When does the US get the damn thing?

@Kyle81:

make a japanese account

Why on earth would they remove a demo from their network?

Lighting looks great!

@Rectangle: It's dumb, but they probably think it will deter people from buying the final release when it comes out soon after.

As awesome as this looks, I'm a bit concerned too. GT4 was kind of a let-down. Not that it was BAD, it jsut didn't do much for the series. I really hope they focus on doing more for the gamepaly in GT5, not jsut improving the graphics, i don't want to see this series become another Final Fantasy.

GT4 was supposed to be the next big thing,but then Forza came out and killed it. Now that Forza 2 cameo ut first, GT5 has plenty of time to improve and blow it out of the water.

downloaded this yesterday, the crowd looks weak.. I expected it to look a lot better.. the driving is cool though.

@Mr.Waffleton: Forza didn't kill GT4 for me at all. Having spent a lot of time with the GT5P demo, what GT5 does for the series is make the cars controllable. This is partly because of physics improvements, and the fact that they took out "bumper car" crashes. So if you loose control, you're more likely to fix your mishaps this time.

@Mr.Waffleton: bit odd comparing this to a final fantasy no?

surely all GT games are just updated graphics with new tracks and cars - were as final fantasy are completely different games :/

but anyway - i love them both :)

and i hope them extending this demo doesnt mean that prologue has been delayed :(

@makemoney:

why does the appearance of the crowds matter at all. If you going slow enough to look at them you are probably in last place.

I'm confused, where are the pgr images?

here we go again forza,forza2,pgr,pgr2,pgr3,pgr4,mario kart all beat any GT game.

Wish the game would come out soon so the comparisons would stop.

so many car racing games why quibble.

Looks good, but if it isnt at least twice as fun as GT4 then there is no way it can win over the Forza2 / PGR4 combo on 360.

@RobTheBuilder: I didn't really get into GT4, I near 100% completed GT3 and GT4 just felt like more of the same.

how to you make a Japanese PSN account?

@makemoney: LMFAO ... I am guessing the game session you took went like this ... ok ok ahh crap shadows look nice ... trees look good and so does the course ... the cars are excellent ... holy freaking interior of the car batman ... gotta look closer ... the road looks nice and so does the sky damnit damnit ... what in this demo looks ... wait a second ... the demo has crowds????? ... the crowds look crappy ... that's it in a demo of a demo for a game coming out next year the crowds don't look good ... time to post on kotaku.

GT4 was spoiled by having spent most of its life being destined to be an online focussed title, only to have online taken out of the equation very late in the day. The cobbled together a single player experience made for acres of boredom only relieved by the fantastic photo-mode and car shopping (itself greatly spolied by the decision to make it impossible to buy a car without a memory card in the slot, so any car you bought you were stuck with due to auto-saving, no more try before you buy)

Online was the only thing Forza had over GT4, and with the crappy frame-rate and cars that handled like semi-congealed porridge it takes a special kind of fanboy blinkers to think it's an adequate substitute for what Polyphony offer.

I can't believe these guys like the Impreza...

Sucks! Engine is way too peaky, and it falls out of boost faster than Lohan out of rehab, handling is way too loose (so long as you use something other than the softest Race tires, ya cheaters)...

My two picks are the Evo and the slightly faster 135i. Sure, the GTR gets you around the track faster, but it's about as exciting to drive as a Cadillac.

@EvilJ: Oh god the Evo! So sexy!

@JudgeNutmeg: GT4 was flawed by lack of online. But it was even more flawed by a complete lack of good AI.

I never played Forza 1, but Forza 2 is everything GT should be.

@Mr.Waffleton: Have not paid much attention to GT5 have you? New AI and physics modes. The final game is said to have damage modeling. Many changes from GT4.
@EvilJ: I did my fastest lap with the new STi. Too peaky? Perhaps, but I havn't seen a dyno sheet yet and I wouldn't go strictly by a videogame. I wonder if they are using the same twinscroll 2.0L setup from previous JDM STis? Yeah TQ drops pretty fast if yo stay in it up to the 8k redline. I was talking to my brother and we were wondering if the US version of GT5 will put in the USDM STi with the 2.5L engine.

Oh, my brother is an 02 WRX owner looking at buying the new STi when it is released in the US. We are biased. ;)

Uh why does gt5p06 have a SEGA logo in it?

if gt5 really does have major changes, and really does have damage modelling, i will be a happy boy. if not, i might actually give it a pass. i've been a gt fan since the original on the ps1, but other than looks it just seems to be the same game over and over. here's hoping.

@dadeisvenm: Hey yeah... SEGA and Sammy are on the overhead billboard...

GT for ps1 is the best of all..! for me at least..plus you gotta admit the soundtrack is soooo good!..

On a sidenote..

Does this mean that the demo available on the U.S. psn is different than the one from the Japanese psn??

If someone could clarify this point for me...most appreciated.

Oh..and i do agree with the prior comments mentioning the crowd.. I was a bit dissapointed with the fact that there was no response from the crowd, if drove straight in to them.. I would have imagined that a game designed for the next generation game system would have polished these minor details.. my hope is on the final release of the game.

@RobTheBuilder: I'm the opposite, I played the original and not the new one, as the culture that produced the first isn't going to produce a significantly better game with the same mentality towards the series (notably that they thought the most important thing in making a GT beater was having better Anti-Aliasing).

FM2 may be everything GT4 ought to have been (I severely doubt even that, but for the sake of argument I'll go along with the premise), but they've only just achieved a frame-rate that Polyphony hit flawlessly in 2001, on hardware 11 times less powerful. Turn 10 are literally an entire console generation behind what Polyphony can do, and are no threat whatsoever to sales of GT5.

The only people who can spoil GT5's party are Polyphony themselves, and as long as they steer clear of the mistakes they made in GT2 (which even with all the bugs shifted 8.5 million units) they'll blow everything else out of the water and sell a buttload of systems, just like GT1 and GT3 did.

GT1 For me was te best thing!!!!! main reason why i bout my Playstation back in the day...Still listen..to that amazing soundtrack!

Who gives a shit about the crowd?

never an ingame shot.

@vizion:

anyone who's seen pgr's responding crowdes.

actually, the ingame shots are just as good as the fmvs...

i mean seriously the in game graphics are HELLLA CLEAN. I can't get myself out of the cockpit view cause it looks so pretty...

the prologue has a limited number of cars, does it really need to be out until the 30th??? I mean it's only in japan...

(the rest of us have to "become japanese" to get it)

I do want to see what they have in terms of cutomization... Cause the whole GT experience can get old fast if you can't customize stuff and go online.

ok maybe not just as good as the movies, but they are pretty good.

i mean shoot just look at it

[www.threespeech.com]
[images.playsyde.com]

@silentbob343:
I'm just basing my assessment off of how the engine behaves (and as a Honda driver, I do ride that bastard all the way to redline).

It seems to have a very narrow powerband (like most Hondas) and just seems way too "slippery" on the track for a AWD. Not as bad as the IS F, but it just doesn't feel right... and I was a big fan of the STIs in the older games. Fatter powerband than the EVO generally speaking.

I ran some "hot lap" style runs and, the car break down was something like this:

1-GTR
2-135i
3-EVO
4-STI
5-Atenza
6-IS F (only because I was off the road with it most of the time)
7-OF-C or whatever its called

That was on professional mode, with S3 tires on, no ASM, and no Traction Control. Of those, the EVO was the easiest to control, if not the fastest around the track (had some scary moments in both the 135i and GTR, but they ultimately proved faster).

Anyways, I will say this... all the flaws that I found with the STI seemed to go away with R3 tires... but I like running Sport tires to get a better "feel" for the car (especially when tuning... it's kinda like rough cutting a diamond and then using the Race tires as a "polish" to the job).

Last note, as much as I was uncomfortable with the STI, the only car I truly hated driving was the IS F. The F should stand for Fail. I'm sure it's great with stability management and all the little electronic nannies, but without them, it would understeer like mad until you tried to use a bit of throttle to bring it out, and then it'd snap viciously.

@EvilJ: All Subys have small turbos that run out of breath up top. The JDM 2.0L version can run up to 8,200, USDM redline is 7,200, but I wouldn't take to redline unless you are running a larger turbo and more aggressive cams.
JDM STi, v.8, with the VF37 Twinscroll:
[i61.photobucket.com]

Subaru wanted these cars to have nice low/midrange grunt. As you noticed it is a lot different that driving a Honda which has very little TQ until the upper rev range. A better downpipe and exhaust can help top end a little on that STi above, but it really needs a bigger turbo.

The reason for small turbos has to do with the location of the turbo and the boxer engine layout. To keep lag down they need a smaller turbo that spools quickly. In the US the STi never had the twinscroll turbo and equal length headers, but instead got the 2.5L engine. This was most likely done for economic and emissions reasons.

USDM STi, tuned;
[img210.imageshack.us]
Again shows off the TQ lump from 3,800 to 5k.

The graphs were not on the same dyno so disregard the numbers, posted just as an example of the powerband. They were both done on stock motors with stock FHI turbos. I hear the new STi is even better with early power delivery and I can't wait to see dyno sheets of the new car.

All my runs were done on the R3 with no driving aids and "professional" physics mode. Sorry for all the Suby info, but I love cars and could talk about them at length.

@silentbob343:
I'm the same way, and should point out that I'm talking about the STI in the game.

I'd be lying if I said I was as up on the STI as the EP civic/EVO (own one, will own the other), but I'm saying the way the car feels in the game... just not my cup o' tea.

My beef is more with the handling than the power delivery (although I felt like I had to down shift a lot more than I wanted to keep it in it's powerband) but given what you're saying, it'd make sense to shift a lot earlier than I have been...

It'd probably be faster if I had known that about its powerband (something given pretty conveniently in the full version of the GT4).

Sega and Sammy get billboard spots on a Japanese race track because they are Japanese race sponsors, much like Nintendo sponsors a car in American NASCAR events now.

The one thing that Polyphony definitely has is that they are sticklers for detail, and desperately try to get any content in their games to match up with real life counterparts.

The new Impreza looks terrible... but it should still drive pretty well.

@EvilJ: I understand you were talking about the car in the game, but I'll take any chance to talk about the car. ;) I like all cars really, but when I started watching rally many years ago I was drawn to Subaru. I'm a member of a couple Subaru forums, couple Mazda forums, and even one Evo forum.

I have to agree with you about initial impressions for the STi in GT5P. When I first drove the STi I was thinking; "man the BMW and EVO are much better". Then I put up my fastest time and was like; "hmmm...odd, but cool." Of course my times are nothing ground breaking it was just funny I was able to beat my previous times without thinking I was and that the car didn't handle amazingly well.

In reality it should be the best STi yet. Based on a modified Legacy platform with multilink suspension in the rear. Tweaks to the engine for a bit more power and spool up at lower RPM as well as driveline tweaks, i.e. Si-Drive, VCD, and DCCD should help it surpass previous generations of STi.

I hope you enjoy the new EVO and I'm sure you will. Nice size stock turbo that can push the car to the 11s. Cams are easy to change out as with any inline engine and will help that large stock turbo feed the engine more air. I believe it is the first year the USDM EVO gets AYC and it should help the already great handling.

@Blah8: heh, every design change the Impreza goes through gets the same reaction. Take a trip back in time to the 01/02 WRX unveiling and everybody was pissed, my brother included, a couple months go by and people really like they way it looks. Then SOJ redesigns the front for 04/05 and people complain it looks to plain, but a couple months later they like it. Look at the 06/07 aka pig nose; I hated that redesign so much, but after a few months I think it edges out the Bugeye for top spot in the looks department for the GD chassis.

Now we have this new Impreza and I've already come around, but I hated the "wagon" when I first saw it. I really like the STi over the Impreza/WRX. The wider fender flares, front bumper, and larger wheels & brakes really help give it a more aggressive look. Even the std. Impreza/WRX can look good with a few touches; sports grill and painted rear trim piece that connects the taillights goes along way. Red rock blocker tint helps the taillights as well. One thing to remember is the Impreza was always an inexpensive car with the WRX and STi being based off of it. It was never a crazy low slung looker, but rather an economy car.

Some pics I like of the new car;
[www.nasioc.com]
[www.nasioc.com]
[www.nasioc.com]