Alright, now that I have got some time with the game, it's time to vent frustrations. But before I do so, I will say, I am loving this game, but with love comes shear hate, as with anything challenging
So consider this a mini-review, most of the bad points are here, and yet it don't matter as the game is flat out amazing, so just remember that while reading this, I am venting.
The biggest thing is, like the other GT titles, the opponents cars have some sort of glue on them. If you tap them from any direction it's like you damn stuck to them. And it doesn't bother me a ton once the field is spread out, but when you have 2 - 3 laps to pass an entire field of cars, you don't have time to wait for them to spread out. I wish there was a qualifying lap, because whats happening is I get placed in back, and I have a faster car, but they travel 2 - 3 wide through the corners and I either have to sit behind them and go slow, or try and pass on the outside way out of the racing line, which gets risky and messy if you touch dirt.
And so far, I'm really shocked theres no brake settings, or upgrades, like said hopefully it's in a patch, all the other games had it, wonder what happened here. And rim selection seems very low, GT3 and GT4 had a ton of rim selection, I only have about 10 to chose from for my Vette, and no size adjustments, which I thought the other games had, but I might be crazy here.
I like the new interface, but something need tooltips, like what exactly do I have to gain from fixing my Vettes Chassis, I've worked on cars for my entire life, I understand frames can get bent and such, but it's not that easy to do. And with something like a Corvette, yes I can put a new frame under the car, but my Miata, thats a unibody car, if that thing gets bent, it's done for, you can't just fix that. So a tooltip to say whats going on would be nice, same with the engine rebuild, although thats pretty basic, I just like reading it.
Also the car purchasing has some ups and downs. Firstly, I love that you can change the background, I'm all about mood, when I bought my 69 Vette, it was 299hp and $75,000, yet the 2010 Camaro was 425hp and $35,000. I bought the Vette for the attitude, and I don't regret it at all. But, I bought it in Piano Black, and I put Black rims on it. So it's a dark car. Being able to rotate the view in the show room, or in the rim selection would be very nice. Showing the rims from a dead on shot doesn't do much for me, and my car was hard to see in the show room in anything but a white background, which has no mood, if I could have rotated it to use the backgrounds natural lighting it would have been nicer. Also, rim paint (and possibly car paint, as I havent looked at that yet), it shows a virtual rim in the color you chose, but it doesn't show a preview on the car. Yes I can see what the rim will look like, but without a tire on it and it on the car, it makes that decision very hard. Also the used cars, it's nice to see American cars in there too, but the sorting is aweful. I want to be able to sort by Country Origin, Make, and such. The previous games had the used cars at their specific dealer. The sorting isn't needed so much as it only seems to show about 25 cars for sale at a time, so I guess I would like to see a larger list of cars for sale at a time, and more sorting options. (Also, my 3rd day in the game I see a 19 million dollar GT40 in there....)
And lastly for my nagging, my car is Black, my interior is Black, hard to see everything. I race from the inside view on the Vette because I bought that car for the attitude, I feel so badass driving it in that view. But I can't see anything, just the top of the steering wheel, the speedo is too dark to see, as is the dash, sometimes if I corner and the suns behind me I can see it all and it looks great. Not much can be done about that, but you have the ability to turn on your Windshield wipers and your Headlights. But for some reason the wipers are a toggle that stay on, and the lights you need to hold down. I want my lights on, I don't want to hold down a button, when the lights are on it turns on the lights in my Tach and Speedo, and thats just freaking cool! Adds more to the mood seeing my old school gauges actually working.
Now that I think I have covered all of the bases on what bothers me (and some of this has been a reoccurring thing, so take it with a grain of salt). What I love is the physics. This game has amazing ones, I mean the other games drove good, but sliding always felt awkward. I had the default assists on when I started, and on my bone stock Miata it didn't matter. But once I bumped it up a bit I turned them off, then back on to the low defaults, and I must say, never ever use Stability Management. You can't slide with that at all, it just hits the brakes, don't even have to think when coming into a corner, start to turn and it brakes for you basically. I turned that off and it's amazing, I slide my Vette out of most corners and it puts a smile on my face, it' a controlled slide to, thats the best feeling, sliding sideways, but not feeling out of control, couldn't do that in the past games, I just find myself forcing a slide because it's fun.
The only time I might mess with settings is for twitchy MR cars, I got one given to me, was night and day from the Miata or my Vette. Those cars I can control the slide out of anything, they drive awesome, the MR car is like a freaking knife. Either your stabbed or your not stabbed, very little middle ground to work with, sliding that thing is seriously an art form. I'm sure supercars will be better as they have better suspension work, but it's still the reason I don't like MR, it's you got grip or your dead.
Hopefully this helps some people out, anyways I think I'm gonna go get the rest of my Vette upgrades!
The 3000GTs on this game sound EXACTLY like my own. I had the surround on doing a practice race with my new 3000, and my wife came into the living room thinking I had pulled out of the driveway. This goes for the rest of the cars in the game: their likeness to the real thing.
They have done a real good job with the Japanese made cars exhaust notes. But the V8's are lacking, maybe once I get the Stage 3 engine upgrade, as that finally mentions a camshaft upgrade. But so far my 69 Vette with every upgrade except Stage 3 engine and Supercharger is at I think 441hp, but doesn't sound like it. At the starting line revving it sounds like a 4 popper, once rolling it sounds much better than that, but still not roaring like an 8.