I'm pretty sure most impartial observers predicted these kind of scores, the game was so hyped up that it was inevitable reviewers would take that into consideration, even though most people would disagree with penalising a game for "hype".  Halo Reach suffered the same fate, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, etc will too sadly.

I don't care personally as the game is precisely what I expected it to be so I'll be picking it up sometime in the new year when I have the time to play it properly.

Wait destructoid gave it 100? 

This is annyoing. They say it is the best simulator this gen but the score is odd based on the comments.  Meh, I will wait for more. The Destructoid review encourages.

As long as it's life like...

That's all we care about

This was a good review, read the review and forget the score for a minute.  The game got a lot of praises but the scores are not consistent with the review.  It's as if someone else scored the game while another person wrote the review.

IGN Final Impressions: "This is the best driving simulation available for consoles... and by some margin."
"After six long years, it's reaffirmed itself as the king of simulation." 

Comments like this and that final score are going to confuse a lot of people.

I don't get why people are so mad about this score? First off its a good score when it comes to racing games which usually don't have very much replay value to begin with. After a year or so almost nobody will even care about GT5 and life moves on. So stop complaining about a review score that was given im sure there are people called editors who wouldn't just let the reviewer just post any old review about the game. Oh yeah if it will sell better in Europe and Japan then hip hip hooray to those countries but as long as it sells then it shouldn't really matter what the review is some games are just better than others whether you like it or not.  

By the way, just saw this over on GAF...

"Martin Robinson (IGN GT5 reviewer) Facebook:

likes: 27

NOTABLE LIKES: XBOX, MASS EFFECT 2, official XBOX magazine, BUNGIE, BUNGIE LLC, HALO 3, HALO REACH."

Kinda funny, eh?

presentation a 7??? wtf??? btw this game is much more better than GT4 which got a 9.5 and it gets a 8.5?

edge will give gt5 a 6 if the reviews continues like this...

8.5 IS NOT BASHING THE GAME, it's actually a good score. I wake to people crying about reviews, and then I see the game sitting at 86, and I am like wtf is wrong with you people.

It's like he was talking about the gameplay itself. The racing itself is said to be far better than anything... Ever.

It's just the rest of the game doesn't seem to live up to the hype.

Let's hope they can vastly improve upon this for GT6... And get it out far quicker!

This reminds me of the FFXIII reviews days.