Poor Design Decisions Make for A Massive Disappointment
GT5 starts out with more of a whimper than a bang. I've never seen a video game post an epilepsy warning as big as GT5's. The game offers you an initial 8GB install option – I took it and saw 20 minutes remaining. 20 minutes later, the game is still telling me I have 15 minutes left. The overall installation time for this 8GB was 45 minutes, with the last 6 minutes telling me I have "1 minute 30 seconds remaining". Hmm, interesting, so the status bar at the beginning of the game isn't even accurate?
You then have to scroll through a massive EULA before watching the less than impressive opening video. It shows us some of the most boring aspects of car manufacturing. Among other things, we see iron being mined from the ground, and then turned into steel, followed by cutting out the steel, and robots forming the chassis for.. an assembly line filled with mini vans? Where's the air tunnels? The hand polishing? Revving tach gauges? Construction of the engine? Hand stitching the upholstery on exotic cars? All of this is being shown over a soundtrack of overly dramatic piano, banging away at your eardrums like you're watching the final act of a Shakespearean tragedy.
This video is then replaced with gameplay footage featuring possibly one of the worst euro-trash, light-rock tracks I've ever heard. It in absolutely no way gets you excited for the game to. "You start to sweat while my velocity rises?" What the hell are they talking about? It's awful drek and I found myself first bewildered at the song choice, and then laughing at how terrible it is. This is the best licensed track they could find for a game 6 years in development?
Finally, a digital avatar in a racing suit walks out of the garage towards a pit crew. Am I the only one who thought the sash-shay of this anonymous racing driver's hips was extremely feminine? It was like watching a reskinned Dead or Alive Volleyball intro.
The Interface
More bewildering choices appear as soon as you start the game. In GT mode, you are warned that whatever driving suit color you choose will be your "only chance" to pick. Why would they give you that limitation?
You have to buy a car before you can even preview any of the events in GT mode. That's right, you can't even look at a list of what to race before buying your first car, which you have to do arbitrarily and just hope that you'll qualify.
Everything also has a "level" requirement. While I can see some of the more difficult races requiring a certain level of experience, to have that limitation of the cars you can buy is ridiculous. It smacks of artificially inflating the game play.
GT TV is something that's featured prominently in the game but I don't see the draw. Sony is going to sell me 4 minute video clips of car races or classic car meets that I can already see on cable? No thanks. I was hoping it would instead be a sort of "best of" multiplayer race replays.
More artificial time sinks abound: painting your car requires you to already own a car with that color, and then you can only do it once. You have to pay fees to do anything with your car, like paint it, change the oil, things like that. Realistic, sure. Is it fun when you have to run the same beginner races over and over again just to get enough credits to paint your car? Not so much.
Arcade mode doesn't give you any filtering options for your list of cars. They all just show up in this big list, Ferraris and LMP cars mixed in with Minis and VWs. You can't even bring up a list of "only Lamborghinis", it just shows you this big scroll bar of cars.
Photo mode can't even be accessed until you own your first premium car. Depending on how good of a racer you are, this can be a while.
Car Selection
Again, I expected a much more varied selection. The usual joke about the GT series and their near-duplication of car models applies to GT5 as well. Tons of Skylines, NXS, and Civics. SIXTEEN Honda S2000s. TWENTY-TWO Mazda MX5s!
The exotic car selection was lackluster – there are some Zondas, Ferraris, and Lambos but the car selection is mostly sub-$100k cars. For some reason the game includes a few F1 cars (!?!). No idea why they would include F1 cars in a game like this – the physics engine for properly simulating F1 cars should be leaps and bounds differently than 99% of the other cars in the game.
No Porsches either!
Graphics
I am sorely disappointed to admit this, but I was not that impressed with the graphics. Sure, the game looks good, but it's about the same level as any other car racing game from circa 2008. The premium models look great, but they still look about the same as other racing games from 2009-10. I did enjoy the different replay camera views, especially the ones where you can see the driver.
I don't know what kind of eye candy I expected after all this development time, but no matter what situation I was in, I just couldn't help noticing flaws. Aston Martin's DB9 has the wrong speedometer, and it's stuck on KPH, regardless of your Options setting. Several gauges in other Premium cars don't even function. The brake pads glow red hot even if you're running a low performance car and braking at 30 mph. Dirt and dust are the usual puffy fake-3D clouds that dissipate almost immediately. No chunks of tires or carbon fiber littering the track after a 20 lap race.
Tracks look great, but you still see cookie cutter trees and spectators. The sense of speed isn't as profound as I thought it would be – no motion blurring, not much shaking in the cockpit, hardly any judder when you shift gears.
Gameplay
Here's where it all comes down, and I have to say, once again I was disappointed. I've played enough racing games on enough platforms to tell you that GT5's physics engine is just simply "off".
Car handling is all over the place. The above mentioned DB9 screams off the line like it's 1000lbs. Tapping the brakes with the slightest turn in the wheel sends it into an uncontrollable spin even when you're going 50mph. It's not realistic and just doesn't feel right. Not having the ability to control the break bias is unforgivable. The realism setting for off track and curb isn't right either – turning this feature on means your car is going haywire the instant one part of your tire touches the curbing or the grass.
Cars hit each other like bumper cars going 10mph. You can bang around the track, hitting other cars, with hardly a damage indication or a sense of slowing down. It feels very Burnout Paradise. It's also ridiculous that "full damage" isn't unlocked in the game until the later levels, so you can't even play your initial races with a realistic game play setting.
Rally racing is still a ton of fun. I haven't played enough rally racing games to comment on the realism, however.
Weather effects aren't well represented in other racing games, so it's great they've included them in GT5. I haven't been able to really compare the realism for the above reason. It did feel a bit like flicking a switch however. Tires in the wet seemed to have a simple "slide factor" applied to them, and puddles don't accumulate on the track where you'd expect them to. The weather effects aren't cumulative either – if you can powerslide around that wet corner 2 laps into the race, you can do the exact same powerslide 10 more laps into the race. Meaning, the track doesn't get wetter or dry out as the race progresses.
Computer AI isn't reactive. They drive a line and only deviate if you or another slower car gets in the way. They don't race each other and they don't race you – they simply provide obstacles to your progress, kind of like walls that follow a specific racing line. Hammering on one driver won't make him any more or less aggressive. If you slow down on the line they will all slam into your rear end in a comical pile-up.
Multiplayer
I didn't put a ton of time into GT5's multiplayer, mostly because of the usual band of idiot drivers that appear online for the first week of any game's release. All the worse of the worse is on display here. People driving the wrong way, people playing bumper cars, people spinning out on the first turn and then rage quitting the race. There may be potential here but GT5's multiplayer community is simply horrible at the moment.
Overall, GT5 is a tremendous disappointment. It would be amazing if it came out during the PS3's launch, and would still be pretty darn good if it came out in 2008. To have the game in this form released in 2010 is borderline embarrassing. It brings nothing new to the racing genre except for plenty of artificial time sinks, a bewildering array of poor design decisions, and a skew towards arcade racing instead of a simulation.