OK, so I have spent an hour or so in Arcade so these are my EARLY IMPRESSIONS of the game. May well change the further I get into it.
Warning - This is going to seem mostly negative, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. My impressions may well change as I play.
So.
The intro. WTF? I get the first part of it, but not really what I want to see when thinking about racing and fast cars. It's slow and mundane. The second part is great, that should have been the whole intro. Not sure what the thinking behind that was.
The menu music. Well the first thing my wife said was it sounds like porno music. Not far off the mark.
So into the options first. Main beef here, can't disable any parts of the HUD. The HUD is a bit of a mess by today's standards, to busy and shows a lot of info I don't need to see during the race. How hard would it have been to make this customizable. It's a standard feature I expect in racing games.
Into Arcade mode. One huge long list of cars. Was it like this is previous GT games, I can't remember. But either way it's not very efficient and clumsy. Again, I expect better by todays standards.
Despite installing the game, loading times are a quite long.
So that was my main issues before I started a race. None of these issues are a game breaker individually, but together they are quite annoying. No worse than GT4 perhaps, but that was 6 years ago. Things have moved on. So while none of these issues are bad as such, it's functional. But with the general advances made since 2004 it's quite dated. I didn't want flashy menus like Codemasters games, I like something quick and intuitive to navigate.
So out for a drive in an Impreza. A bit early to get a proper handle on the physics. I would say they are probably better than Forza 3, and probably the best I have experienced on a console. But the problem for me is I come from sim racing on the PC and it's not quite up to the physics model in iRacing. But I would imagine most people have not played games such as this and will probably love the physics.
Next I hit a few cars. Crash physics are still crap, as is the crash sound which sounds like someone hitting a tin can. They were crap in 2004 and they are crap now. Do I need to elaborate on why, I think it's fairly obvious but can do if anyone wants me too. Will this change later in the game? Who knows, if it does it was a dumb decision as you really want to give a good impression of the game early on.
I didn't crash hard enough to make a judgment on the damage model yet.
A.I. seems slightly improved, they seemed more aware of my presence and would defend into a corner. But also still try and take the racing line like I wasn't even there. Again, I've heard this gets better after a few levels. Stupid idea for the same reason as above.
Graphics. Shadows look terrible. Personally I can't help but notice them, so the problem here is while the game overall looks quite nice, the awful shadows detract from that look. Similarly there is a lot of aliasing. Around edges on the cars such as doors, to fences, to poles. Again this is very obvious and detracts from the overall look. Without these issues would be a fine looking game. BUT with those issues not so much.
I tried taking a few photos and watched the replays, again they look good. But so far I can't get anything even remotely near the best screen shots we have been fed. The level of detail does not appear to be there.
Interior view is great, I find it hard to go back to bumper cam when I know the interior view is available, and for this reason I will make very little use of the 800 standard cars, if at all. I have become very used to having cockpit view over the last 15 years and it's now an expectation. Only the the HUD ruins it a little. I just don't need that much crap on screen when driving.
Overall the game feels very much like GT4 in general with a few new features. And that's the problem, while GT4 was great 6 years ago, things have moved on. So far it's not a bad game, but it's not enough. It hasn't evolved enough especially in some key areas such as AI, sound and crash physics. There is nothing I expected that can't be found in other games, so I don't think my expectations were way out there and unrealistic. The annoying thing is on their own some of my issues are just minor flaws and niggles, but they would have been so easy to fix. And all together they detract from the experience.
GT4 was the pinnacle console sim in 2004. That's six years ago. But it has not made the same advances other games have. What's been added is not enough to keep it at the same level relative to the competition that GT4 was. I won't go as far to say it's now just another racing game. It is a little better than that. But gameplay wise and to some extent visually there is not a whole lot that separates it from Forza 3, which is the closest and best game to compare it to.
There are plenty good features in GT5, but the majority of these features are present in GT4 and as such do mot really add merit.
Finally, also have some comments to make about the Force Feedback. I use a G25 and the FFB is a little lifeless so far. You can't really feel the subtleties of the road. iRacing is the benchmark for FFB by quite a margin, and remains so. Im sure some people are getting bored of me banging on about PC sims, particularly iRacing, but fact is I play it and as such it's going to effect my opinion of GT5 and will make comparisons.
As I said it's not a bad game. But some pretty impressive promises were made over the lst 6 years and I can't help but feel a little disappointed at the final result. However like I mentioned at the start, it's early days.
Warning - This is going to seem mostly negative, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. My impressions may well change as I play.
So.
The intro. WTF? I get the first part of it, but not really what I want to see when thinking about racing and fast cars. It's slow and mundane. The second part is great, that should have been the whole intro. Not sure what the thinking behind that was.
The menu music. Well the first thing my wife said was it sounds like porno music. Not far off the mark.
So into the options first. Main beef here, can't disable any parts of the HUD. The HUD is a bit of a mess by today's standards, to busy and shows a lot of info I don't need to see during the race. How hard would it have been to make this customizable. It's a standard feature I expect in racing games.
Into Arcade mode. One huge long list of cars. Was it like this is previous GT games, I can't remember. But either way it's not very efficient and clumsy. Again, I expect better by todays standards.
Despite installing the game, loading times are a quite long.
So that was my main issues before I started a race. None of these issues are a game breaker individually, but together they are quite annoying. No worse than GT4 perhaps, but that was 6 years ago. Things have moved on. So while none of these issues are bad as such, it's functional. But with the general advances made since 2004 it's quite dated. I didn't want flashy menus like Codemasters games, I like something quick and intuitive to navigate.
So out for a drive in an Impreza. A bit early to get a proper handle on the physics. I would say they are probably better than Forza 3, and probably the best I have experienced on a console. But the problem for me is I come from sim racing on the PC and it's not quite up to the physics model in iRacing. But I would imagine most people have not played games such as this and will probably love the physics.
Next I hit a few cars. Crash physics are still crap, as is the crash sound which sounds like someone hitting a tin can. They were crap in 2004 and they are crap now. Do I need to elaborate on why, I think it's fairly obvious but can do if anyone wants me too. Will this change later in the game? Who knows, if it does it was a dumb decision as you really want to give a good impression of the game early on.
I didn't crash hard enough to make a judgment on the damage model yet.
A.I. seems slightly improved, they seemed more aware of my presence and would defend into a corner. But also still try and take the racing line like I wasn't even there. Again, I've heard this gets better after a few levels. Stupid idea for the same reason as above.
Graphics. Shadows look terrible. Personally I can't help but notice them, so the problem here is while the game overall looks quite nice, the awful shadows detract from that look. Similarly there is a lot of aliasing. Around edges on the cars such as doors, to fences, to poles. Again this is very obvious and detracts from the overall look. Without these issues would be a fine looking game. BUT with those issues not so much.
I tried taking a few photos and watched the replays, again they look good. But so far I can't get anything even remotely near the best screen shots we have been fed. The level of detail does not appear to be there.
Interior view is great, I find it hard to go back to bumper cam when I know the interior view is available, and for this reason I will make very little use of the 800 standard cars, if at all. I have become very used to having cockpit view over the last 15 years and it's now an expectation. Only the the HUD ruins it a little. I just don't need that much crap on screen when driving.
Overall the game feels very much like GT4 in general with a few new features. And that's the problem, while GT4 was great 6 years ago, things have moved on. So far it's not a bad game, but it's not enough. It hasn't evolved enough especially in some key areas such as AI, sound and crash physics. There is nothing I expected that can't be found in other games, so I don't think my expectations were way out there and unrealistic. The annoying thing is on their own some of my issues are just minor flaws and niggles, but they would have been so easy to fix. And all together they detract from the experience.
GT4 was the pinnacle console sim in 2004. That's six years ago. But it has not made the same advances other games have. What's been added is not enough to keep it at the same level relative to the competition that GT4 was. I won't go as far to say it's now just another racing game. It is a little better than that. But gameplay wise and to some extent visually there is not a whole lot that separates it from Forza 3, which is the closest and best game to compare it to.
There are plenty good features in GT5, but the majority of these features are present in GT4 and as such do mot really add merit.
Finally, also have some comments to make about the Force Feedback. I use a G25 and the FFB is a little lifeless so far. You can't really feel the subtleties of the road. iRacing is the benchmark for FFB by quite a margin, and remains so. Im sure some people are getting bored of me banging on about PC sims, particularly iRacing, but fact is I play it and as such it's going to effect my opinion of GT5 and will make comparisons.
As I said it's not a bad game. But some pretty impressive promises were made over the lst 6 years and I can't help but feel a little disappointed at the final result. However like I mentioned at the start, it's early days.
