Nonsense... Turn10 got it completely right and PD screwed the pooch!
Seriously, good post.
Awright you.
And yes, I'm having some fun with my edit, please forgive my relentless sense of humor.
To give T10 and Forza the time of day for once, it is a good contrast to what we got in GT5.
While GT5 has a basic online structure right now, the cool elements Kaz discussed with interviewers, such as the Event Creator tools rather like we have in GT2, failed to appear. Evidently, the PSN still doesn't have the capacity for this just yet, and more GT5 fans are coming online every day. A few PD designed events appear every month or so, and just two online leaderboards at a time so far, and we have to be content with this for now. Meanwhile, the well implemented online structure Forza 2 had was discarded, for whatever reason, in favor of some strange sandbox style open system, where only private lobbies provide a shelter from the cranky rammers. While it has leaderboards for anything and everything, physics exploits mean they have to be wiped every couple of months or so, and the exploits patched out.
DLC is readily available in Forza 3, though you have to pay for it, as well as Live Gold if you want access to online gaming and stores. So far, all GT5 DLC content has been free.
GT5 has online trading and gifting, and the ability to share cars, pics and replays. Forza 3 has an online Auction House and Storefront, where people can sell decals, liveries and more, as well as trading and sharing.
With GT5, we get a paint shop... with no paint! We're stuck with the weird system of stealing paint from purchased, won, gifted or traded cars. And no livery editor. Meanwhile, Forza, especially Forza 3, has a superb and very powerful livery editor, complete with the ability to create and sell decals and complete liveries. But if you get over 130 some odd files, and if you're any kind of car painter, you will, the file handling bogs down terribly. And this is also true of image files and replays.
GT5 has a staggering number of cars, though only 220 some odd are of impeccable quality and feature interiors, and cockpit views. Forza has around 500 cars now, all of high quality, and all (as far as I know) have interiors and cockpit view. While many races in GT5 allow only 12 cars, there can be as many as 16, even online. For whatever reason, Forza is stuck with 8, even though bot cars are of much lower detail.
Damage is restricted to certain cars in GT5, though all suffer visual scuffing and denting, and while you can lose doors on racecars in GT5, Forza has a much more authentic visual and physical damage model, running about one-third what one would suffer in real life.
Physics are very good in both games, though I favor GT5's a bit more, and consider them to be closer to the PC sims I own. But collisions with other cars is more treacherous for you in GT5, and you have more of a chance of losing control if you are the rammer. GT5 has the advantage in wheel controllers, as just about any USB wheel will work, though it works wonderfully with the Logitech Driving Force GT wheel. To get a comparable experience in Forza, you need to buy the pricier and pedal-less Fanatec Carrera GT wheel, and wait for it to ship, as it's unavailable in stores.
GT5 features hundreds of sports, compact sedan and race cars, though most are Japanese cars. There are also dozens of what I refer to as "dinkmobiles," tiny underpowered economy, hybrid and utility cars, but supercars such as Ferraris, Zondas and Ford GTs are also fairly numerous. In contrast, Forza has more American and European models, more "sportier" models with higher horsepower, and more high end and supercars.
GT5 has the weakest modding system of any Gran Turismo game yet. Racing transmissions have no adjustable ratios save for the "final gear." Brake upgrades are completely missing! Many Premium cars won't accept but the minimum of bodykit fittings, and Race Mod is currently only available for 17 cars. Meanwhile, Forza will allow a great deal of tinkering, even to the selection of spark plugs, and offers a wide selection of name brand bodykit elements for all cars. And every car, including race cars, can be painted and decals applied.
GT5 once again features a trainable B-Spec bot, while Forza allows you to hire a bot to drive for you. Unfortunately, B-Spec "Bob" can only be employed in a separate B-Spec Mode.
GT5's graphics are a bit dodgy this time, even weaker than Prologue's, with glitchy shadows and replays with fewer effects applied. Even so, they still look outstanding, and there's an element of "realness" to them. While Forza 3's graphics are nice, in many ways they're less impressive than FM2's, and only on occasion is there an uncanny sense I'm watching lifelike racing film, as I often feel when watching a GT5 replay. Trackside details are heavily in GT5's favor, though Forza's aren't shabby. Forza does seem to have a better variety of tracks, though you might spend much more time taking in the sights of the GT5 courses, and GT does have an authentic Nurburgring course, the whole thing, whereas Forza's version is fraught with innacuracies. GT5 ups the ante a great deal by offering a Course Maker, giving the user the ability to make tracks and even share them.
Replays are a delight to watch in GT5, with a variety of camera angles and dynamics through the show. Forza's replays are nice enough, but you get one version, which repeats with every lap. GT5 does get a bit too carried away with flying camera shots.
Sounds run in Forza's favor, though GT5's car sounds are greatly improved and rather comparable, and the tire sounds are much better compared to Forza's flatulent single large "low pressure" sample taken from a Buick.
GT5 has the luxury of changing time of day and weather on some tracks, while Forza's are fixed and sunlit.
Photo Mode is very nice in both games, but the system you go through - or should I say,
ordeal to upload images to your file sharing site in Forza is terrible, and the image quality suffers badly just uploading it to the official forzamotorsport.net site. Meanwhile, GT5 allows easy USB access, though you have to load each image one at a time.
Music in GT5 is overall very good, with superb smooth jazz style menu music, and racing and replay tunes of various styles, though they do seem to be the weakest ones yet. However, you can load your own tracks into the music player. Forza's soundtrack is decent, with menu music done in a tasteful ambient techno style, though the racing music is even more of a grab bag than GT's. And you can only listen to music while racing
and in replays, or not at all.
Most importantly, the game structures of both games are markedly different. While both use experience points, GT5 has them applying to almost
everything in the game, including buying cars, license and race events. GT5's economy is much stingier, and you win cars only once in each event. GT5 also has a curious lack of track variety in single player races, and many tracks aren't used at all. B-Spec is its own mode, and you can't use your B-Spec drivers at all in A-Spec single player mode. You can have up to six drivers however, and are allowed more as your first one clears experience level hurdles. While Forza has a strange sandbox-like progression this time around, you can jump out of this odd "Career Mode" and race any event in whatever order you want, provided you have the car and sufficient experience, and is a much more developed structure than GT5's.
The debates rage on as to which is better, though sales seem heavily biased in GT5's favor for now, and it seems that a steady stream of updates for it are in order though at least 2011. And as I said previously, I don't think being western has helped Forza, or not being western hurt GT5.
ore better say
because this behaviour lets companies sell us crap and get away with it....
