I think what has happened is, & i dont know really how to say it is, but alot of folks have become victims of their own anticipation.
We have been tossing out so many wants, whats in, the game has this, the game has that, that the game has become old news before it is even 2 weeks old. i think there was so much talk about what they think should be in & what they heard or someone mentioned, that everyone started to believe it all was there.
i can rememeber before GTP, or atleast i knew of GTP, that i waited for the game without knowing anything about it. other than what i might have read in a magazine or something. i remember waiting for GT1. i read a small article in Autoweek about it coming out in May 1998. this was like Dec. or Jan. this was the first i had heard of it. well, being a import car guy, i couldn't wait till then. i bought a PSone from a pawn shop just for GT1. then, May 13 1998 it was on. when i got the game, it was very exciting, exploring & finding out what it was all about.
racing my own car at the time (1992 Civic Si, Captiva Blue) vs the world.
learning all the ins & outs of the game as i progressed. i literally put thousands of hours in before GT2 came out. i remember calling everyday asking when & if it arrived yet. even when it came out, i didn't know anything about the details of it. Learned as i went.
now, i find myself knowing everything about Gt4 & i can't say that the same anticipation is there.
the excitment seems to have fallen somewhere in the "this game sucks ass" & "I cant believe they hurried this piece of crap", granted those are exaggerations, but the sediment is there.
no one knows what is involved in making a game of this magnitude, so for everyone to be breaking balls for it taking so long, then to piss on their work for what whatever reason seems kind of ungrateful.
Now don't get it twisted, i'm not saying that we should be grateful for PD, SONY, or KY, but the fact that there is a GT4 to be played currently.
I'm not trying to give KY & PD a shine here, but just the benefit of the doubt.
You could also look at it in a worse case scenario, what if there wasn't a GT anymore. what if KY & PD said: "You know what? No thanks, we're good, thanks for playing...."
now think of all the other games that usually everyone here trys to defend GT against. well, you would have to find one of those to hold dear, because GT would be no more.
By the way, if what PD does isn't that hard to do, i wonder why none of these other games have seemed to master it.
I am sure that at the beginning of development, they have a certain amount of goals for the game that take alot of work. photomode for example. i bet that it took a whole lot of development time to integrate that feature. well, after laying down the millions of dollars i'm sure it cost to make. they couldn't justify just dropping it in favor of say drift competition, when drift competitions may not have been on the top of list of goals when development started.
so with SONY & the public demanding a release date & you have to make some decisions about what can stay & what has to go.
who knows about the 2 player garage thing. i am sure that there is a pretty good reason for its exclusion that we may never know, unless KY comes out & says why. it may have something to do with the online or something & what they have planned for online.
like the Sony exec said "he has a working version of the online game on his desk", this may mean that they have their own plans for how the online enviroment will be.
Just as in the points system, you have to focus on driving, rather than tuning & high HP.
paint shops? original colored cars? trust me, no color is original. if it was then you just made one up that no one has ever seen before.
buying & keeping wheels for all cars. well, the RL wheels from a Civic dont fit on a LMP car, so you may have to deal with it.
they seem to have changed the whole wheel & tire thing i believe anyways.
well sorry, i have typed a novel here, but i was getting down about this game & i didnt like it, so i had to speak up.
i am a day late, but i just fumbled around & with some trickery, got the no time limit Japan demo working last night on my HDD. and i am now in much anticipation for GT4 & the vast selection of cars to be able to run on the Ring. not to mention the **** load of other tracks in the game that nobody has ever seen before in the same game. i am into GT for the driving, cars, & tracks. which i believe what the core element of GT is. all the other stuff is just bells & wistles. if it's there great, if not, that's OK too. the amount of locations, cars, & improved graphics & physics is just what i would EXPECT from another GT game. just as a reference of how far it has come, dust off your PSone and fire up GT1 & see what one you like better.
just remember to only a scant 11 day ago, when the first images & talk of the game emerged. how great it was, how awesome it was.
now whats the talk?....it seems that,sometimes technology & the information age are not always that great.