Wow, didn't expect so many responses in this thread so quickly! I thought I had lost this thread (deleted or locked etc) because the reviews section disappeared overnight, so I gave up and went back to testing GT5.
After more thorough gameplay it's become apparent to me that this game was indeed rushed somewhere along the line. This was most likely to capitalise on christmas sales but having said that I think it could have done a world of good to wait until mid-December before rushing it out the door to retailers.
Incoming wall of text!
It seems to me that PD really messed up the release, whether they were pushed by Sony or not. It's as if PD had perfected maybe 25% of the game, having made 200 premium cars and worked out most of the backbone code such as physics and track designs etc. Which, to be honest, is exactly how I would have expected PD to go about creating the 5th installment of arguably the most popular (and hence the most profitable) racing sim series on the market. However, maybe after they had this supposed 25% completed, they just decided to simply convert the remaining 800+ cars over from GT3-4, to make an impressive marketing limbo for an early release. Then they topped it off with some quickfix menus and some more carried over features, then forgot about the rest.
I'm confident I'm not the only one who would have prefered to see maybe 50 more premium cars, with the rest being released along the line as (free, hopefully) DLC, if it meant a more polished product upon release for our hard-earned dollars. The rest of the cars could easily have come later as DLC, maybe that way we might have missed getting 50 Miata/MX5s, 25 Skylines and a heap of cars that have been thrown around by PD for a decade that, by now look extremely dated, or are just plain useless (Daihatsu Midget anyone?).
The licence's are stale and old, it's a chore to complete them all now and the only point is to assist the horribly thought out and implemented experience system. I mean really, how did they think the huge GT fanbase would enjoy sitting through the SAME licence tests we have done several times over? This is of course, excluding the long and frustrating hours put in to attempt complete gold results in 4 previous titles! Implementing Topgear into GT was a fantastic idea! But making us race old VW Kombis around the Topgear track and have the nerve to call it a "thrilling" race?
Last night I did the European hot hatch cup in my Lamborghini Countach, heavily tuned with racing tires, just as I did the compact car cup in the same car, without even holding my B class licence! I refuse to accept anyone saying the game has "minor" flaws when you think about this apparent lack of care implemented in a game that should and could have been so much more...
Yes, things will most likely be fixed via patches and DLC - but how long will this take until we are presented with the product that was glamourised to us for several years? Several years more?
Maybe we are playing GT6 right now, they just forgot to tell us that the latest Prologue was actually GT5. At this rate, we could potentially see only one proper Gran Turismo title released on the PS3 before the platform moves on but the game developers are still stuck in the previous year.
Furthermore on the subject of half-finished and care lacking aspects of the title, the menu is cumbersome and the constant auto-saving which you cannot turn off, even though we are still given a manual save button is getting exceptionally annoying. Even with the game data installed on the HDD the load times are hardly improved and still seem to take forever. Is GT5 pushing the PS3's capabilities or is it really just so rushed together that some of the coding is creating unnecessary strain?
The B spec is rather appalling, to say the least. As some people have stated, we buy Gran Turismo to
race and not to create some emotionless, randomly generated, player-controlled AI racers career. While the concept certainly could have some appeal to a few players, the fact it's even there for everyone else really seems like a menu filler and nothing else. Especially when you consider that it's the same events with more laps, but the cash and car rewards are both less then the A spec equivalent.
The tuning and GT auto (wheels, oil, racing mods etc) are extremely lackluster and boring, I swear the GT auto in Gran Turismo 5 is straight out of Gran Turismo 3/4. Why can I
-NOT- turbocharge my classic V8? Why can I
-NOT- put aftermarket wheels on a "standard" car? Why can I
-NOT- obtain a tuned/upgraded brake system? I'm not a boyracer, but why does my highly tuned FD RX7 track monster
-NOT- have an equally high-level wastegate/BoV to add to the crazy mix of sounds and add to the overall experience? If we have been fed hundreds of low quality, dated looking cars, such as the R31 GTS-R Skyline, why can I
-NOT- put my favourite old Calsonic racing livery on it? It's not as if PD seemed to do anything else about these cars aside from constantly convert them from previous titles in a neverending chain of misery.
Perhaps if the low quality "standard" cars were actually released with the ability to customise them with the racing modifications we were seeing back in GT2 (for example) and we were able to find the elusive socket to take the lock nuts off the "standard" car wheels, maybe, just maybe, the standard cars could be remotely justified to exist in such a (previously) high-level racing simulator in 2010. I feel I could go on about all sorts of things about this game, both good and bad, but I just can't bring myself to bare it anymore.
Also, I don't think it's that anyone believes 5 solid non-stop years were spent on developing GT5, but a lot more time should have been implemented on it then seemingly was spent on it. Why bother to make GT for PSP at all, when GT on a PS console should be the main goal as it always has been? The fact you can only transfer things from GT for the PSP and nothing from Prologue at all is just more marketing gimmicks to me. No, I don't think 5 years were spent on Gran Turismo 5 - it seems like it was more like 5 months.
Several months ago, my girlfriend and I decided to purchase a new HD LCD TV, with a blu-ray 5.1 home theatre system and one of the latest consoles. She was keen to get an Xbox 360, but I was so enthralled by the promise of a new and 'improved' Gran Turismo I was devoted to a PS3, and that was my
sole reason to wanting a PS3. Amazingly, we walked out with a PS3, in hindsight I regret this to no end. I've been fighting the urge to ask my girlfriend if she wants to go trade-in our PS3 complete with GT5 and accesories, and get a 360 with Forza 2 and 3 (for me), and Kinect for her. I'm split 50/50 in hoping that we will see a steady flow of appreciated updates and DLC for GT5 but I just don't see it happening in the time I'm prepared to further wait. Last night I even trashed the garage trying to find our old Xbox, hoping that we had Forza with it, as I honestly thought the original version of Forza would be a good comparison for me to the latest Gran Turismo offering. Sadly, the games are nowhere to be found, no doubt lost in the last few house moves.
End wall of text.
To make the point -
So here I sit, a once diehard Gran Turismo fanatic, having acheived 100% completion status in GT1 (twice over), GT2 (a dozen times over, at least), GT 3 and the high 90% mark for GT4, recontemplating my love and devotion to the title. Having spent countless hours playing Gran Turismo 2 especially, having gone through dozens of controllers and several consoles on this title alone, no joke the only time GT2 left my drive was to put the arcade disc in for races with friends! Am I a fanboy? Definitely not, am I a car fanatic that immediately fell in love with Gran Turismo when he was 11 years old? Definitely am!
I enjoy all racing games, arcade or otherwise, but GT was always my favourite, always my holy grail, always the one I most looked forward to hearing information about. While I understand the competitiveness of gaming titles to some people (it's some peoples equivalent of sport teams) I don't agree with it at all, as much as I loved Gran Turismo I would never rub it into a fan of a different games face as the best bar-none, I'd not force my opinion over someone elses.
Having said all of this, I'm getting strong feelings from the Forza side of the fence. Some people laugh off GT criticism by saying it's meant to have something for everyone, it's just meant to be the game for a general avid racing/car fan. But this is hardly the truth, Forza might not have the same level of physics or graphics but it's overall, a much more polished product. I don't care for Formula 1 cars, I respect them to no end for the amazing technology in them, but if I wanted to race them I'd be playing an F1 game. Slapping dirt or snow tires on an old car and having a ball with some rally was fantastic in GT5, but I don't want to go to rally school with Sebastian Loeb. I don't particularly want to race Nascar either, I thought that was a job for the Toca/Racedriver series? Gran Turismo has really lost its essence to me, the things that made my mind go crazy and my face hurt from maintaining a huge smile, like the CRX Del-Sol LM race car from GT1, or flying around Tahiti road in GT2 in the Japanese 80s challenge to win a crazy R31 Skyline silhouhette race car.
Just by looking at Forza 3 next to GT5 I feel as though Forza has been released with the utmost care from everyone involved in its creation. Looking at Gran Turismo 5, I feel like it has become a confused and incomplete marketing tool, more a mainstream brand name then a well thought-out, honest game. Amazingly realistic physics, cycling weather effects, stunning graphics, premium cars and a car list of 1000+ you say? All can be easily counted as marketing ploys to lure buyers, especially a gigantic car list. Considering so many of the 1000 cars are things we've seen for over a decade, some not even being updated, some not ever having any desire to them, it's more like a car list of 100 or so for me.
I think I've figured out that 'strange' feeling so many of us have said we experience when playing GT5. It feels like Gran Turismo 5: Beta edition. And to be honest, for me that's just unacceptable in video games these days unless you specifically signed up to an actual beta trial. The technology and funding behind games now is better then it's ever been and PD, along with Sony, have deflated my Gran Turismo dreams. Marketing is one thing, to rush a severely incomplete game out to capitalise on a sales boom like Christmas is something I would expect from EA with another Need For Speed Undercooked Rice, er, sorry, Need For Speed Fast and Furious, um, apologies - Need for Speed Underground.
I realise this post is huge, and fear not that it is the last thing I will post on this matter. I've not so much dug deep into my verdict of the game itself, but I've dug deep into my love of Gran Turismo and my faith in it as a series.
It's a sad day in my gaming history today. I think I'm going to ask my girlfriend if she still wants that Xbox...
Other games didn't have a sunset, but they had the better physics, A.I. etc. So, sure you can say "Test Drive LeMans may not have been the best racer out... but it had daytime transitions."
