If there were any more douches in this thread I could swear I would smell extra cleansing tropical aromas from my screen.
It's not a horrible game, just not the world beater everyone expected and some poor design choices (24 hour races...wtf?).
How is a 24 hour race a poor design choice? You do know there are real 24 hour races? Its one of the few things that I actually think was a really cool thing for them to do, although I think they could improve it a lot (setup teams, and so it could be done as a collaboration with other players so that you only have to do stints and you could split it up into varying lengths). Plus, I mean, you can always just pause the game and come back later, so its not like its a huge issue.
it's meant to be a simulator, not an arcade game. people need to understand that before buying it. if you want lots of flashing lights and particle effects, get need for speed. if you want to try out a ton of car models on faithfully recreated tracks, you buy gt5
Its a mediocre sim. It might be more realistic than some other racing games, but that doesn't mean its all that realistic. The views really don't give you a great sense of realism (the cockpit view in PGR3 feels more realistic to me, even if the physics of the game aren't, and I think NFS Shift is much better in cockpit view as well), the collision detection/crash physics are just bad (even when they do finally show up), the graphics are meh (everything is washed out looking, the tracks are pretty barren and aside from some dirt/water on the tires and rubber marks on the track there's basically no feeling of actually being at a real place), the AI is not very good, and even the driving mechanics in some areas feel busted (the rally parts do to me).
GT5 feels like they're trying to simulate a driving simulator, not actual driving/racing. I don't feel like any game is stellar at that so far (ones that are more hardcore sim are lacking in the visuals to give the full effect, etc), but I do feel like other games are more fun and give a more visceral racing experience, and so if the choice is between a more enjoyable game or a more realistic but still mediocre sim, I'm gonna go with the former.
The game I want is one that drives like GT, but with more "stylized visuals" to up the visceral impact (tone it down/up depending on what cars you're driving), with the world interaction of Dirt, the customization of Forza, and with a large car list (but not to the point where there's 20 versions of the same car). I'd also like a game that has some old school type of Monte Carlo Rally racing.