The game released with alot of horribly obvious flaws and some awkward design choices, some that've been fixed thanks to some updates. Photo Travel mode also made the hype skyrocket to unrealistic expectations with all the bullshots it produced.
Still though, when I play GT5, it doesn't really feel like I've been playing a game that's been in development for 5'ish years. The detail on the cars are ridiculous, but when you're actually racing that hardly even matters: the chase cams are bad, with no 360 viewing feature (such as Grid, Shift, Forza, etcetc), and you can't even move your driver's "head" when in cockpit view using the right stick like you can in many other racers. That was a turnoff for me - so much detail put into the interiors yet you can't even look around unless you're using the headtracking feature (which isn't even useable in GT Mode due to some memory restrictions if I remember right).
In short, I think PD put too much time in the wrong areas. The sound in the game isn't that great either, which is a huge disappointment - NFS:Shift has me wanting to crank up the volume much more than GT5 does.
It's a good game with lots of content but like many have said, the quality is inconsistent.
