Having been a big fan of flight sims myself, as I grew up I realised there wasn't really anything to do between take-offs and landing approaches. Other than lay out a flight route and to clock fuel consumption vs. distance travelled at a certain speed and work out if I would make it from Calais to Heathrow and if I got a second go at landing approach in my F16.
The graphics, user interface have evolved, not the gameplay.
Well, they tried to keep "me" from wandering off and playing in the yard while I set my plane to auto-pilot by optional random mechanical failures. Couldn't say it worked.
I know what you're thinking of, but options are not the solution. They try to masque the fact that, in this context, a video game was badly designed.
You don't cook a meal and in the end say "Oh, I don't know how it should taste - go figure it out yourself."
Let me give you another example: I like tea. I ordered a cup of Darjeeling the other day. What I got was a hot cup of water and a tea bag.
Sure, you could say: I have the option to make my tea stronger or weaker, all power to the tea drinker by giving him options.
But that's not what I wanted. Take a bit of common sense - I ordered Darjeeling for a reason. What tine of day was it? It was in the afternoon. So, by common sense, there's a very good possibility I ordered the tea for its stimulating effect rather than something hot to calm me down before bed-time. They were either too lazy to time my cup of tea correctly themselves and/or ignorant how to make a proper cup of tea in the first place. So they served me something I didn't order (a cup of hot water and a tea bag) and let me do all the work.
I feel the same towards some racing games: PD builds games (I assume, after Gamescom I will have seen it by myself) the way cars were built 30 or 40 years ago. A Horch or Ferrari were tailor made for the patriarch, that was it. If you have seen footage of Kaz racing in real life and showcasing GT, it's hard to tell the difference. It's quite another story if you watch some "we're gonna break the record on the Nordschleife" footage.
Now don't get me wrong, I love the GT franchise for what it is and Kaz is a very glamourous figure and a well educated, witty and all around nice guy.
I'm very much looking forward to karting, maybe even some hilarious, light-hearted TopGear challenges.
But, spiced up production cars on a race track is a bit of a flaw - it's one big track day all over again. Thus I'm more eager to try out SuperGT or DTM cars again.
"Standard" and "professional" physics are, in my book, by now an outdated concept. They could offer realistic driving aids, modelled exactly to their real life counterparts (which they won't) or professional setup cars in-game (which I fear they won't do). To me experience, all it takes is a bit of effort if the ride is set up well. I showed it to some of my friends, they tackled the Nordschleife just fine when I gave them my ASL Garaiya and some basic instructions.
GT educated me in the same way that my old teacher told me Tai Chi - just by example, and some preparing talk, and that was it. For a European, it can't get more complicated because it requires skills foreign to most of us: being aware of errors while being about to make them.
Sorry for the far too many words, I guess it's because I dived into the forums and discovered, with some "new" footage and info at hand, the discussion still remains how "sim" GT is going to be, how many glitches there are to be found and if Porsche is essential to the car list or not.
I hoped dedicated fans would demand more than the basics (it's 2010 after all) and had gone beyond the basic stuff.
Anyway, back to the music I guess.
