“The car is heavy” – Gran Turismo 5

**Gran Turismo 5** (Polyphony/Sony, PlayStation 3, 2010)

Back in 1998, Gran Turismo arrived close to fully formed as a deep racing game with impressive handling and an upgrade loop that made playing it an experience to keep going and going with. Gran Turismo 2 smoothed out its few issues and added enough extras to draw that experience out towards the infinite if you wanted. Gran Turismo 3 and Gran Turismo 4 followed on much the same as the first pair, but looking spectacular. Gran Turismo 5 could and did pull off the same by moving into HD. But by the time Polyphony finally finished it, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue had been out for two and a half years showing what that would look like, so it would take a bit more to be special. The route they went was to try to find new ways to express a love for the world of driving cars fast.

Love of cars driving fast was already the heart of the whole series, and expanding that was nothing new, of course. Gran Turismo Concept Tokyo-Geneva 2002 did it by focusing on concept cars from motor shows, and providing a set of the most up-to-date ones to get playing with. That didn’t do so much for me, lacking the level of fascination with those cars for doing the same things with them to appeal. The difference in Gran Turismo 5 is the context it puts its cars in, which starts from the intro with its dramatic journey through the manufacturing process from molten metal to a complete car.

All of the usual Gran Turismo successes are in there, give or take some terrible load times and some particularly awkward menus, but there’s now more. You don’t just get to do Nascar driving around Indianapolis as part of the standard career, although if you want to and earn enough money you eventually can. Instead, once you reach the moderate level requirements, you effectively get a set of Nascar specific licence tests, with driver Jeff Gordon offering gently reassuring advice, though the game remains pleasingly hands-off once it gets to the finer details. Trying to take an oval corner at full speed without hitting either the outside wall is as compelling as any classic Gran Turismo licence test, but gains further from the sense of it being a carefully curated glimpse into a wider world.

The newest highlights of Gran Turismo 5 are the ones where it expands to take on the variety of assorted Codemasters racers while locating those experiences deftly into a culture. Learning the way round the infamously lengthy and challenging Nurburgring Nordschleife, piece by piece in a classic Mercedes, the history feels ever present without being overstated. Karting feels appropriately like its own separate thing while drawing on all the same skills. Admittedly it’s still not going to do much for anyone without at least some interest in cars, but if you have that it’s a warm invitation to go in further.

Most telling of all is that alongside its fictional tracks in fictional locations, and fictional tracks in real locations, the real tracks in real locations don’t just go from Indianapolis to Suzuka but also include the Top Gear Test Track from the BBC magazine show. Which is not home to a formal racing event on the same level of any of the others, despite having been navigated on camera by an impressive array of famous racing drivers. What it is though, for all the faults of the associated show, is one of culture’s most popular expressions of the love of driving cars really fast. Recognising and celebrating that in simple form is what Gran Turismo 5 is all about.