Got the game on the 23rd, but work interfered with my gaming time, so I really didn't get to play it much until yesterday.
First of all, let me get my beefs out of the way. I'm not entirely happy with not being able to qualify. I'm not the best driving gamer, so if I'm having trouble winning, I'd like an opportunity to move up in the field.
Rolling starts. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something I don't like about them. Then I read the post where someone says that by the time you cross the start/finish line, you're already about 9 seconds behind! That kind of a handicap I don't need.
Prize cars. I thought it was very cool when I won a Plymoth Prowler, noticed it was a FR car, so I thought it would be fun to use it for the Beginner FR races. No such luck, as when I tried, I was informed that it was a "special car", whatever that means. Same thing with the Toyota Motor Triathlon Car. Neat! Now what can I use it for?
Along the same lines, it's nice that the wanted to include as many different nationalities as they could in the game, but there are a lot of countries that have one manufacturer, with a grand total of one car available, and sometimes it's not even purchaseable! I think they could have reduced the clutter on the GT map quite a bit, if they had tried.
Now that I have a few cars, I'm not entirely happy with the way the garage works. Granted the filters are there for a reason, but I liked the long list of cars I managed to get in GT3, and I could still find what I wanted quite easily using the different criteria.
Oh, yes, rallying. So far, the rally races I've run have a MUCH different feel to them. In GT3, the rally races were the only ones I was able to drift worth anything, but now it seems that as I'm going into corners, I'm either gripping too much and getting completely sideways, or just floating over the road and slamming into the barricade, neither of which is really that much fun.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to tear apart every little aspect of GT4, saying the game is horrible! On the contrary, I will probably be playing this game for a long time to come, if for nothing else to figure out what vehicle I can use to beat the competition, which seems a lot harder in this game.
Like everyone else though, I love the new physics engine (once I got used to it, the first few attempts at B-3, or whatever the first cornering techniques test was, was quite an eye opener), the graphics are phenomenal, and now that the music is off (just like I like it), the sound is great too.
The moment GT3 became almost an obsession was when I got my first F-1 car. Time will tell if GT4 has that same effect on me...
