't wait to get another controller so that I can actually race friends. This will provide quite a lot of replay value. I'm excited to see what I will unlock once I advance to the next tier of content as well. I certainly hope there are more races in each subsequent difficulty level. I was disappointed to see only nine tournaments for the beginner rank, but considering how boring these easy races will be for skilled players I understand. I snapped a few pictures, including the one above, during replays. The photo capturing abilities are rich and the replays are very sharp as well - I'm having a lot of fun re-watching the races and analyzing my mistakes. It's clear that a great deal of work went into making this game sleek and rich with content.

Something else that I'm finding enjoyable about the game is the inclusion of specialty races with specific entry requirements. The beginner's races offer several tournaments of this type, such as a European car manufactured between 1960 and 1979 or small Japanese cars from before 1979. It's tough to afford extra cars at this point in the game, but it's fun to have the variety. Unfortunately, both of the classic cars I purchased to participate in these races proved to be very, very slow and handle terribly. I suppose it demonstrates a realistic representation of their actual performance, but it's definitely frustrating.