Gran Turismo 5 reviews are GO!

After what has felt like an eternal wait for the millions of fans of the franchise, the first reviews of Gran Turismo 5 are currently appearing online following the lifting of Sony’s reviews embargo at 8:00am.

The overall picture is positive, with plenty of eights, a nine from Eurogamer and one or two sevens.

Ultimately, Gran Turismo 5 has improved in the most important area, how the cars feel,” CVG claims. Pounding the tarmac at the Nurburgring is even more satisfying knowing that the car is behaving as a real car would. It’s the biggest racing game around, so you certainly won’t be short of things to do once you get locked into building a serious car collection.”

However, the review does end on a somewhat sour note:

Too much of GT5 relies on past glories, building on the success of the series without shaking free of the design quirks that are holding the series back. High expectations are justified when a game has been in development so long and GT5 has more than a faint whiff of disappointment about it.”

Eurogamer’s 9/10 is currently the highest score that MCV has spotted, with reservations about the online mode and car damage offset by the vast scope of the package:

Dreamed up five years ago and served up yesterday, it’s an off-kilter vision of the future, a cumbersome game with odd priorities, certainly. But it’s equally a game that heads off in unexpected and exciting directions, makes a few notable improvements, and overflows with love – for cars, for games technology and for its own mad pursuit. It’s good that Gran Turismo’s been away so long, because it’s all the better to have it back.”

Consumer site IGN is also balanced in its praise:

Gran Turismo 5 is a 10/10 simulator wrapped up in a 5/10 game – it’s driving is as exhilarating as anything that’s gone before, and its slavish obsession with the minutiae of many of its cars ensure it’s an encyclopaedia of automotive delights. Its brilliance on the track, however is matched by its sloppiness off of it, and there’s a lack of polish that would at one time have seemed sacrilegious to the series.

Ultimately its driving wins out to ensure that it’s still a great game, but it leaves that nagging doubt; this could have been a masterpiece were it not for the fact that Polyphony was so absorbed with the detail that it took its eye off the ball.”