long story short : reviewers when after GT5 with their pinchforks and nitpick lenses on because the game had taken over 5 years to come out , so they figured the following formula for their "reviews" :

                               Overall Game Quality

GT5 Score =       ----------------------------------

                              Time of Development

Meaning no matter how good the game could be,  an Overall Quality of a 100 wouldn't be enough, because they figured "but hey, we were expecting SO MUCH more, like a total eclipse, perfection inmaculate, you know after 5 long years I've invested WAITING! Outrageous! I've done all that waiting, I almost feel I want my money and TIME back!"

So they play the game with their ridiculous overblown expectations, expecting it to be somekind of a bastard child of the Virgin Mary with Elvis and nitpick it to death. Mind you, most of them downplay the overall picture and the numerous strengths of the game, including those that NO OTHER CONSOLE RACER HAD BEFORE, and focus their attention on trivial things and flaws that sometimes aren''t even detrimental to gameplay at all, and showing very little professionalism and coherence, they weigh these aspects where the game is at its lowest with a much harder critique and judgmental approach than that shown while reviewing other racing games including Forza 3. And of course the little formula above played a large part in all that.

Ohh..miscommunication....I thought you were trying to bail out or something...

Anyways.. my only issue is the notion that you believe that GT5 was rated "unfairly" . All I really ask is for you to prove that notion in my previous post

The reasons are things like menus, and standard cars graphics, no matchmaking, some people complained about music, AI, damage(lawl), shadows, sounds from cars engine. These are all the things that forza has better than GT 5, although its doubtful in the case of damage and AI. What GT 5 supposedly does better, is realism in physics, premium car graphics are actually unrivaled on any platform(including PC), photo mode, karting, rally, and maybe some other things which I might or might not have left out. I have played forza 3 a bit but not gt 5 though.

I think what CGI is saying is that GT has always called itself the "DRIVING simulator" which is all well and good but not all reviewers want to play a "driving" simulator, they want to play a "racing" game which Forza does, it gives a taste of both world and caters to the pallete of the reviewers more than GT, which just does its own thing and does it extremely well but because it's not inline with what the "reviewers" want, they give it a lower score.

GT5 is lower because of hype. So much hype. It had too much hype. It ruins any game metacritic.

people waited for a LONG time for GT5 and didnt get everything they wanted. BOOM

I have to say I am quite dissapointed with GT5 so far. Not only do the graphics don't wow me (I have yet to play the Tokyo track though which I always thought was the most amazing in pre-release videos) but often I am thinking to myself "this just doesn't hold up to the standards of PS3 graphics á la Uncharted, Heavy Rain, Demon's Souls and God of War 3".

I was also very disappointed with the online. I'm still thinking if it's only me, am I missing something, but the choices/modes of online games are extremely limited (It just gives me a random list of 100 lobbies that can't be sorted and the only major parameter I can influence is choice of track).

I like the career mode so far though which I think is perhaps the most important thing.

Ahem.

Thousands of years ago, before the dawn of man, Gran Turismo reigned supreme . . . capturing and tormenting all preexisting life on planet earth. This knowledge had been lost as the eons of time descended this planet and collapsed all archaic knowledge of sense and reason.

Now, reviewers have only recently rediscovered this previously long lost knowledge, and now have a horrid bias against GT5, after unwittingly selling their souls to the past four entries due to its awesome awesomeness, which they figured out from their future . . .

Do you understand now?

So what is the difference between a driving game and a racing game?  I thought both games were car racing simulators.  A driving game makes it sound like the racing isn't the main feature or something.

expectations