I ended up downloading the demo this afternoon but didn't get around to playing with it until late this evening, here's my first impressions for anyone that's interested
. Urgh it turned out longer than I expected so for anyone that doesn't like many words: "I like it, some minor things I don't like so much but generally it's pretty good!"
Menus and UIGenerally speaking I like it all, mostly the menus seem to flow together pretty well and the HUD while driving seems much crisper than in GT5. I really like the new look of all the race / event menu stuff but, while it's still crisp and clean I really don't like the initial "GT Life" menu / ui at the very front. That part with it's big buttons and vertical banners just kind of reminds me of a smart phone or tablet menu system, don't get me wrong I like the way it works much better than GT5 (it's much less clumsy feeling) but I just don't care for the visual look and design of it. Maybe it'll be a bit better with the full game when there's actually more content to deal with.
Tutorial lap and Lucas OrdonezI'm all for having some beginner tutorials, driving school stuff and wotnot but I found this to be more of a pain in the arse than interesting. I think I mentioned it before when we saw some pictures from Silverstone and I don't have any ill will toward Lucas as a person just the way the feature is implemented, his constant popping up reminds me of the Mr Clippy fiasco from previous incarnations of the MS Office suite of programmes. Here I am trying to do a lap and his annoying face keeps popping up with these useful tips like "Hey don't forget to brake for that corner that's up ahead!" which you invariably DON'T brake for because you're trying to read the stupid popup message, IMO this whole feature in the demo could be done so much better.
At the very least it ought to pause the game so you can actually read what he's trying to tell you, or perhaps instead of you driving yourself right away it almost should be a scripted "ride along" tutorial that can stop and start and properly identify important things for you. Right now it's like you received a text message while driving and I found it more distracting than useful. Same with the popups on the menu screen, Lucas' stupid grinning face popping up saying "Hey, now you need to buy a car so we can race! Go here to buy it!" then "Hey now you've got your car you can go racing! Go here to race!", it's Mr Clippy all over again... I swear if he pops up grinning at me when I first start a GT6 online lounge to ask me if I want help sending my friends a PM / invite to come join..
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GraphicsGenerally not bad, overall they seem a bit more polished than GT5 though I think most of it is more subtle and less obvious. There does appear to be a framerate issue particularly with cockpit mode and lots of smoke though I don't think it's terribly bad and hopefully just due to it being a demo. Lighting and reflections seem to have improved as have dust / smoke clouds and shadows too generally speaking, there are a few spots where you still see a bit of jagged smoke / shadow lines but it's much improved over GT5.
One thing I would like to see changed is the colour contrast or vibrancy, particularly noticable on Autumn Ring (I assume it's been updated with some new lighting / graphics features?) it seems like the colours are simply too colourful. It almost felt like I was driving around in Kingdom Hearts or Zelda or some kind of overly colourful game like that, it might be just me or my screen (or maybe a PS3 setting I can change?) though.
PhysicsNow this seems to be a very significant improvement to me, not that GT5 was really all that bad but this is definitely that much better but at the same time it felt like quite a natural improvement. Not like when I first went from GT5 to iRacing and the physics seemed drastically different, in some ways it's more like going from GT5 to Race 07 or even pCars.. not that I'm necessarily saying the physics are as good as those games but the feeling when switching between GT5 and GT6 is pronounced in many ways but relatively easy to cope with.
I thoroughly enjoyed sailing around in that Nissan Leaf, perhaps it's just the sheer comedy of the yacht-like suspension rolling from port to starboard but I think when we finally get the game there will be a lot of racing in the smaller eco-box cars like that. I can see them being WAY more fun in GT6 than they are in GT5, and they're already quite fun as it is
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