Likes
- More rounded car list than GT5, IMO.
- Long career mode.
- A few real-life courses not in the GT series or formerly included, examples include Sebring, Road Atlanta, Road America, Twin Motegi, etc.
- The inclusion of drag racing.
- More in depth tuning options and parts than GT has ever had, including real-life parts manufacturers
- Nice and plentiful wheel selection, with the option to choose wheel and tire size.
- The ability to create custom paint jobs and liveries.
- Various just for fun online modes, like the whole tag/virus/cat-mouse ones.
- Storefront and Auction House
- The ability to save near-infinite amount of tuning setups.
- More body modification choices when compared to any GT game.
- Engine and drive train swaps.
- Defined car classes that allow competition to be kept even on and offline.
- Every car has a dash board
- Better damage modeling than GT5 IMO, and the fact damage is in career mode and you have to pay for damages.
Dislikes
- Career mode gets tedious as you advance, especially when you are doing the same event 10 times, one for each car class. Theres only so many times I can do Fujimi Kaido before I start pulling out my hair.
- AWD is overpowered as many people have pointed out, for example most of the time a car that has had an AWD swap will leave the same car that has stock RWD in the dust.
- Opponent choices are questionable in some career events, mainly the manufacturer based ones. The problem is those events will include vehicles from an entire manufacturers line up, all in different classes. For example, the Chevrolet event will have a lowly class F Aveo along with a class S Corvette ZR1. The end result is you have to match your car for the strongest performing ones, which are usually only one or two cars in the field, and only end up racing against those one or two with the rest of the cars being rolling obstacles. This could be rectified by having the lower performing AI cars being modified or leaving out cars that are will over power most of the field.
- Poor implementation of drag racing, there is no staging nor can you red light as the game doesnt let you take control of the car till the light turns green.
- Certain events having heats, this is another factor that makes career mode tedious and unnecessarily long. Then theres also the problem it seems within a group of events and those heats, you will always face the same three cars in those heats. This is a big problem with drag racing because you essentially end up repeating the same event two times per individual drag race series championship.
- Physics is a little too forgiving for a game trying to be a sim, I find it easier to play Forza with no assists on then GT5 with assists on, but thats me.
- No night racing, I dont expect a day to night transition which is difficult to program (thats my assumption), but just the inclusion of being able to race at night, considering this has been a feature in racing games, 2D or 3D, since the beginning.
- No tuning of cars in multiplayer lobbies, wow is this a big fail IMO. The only real way around this is to buy and tune as many cars as possible so youll have a wider selection to choose from during multiplayer.
- Unlimited rewind, Im aware you have the choice not to use it, but its too tempting for anyone at times. This wouldve worked if they would have limited the number of times you could use the function per race, IMO.
- No rallying, but this is not that big of a deal for me.
- A more minor gripe, but engine swaps are limited to within the vehicles manufacturer, but I assume this is a licensing issue as I can see some car companies gripe about having a competitors engine being put in their cars.
Oh, and I feel for the people that got screwed with regards to DLC, and how later purchasers of the game essentially got it all for free, not to mention the cars you can only get by buying the latest edition of the game, so you essentially have to buy the game again for those few cars. I think the total cost of the DLC works out to be pretty much around the price of a new Xbox 360 game, but then again I think DLC is overpriced most of the time for what you get. I remember there was a time you could get DLC for free, such as older NFS games which offered free cars you could download from the official website, or how you could get Command and Conquer had a database of maps on their website you could download. Now, with regards to game maps, you pay a hefty price for 3 or 5 maps.