Real talk
The GT5 demo was kinda disappointing but its flaws have also been exagerrated. The presentation is more stunning than any other racing game out there. Like I said before, the car and garage in the selection menu almost look real. However, once you start playing the game, there's a severe drop in visual fidelity. The cars don't look even come close to looking like the one in the selection menu. Aliasing is much more apparent and there're worse tearing/slowdown than the PS2 games. Polyphony is also over-relying on making everything dark in order to achieve a realistic look. Forza 2 looks like crap at first sight but at least cars aren't covered by shadows in broad daylight. In terms of gameplay, GT5 is the best GT game yet because of the larger amount of opponents and more natural AI. However, there are still many old flaws present such as the bumper car physics, lack of penalties, etc. which are unacceptable for a game that is touted as being the best simulation ever. Also, GT lacks many of the features that've made Forza accessible to sim newbs. If I had to pick between GT and Forza, I'll go with GT because I'm a graphics whore. Even with the fake shading, GT is still easily the better looking game. But at the end, racers that try to be realistic suck as games. So go out and buy Dirt, PGR, or even NFS and Motorstorm.