I mentioned the GT5 score as an example of the over negativism towards the game in this forum, you put a list of higher scored games as a proof of how bad GT5 performed, NFS HP was in that list.
I'm very happy with the source, was being sarcastic with the "bad games" quote. Even a 7 does not mean a bad game specially when we are looking at gaming reviews, sim games rarely perform well as classic gaming packages, so is because sim sites have a much different approach in its reviews. For example they would put a much worse score to GT4 than GT5.
See the pattern now?
Yeah, I see it. I also think that the casual gamer open for driving and racing games is more tolerant, while the simulation enthusiast is rather picky.
You know, since you brought up the thought that my taste might have moved along, I've been giving this some thought. I've been asking myself what GT5 would have needed to be for me to absorb me like the previous titles did. And my conclusion is, in a way, that I have moved on. Let me explain.
Basically, every main Gran Turismo title has been the same. PD has always polished every new version over the previous one, so naturally, GT5 is the most polished one yet. I've been playing through all of them with great fun. So why not GT5? Well, there is one part in me that tells me that keeping the original formula and just adapting it to the latest platform doesn't cut it anymore. I miss the invention and the advancement of the idea of Gran Turismo. Maybe I'm getting tired of playing through the same old game that just looks and feels like a current title, but basically still is the same as #1.
There certainly is potential for innovation in GT5. Nascar, WRC, Karting and Top Gear alone would make for complete games in the hands of other developers. Only problem is: PD didn't make proper use of any of this. What's that expression: they have bitten off more than they can chew. What's the point of gathering items and squeezing them into a game until it's about to burst of content when you don't put the ideas into practice in the gameplay?
Don't get me wrong, the driving itself is excellent. The physics are very good and the graphics are very good (some minor problems aside). But the driving itself, even if it has always been the strong point of Gran Turismo, is only a part of the whole. I have come across a lot of driving games which looked awesome right until I got in the cockpit. A lot of dazzlers there, all shine but no substance. Gran Turismo has always been different. And oddly, even if they got the driving part right again, the rest of this game lacks somewhat.
You know, in real life I belong to a little team of three, and we make a product of our own, a magazine. We also come up with a lot of ideas for that magazine, but we constantly have to filter for the ones which, even if they would be awesome for the readers as well as us, simply are not feasible with the time, the manpower and the funds we have. We repeatedly tried to pull through such an idea once in a while, but the result never was very satisfying for anyone. The readers argued that there is only a point in tackling such a task when you can do it properly. If the result is half-assed, it's of no use for anyone, so why do it?
This, in my humble opinion, is where PD, especially Kaz, went wrong. They simply tried too much and were bound to fail on many levels. They should have put their experiences with earlier games to use and set themselves realistic and achievable goals before they started working on this huge project. You can't just start somewhere and see where you end up after a while.
Another thing is that GT5 is fixable so easily. I believe that the shadow thing is one task you really need time and manpower for to fix - no discussion there. Same thing for AI. But gameplay? I said this before a while ago in another thread: every frequent player of GT5 could come up with a better A-Spec mode and good use of all the licenses they have within a day or two. There is no technical limitation of hardware or disk space here, A-Spec simply is a question of designing and organizing events. Thus, I'm having a huge problem to understand how they could get this so wrong. Even if they had copied this 1:1 from GT4, it would have been better and also less work.
