I want to get excited about Gran Turismo 5, I really do. But I already know how it's going to play out; eventually, you find a race that gives you lots of easy money, you win it with an overpowered car, and then you buy even more overpowered cars to win class specific events.

The problem I have with most sim racing games is twofold. One is that there is no really good balancing of cars, and the other is that the AI sucks... and these go hand in hand. I mean, sure, I can pick an underpowered car and have an exciting race, but I feel like I have to make that happen. And then when I do, the AI drives the same line in every game and carelessly rams you to get an advantage. I sure do remember playing Forza 2 and trying to stay on my line during a turn, when the computer barrels into me and I slide into last place. Watching the AI and turning the replay feature on to see the car stats, they don't even accelerate properly, it's really strange.

The race really boils down to having a better car to defeat the AI zombie cars. I mean really, why bother endlessly tuning your car and adjust your spring rates and damper settings to squeeze out that extra 2 seconds on a lap when you can just add 200 HP and run over everyone? And now you want me to run a marathon race for 3 hours, pfft, that is ridiculous.

The thing I hated most before, license exams, turn out to be the most fun in the game since they offer controlled challenges. You have to beat a certain time, using a certain car, for a certain situation. When I played GT4, I mostly did the situational challenges and the gold license challenges. (Except you, bronze S license Nurburgring, go to hell!) Other than that, I used to play tons of GT3 just practicing drifting, since I found it more fun to try and slide through corners out of control and make it look cool on the replay. And by tons, I mean, I'd play the game for months.

Maybe online play will change things, but I don't know; I remember playing Forza 1 online and everyone used the same car for everything. Either way, the next great racing game technology advance should be in driver AI and better balancing of the cars. Give the other drivers personality or something, maybe even color them with wrestling-like interviews or commentary or something. And who knows, perhaps GT5 already addressed this.

Either way, I will say that I'm not looking forward too much to GT5.