Gran Turismo HD 2.0 Impressions

March 24th, 2007, 01:09 Posted By: wraggster

via ign

To coincide with the UK release of the PlayStation 3, Sony and Polyphony Digital have revved their engines and moved Gran Turismo HD to the European PlayStation Store. But while US and Japanese gamers are still running laps in version 1.1, UK gamers have gotten the world's first taste of Gran Turismo HD Concept 2.0.

Largely identical to version 1.1 (and 1.0 for that matter), GTHD 2.0 includes the same 10 cars, the Eiger Nordwand track and time trial and drift options. However, there's one major difference: Version 2.0 includes Force Feedback support. Yes indeed, now that Sony and Immersion have kissed and made up, Polyphony has been able to implement the technology into the game. Listing official support for four Logitech wheels, namely the Driving Force Pro, GT Force, Driving Force and Driving Force EX, racers are now able to actually feel the road as they compete for leading laps times on the game's online leaderboard.

We plugged in a Driving Force Pro, the same wheel that we used to review Gran Turismo 4, and took a few laps with each of the game's 10 available vehicles. The implementation seems to be very basic for the time being, perhaps just a "we're going to do it" proof of concept. Much of the feedback feels like it's based only on engine feedback rather than the road. While you'll feel a jolt when you drive on or off the track, you won't feel pebbles, grass or anything of that sort.

As the first couple cars are rather underpowered, you might not even realize that it's on. Once you get up to the Ferrari 599 GTB, the wheel does provide a great bit more feedback and lets you know whether or not your wheels are on the ground, but only subtly. Again, it doesn't feel as if everything in the world has been assigned a Force Feedback variable yet, so compared to what we saw in Gran Turismo 4 it's a pretty weak implementation.

It's only a start, however, and we have no doubt that Polyphony will nail Force Feedback by the time that Gran Turismo 5 actually ships. For now, you can sleep better knowing just that.

There are 4 comments - Join In and Discuss Here