- 7,823
- U S A
- Tetsumura
- Nigel Fox
Good lord... how can you type that with a straight face?
I'm going to come up with a list of most issues between both games, GT5 and Forza 3, and then I'm going to bow out of this thing because the discussion finally became fairly moderate. Except for the above loaded remark.
Gran Turismo 5
- Only 220 some odd cars and 10 or so tracks are of Premium level. The remainder of cars and tracks are Standards, improved, but essentially imported from GT4. There is a bias towards Japanese cars in the list.
- A number of favorite tracks are missing.
- Weather and time of day are featured on selected tracks, not all.
- Graphics can be inconsistent, have glitchy shadows, screen tearing, nasty flaws with particle effects, and some complain that framerate drops are unacceptable and hurt gameplay. Reflections run at reduced framerate and are pixelated.
- Some car sounds are poor, and don't match the car.
- Standard cars have no cockpit view, can't swap wheels, and have limited body modification options, sometimes to only adding a rear wing.
- Race Modification is limited to just 17 Premium cars, and the only option offered is to alter the color on a portion of the body.
- Damage is very limited.
- Roof view becomes hood view on a few cars.
- Transmission adjustments are limited to the "final gear," unlike earlier GTs, and certain other adjustable parts are limited as well.
- Weight balance is missing, so are racing brakes.
- The drafting distance is unrealistically long (though this has apparently been fixed in the last update according to knowledgeable folk such as amar212).
- The offline game is woefully short compared to the epic GT4, divided into A-Spec single player and B-Spec bot guidance sections. Some races have 16 cars, some are limited to as few as 8.
- Many tracks are unused in any racing event, and many events feature tracks which have nothing to do with the type of race.
- The B-Spec bots drive inconsistently, and in higher performance races, often need much more powerful cars to win because they lack aggression and will to win.
- A number of prize cars can only be won in the B-Spec races, forcing the player to either do them or grind races for prize credits.
- Prize cars can only be won once, and credits are limited to 20 million. A few cars are only available as prizes.
- An experience point system is used, but seems to serve no purpose than to force the player to grind even more than in previous games. XP determines which cars can be purchased, special events and races opened, so now the player must grind for money and XP. The XP scale becomes astonishingly steep, following an exponential curve.
- While the bot A.I. is improved, they still brake too early and hard in turns, making for some trial and error in finding proper cars to make races competitive and fun offline.
- It seems more difficult to disrupt a bot car in a collision than another player car.
- There is debate on the physical accuracy of some tire types, such as racing soft tires. There is debate on the overall accuracy of the physics.
- The online structure is still very basic, and many servers won't show up without a number of searches. Leaderboards are still absent.
- The paint shop has NO paint of its own. In order to paint your car, you must earn a paint chip, which you do by winning or buying a car, though not all cars will provide a chip. Chips can only be used once, often appear different than the actual paint color, and there is no preview. Some surfaces can't be painted. Exotic chips are very rare.
- The used car dealership is limited to Standard cars, and there are only 30, which change in groups of 6 after every race or practice. This is supplemented by an online dealership which offers frequently needed special cars and trucks for certain events, though only 12 cars are listed. They change after a certain number of realtime days.
- Oil changes can't be done between races or in lobbies, and old oil can degrade the engine. The only indication that an oil change is needed is to note a slight drop in listed hp. Eventually, engines (and chassis) must be restored, and can be very expensive. According to a few, eventually an engine can no longer be restored to full performance, and with no provision for engine swaps, means a car is forever impaired.
- Large files can load slowly. It takes about 15 seconds to scroll through around 300 paint chips, and a bit over a minute to scroll through 1600 Standard cars.
Forza 3
- Graphics are uneven. (When run at 1080p), there is screen tearing and occasional slowdown (there is screen tearing and slowdown for me, so I'm giving my choice as higher res possible blame, but I'm not sure). Backgrounds such as with Monterrat sometimes look like digital art, some tracks look more realistic. Shading is much heavier on cars than on scenery. Cars other than the player's car are at a much lower level of detail. Smoke effects are poor. Reflections run at reduced framerate and are pixelated. On occasion, reflections drop to very low framerates, 6-8 fps. Damage graphics can be poor on occasion.
- Time of day is fixed for all tracks, and there is no weather.
- Car models, while improved and more accurate than previous versions, still have unaddressed flaws carried over from the very first game. There is a bias in favor of more American and European cars, and towards muscle cars, supercars and race cars. There are no used cars.
- Some tracks are poorly modeled, such as the notoriously incorrect Nurburgring, changed little since the first game.
- Bodykits are sometimes slightly asymmetrical, making livery painting more difficult. Some car graphics are asymmetrical too. Interiors of many cars are of poor quality.
- Livery painting can be difficult due to strange modeling flaws. Seams and curved surfaces on many cars cause drastic distortion. Some cars are unable to mirror sides properly. Some surfaces misbehave badly, either flipping vinyls, reversing them, pushing them off into empty space, or can't be painted at all.
- The photo system is unnecessarily complicated, requiring the user to upload selected pics, limited to 18, to the official Forza website, which introduces compression and color loss which are difficult to correct, forcing those who want the original quality to buy PC capture cards.
- While replays can be shared, uploading of replay videos is limited to 30 seconds, can only be done to the forzamotorsports website, and is only available to download for 24 hours.
- The file system is very poorly handled. Any group of files - pics, replays, videos, decals or liveries - which exceeds a count of approximately 125 causes massive slowdown. It takes me three minutes or more to scroll through 200 decals. Files can't be sorted or arranged. (This and the photo sharing issues made me so mad and wasted SO much time, I quit playing Forza 3 completely after 6 or 7 weeks).
- Gameplay offline is either a strange sandbox system of multiple choice, or jumping out to an overview of all races.
- All racing, either on or offline, is restricted to eight cars max.
- Racing online requires the purchase of a Live Gold account - and sorry guys, many of us think Live bloze.
- Racing wheel choices are extremely limited. The only serious quality wheel is the pricey Fanatec 911 GT2 wheel, which is $250 - without pedals or table clamps. Sequential shifter is optional as well.
- An experience point system is used, which restricts the gamer to cars and races available by level.
- The previous games' online racing system was discarded. Users are restricted to joining random match or private servers.
- Physics exploits on certain cars require periodic physics updates and leaderboard wipes. There is debate on the physical accuracy of all tire types. There is debate on the overall accuracy of the physics. Drifting is often reputed by real life drifters to be too easy. Cars can be set up with improper suspension settings and still race competitively. High speed collisions can send cars rocketing to the "ceiling" of the game environment. Some adjustments such as with the transmission are unrealistically wide.
- Bot A.I. is rather haphazard, and while tamer than previous games, especially the first, can still be unexpectedly violent.
- DLC must be purchased with cash, not game credits, and is sometimes rehashed versions of existing cars with few changes. Cars must be purchased in packs. Downloaded tracks won't integrate in single player offline games, only time trials and online races.
This is what I recall from the top of my head on both. Besides, it's after 3 am.
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