@brutallyhonest
Talking about the poor AI is NOT nitpicking. It's a game about racing other drivers, so seeing as they have the racing part down, surely the other important part is the "other drivers."
You also don't understand what is meant by good/poor AI. Many people have made this mistake when trying to defend Gran Turismo 5. Good AI is as much about what the computer drivers do WRONG as it is what they do right. It's not about diffi...
Because some games (GT5 included) would take hundreds of hours to 100% complete. Some games are too hard for the average reviewer to 100% complete. But after even 10% they know whether or not they're having a good time. Most gamers who buy the game will not complete it, so why should we hold reviewers to the same standard when the people reading the review won't get to the parts they're reading about?
-online problems
Firstly one should expect this to work day 1. But the complaints were about the lack of progression not the stability of the online. There are also still no leaderboards. Saying "it will be patched later" is no excuse
-no damage models
I am not convinced that GT5 has the most realistic damage. Burnout has procedural damage. So do a lot of other games. Maybe the reviewers didn't play enough to unlock full damage - but in my view it is stil...
I think it's more a criticism of the game design. Prologue didn't have licence tests. In fact Prologue had quite a nice system with performance-point-limited races tiered into different classes. It was praised for this approach (even if it wasn't perfect). Then GT5 goes and reverts back to the old system which to be honest was never that great and even GT4 was criticised for this.
OK by the fact that you were unable to post a video showing the fabled "100% accurate damage" I still think it's BS. There are literally THOUSANDS of GT5 videos on the net - so where are the damage videos. I have not yet seen one which is much more impressive than the damage the reviewers were talking about.
Here's what happened.
GT5 damage has already been shown off with the car doors and such flapping about.
It was strangely not present in the final game.
They made a poor design choice to not make it clear that the damage would be unlocked as you play through.
Reviewers are not going to complete a game 100% before they write their review, it is in fact ridiculous to suggest that they should. They don't have to put in 30...
Your first point is spot on.
I remember playing Wipeout HD online which was great fun. But it died very quickly because there was no online progression.
Then a patch brought in a levelling system and badges and suddenly the online lobby sprang to life. It stayed active for ages (not sure about it now but it's an oldish game).
Games need some kind of reward for playing online otherwise they die out quickly.
Yeah these are photo mode images. Show some in-game shots with aliasing, jaggy shadows, 2D trees, low-res textured environments and you'll soon tell which is GT5 and which is real life.
How about
- Online features - a big part of the game for some people
(GT5 strangely lacking leaderboards or so I've heard, and no progression in MP)
- Career mode - IGN says it feels stale because it hasn't evolved from 10 years ago, you can still win by just buying a bigger car not by learning to drive
- Premium/standard cars - in Forza all 400+ cars look great, in GT5 800 cars look worse than in forza with little damage and no interior view, and only ...
Bugatti is only a standard car though unfortunately :(
@St0
How convenient that "out of the way" was along the racing line, and the car was just before a slight bend that you might need to brake for. I have seen other examples where the cars don't try to get out of the way, so I would think a fair test would be in order to see whether this is coded behaviour or just the illusion of clever behaviour. I've got a hunch it's the latter.
@TheOldOne
I think I have said before that the AI has improved since prologue, and it is certainly impressive that the AI makes occasional mistakes. It's better - but it's still not nearly there and when I saw the rubber-banding I was quite disappointed.
There is a difference between GT robotic AI and online racers though. Yes human racers will not get out of their line and use other cars as a brake. But they will also try to block other cars from overtaking, something that I have not really seen GT's AI do. When GT's AI does something that seems a clever move, I think it's more a fluke of random variables and the way the racing line goes. The AI is not aggressive, it's just following its line mostly which sometimes has conseq...
Good AI is NOT about how good at racing it is. It's about being convincing - and it's in fact more about the mistakes than the things it does correctly. The lower difficulties should be a chance to show off the amazing AI by having the drivers screwing up.
During an online race, you easily get near to the front usually, and it's only through poor driving that you slip back. This makes it exciting when you're in the lead and you could lose it at any second. Bec...
The trouble is how the AI acts at low skill levels. Every race I have seen from the final version someone wins just by having a more powerful car, not by outdriving his opponents. Online, you have to win by driving better. So why aren't the AI oppenents losing because they drive poorly? Why do they have to be artificially slowed down by having worse cars or just not using full acceleration? Rubber-banding also seems to be a problem. It seems that the AI is designed to go around the track ...
Those shadow artifacts look terrible.
Hope they make another? I don't. I don't want to have to buy the same games again. Yes it was good value... but I still have an extra copy of HL2 and EP1 sitting on my steam account. I hope the games are realeased seperately from the get go this time.
Not a very good driver. How the hell did he come in first. He was trying for ages to overtake 1st place and then spun out and went back into 12th. Then he's 3 seconds away from 1st with not much of the track to go and miraculously overtakes on the last bend. Must be some serious rubber-banding AI. Oh and damage is nowhere to be seen after his crash and didn't affect his performance at all (probably switched off for most races).
Nobody ever had any problems running the most demanding of games at the puny resolutions OnLive spits out. It would be a lot more cost-effective to buy a mid-end PC and you could run pretty much all games at higher settings than OnLive gives you. For most people their internet isn't good enough for OnLive anyway.
T9X69 you are correct. It wasn't just because of damage that the reviews were marked down. Furthermore, the damage (and AI for that matter) is STILL pretty unimpressive after level 40; here's the only video that's been posted of the damage in action so far (that I've found) and it seems all the same criticisms apply: