DoFoT:
It depends on what you want from a game. If you care more about driving and tuning than painting and whatnot go buy GT5. Its all about driving and not much else.
I love it because i'm a bit of a car nerd. If you like cars you will like GT5. If you love cars you will love GT5, its just that simple.
I guess I'll throw in my counterpoint to that then, just to give him another opinion to mull over, because I love cars and don't love GT5....
The game is not real good. Every time I've played it, I can't help but think of how it could have been
SOOO much better, if they just trimmed back on the crazy feature list a bit. The game tries to be everything to everyone who likes cars. But the problem with that is, trying to do many things means you'll never excel at any of them. Often the implementation of things in this game is a little weak or unfulfilling because of that. For example...
NASCAR is in, but is pretty plain and boring, and doesn't
feel like a real cup race. If you like NASCAR, you'd be better served with a full game based on that.
Same with WRC stuff. Yes, the rally is pretty decent. But, I've played a bunch of
REALLY awesome rally games before, and this is nowhere near as good.
Day and Night cycles, and Weather effects look amazing.... on the very few tracks that you can actually have them function on.
The sounds of the cars, just as with every GT game that has come before it, is terrible. Very few cars actually sound like their real-world version, and when you tune them up, they get even less distinctive.
The car list, while huge, is
FILLED with cars that I have absolutely no desire to drive in a racing game. I get Kaz's intention, bringing in cars from many eras and different parts of the automotive spectrum to see them, and maybe appreciate them more. But this is a racing game at its core, and I don't ever want to race a VW Kombi.
And lastly, the menus are just pitiful. It really feels like they designed them first, all those years ago, and then never touched them again. So many games have come and gone with great menu systems, and this game took nothing away from them, because they are just awful in this game.
This game really had the potential to be amazing. If they got rid of NASCAR, WRC, Karts, etc, and took out about 4-500 of the boring, crappy cars, we'd be getting somewhere. Use the time and effort that those removed things would have occupied to make some manageable menus, more Premium cars, and get the Day-Night cycle and Weather on all tracks. That would have been great. But that isn't what we got.
Don't get me wrong, it is a good game. But GT games aren't supposed to just be good, they are supposed to be
GREAT. But even after a 6 year wait, we only got
pretty good.
But hey, as I've said on many occasions, it does make some
DAMN GOOD screenshots. Almost unreal at times...
Click to HUGE-size