Jibs almost certainly will, but I'm not too bothered this time round.

The time investment for these games is too much...

Yeah it is.

The Rivals mode in the demo might go a little way to sorting that as it's basically direct TT against ghosts, no tuning, no car select etc. Hopefully that mode has made it into the full game as it's instant Time Attack fun . Frankly I've been unable to beat any of my friends times on there, but the system is very neat as you can pickup the ghost of your nearest rival with no fuss instead of having to face off against the best every time.

I am getting this due to peer pressure and the Rivals mode sounds well executed.

Going to migrate the 360 to a desk and set up the wheel properly and leave it in situe as it doesn't really get played for anything else atm, that setup might be good for Arcade sticks too thinking about it, cool.

Bought the Limited Edition mega pack from Game (exclusive to them) like a chump, extra cars, VIP thing, err, a book written by TopGear magazine I think... No idea.

Will let you know how I get on, and if the nuances are even worth the investment. I am curious as to the reworking of the "career" mode, see if it drives you through. My driving game buddies are taken with it so it must be doing something right.

Ok so, slghtly schizophrenic game with the TopGear crap all over it and Clarkson yabbering on every so often. As for the actual game, the tyres and suspension is different, I've been doing "Hot Laps" in "Rivals" i.e. Time Trials, the good thing about Hot Laps vs the other Rivals modes is its one car one track, so a proper level playing field, anyways, Mugello Short highlights the difference from FM3 to FM4 in terms of tyre and suspension model. You can't take the final corner anything like you could in previous verions, the way the springs decompress and you get understeer is amazing and frightening.

Yes my brother who is into Forza in a BIG way has mentioned that the handling and physics have been improved in this game. It seems that Turn10 pretty much crowd sourced the list of improvements too, so even stuff that was annoying the Forza drift community has been fixed including more tyre smoke and the ability to drift with lower powered vehicles in F3 you had to have a stupid number of horses to get power oversteer apparently.

In short it sounds like a significant evolutionary step and with 2 years since the last release and full interiors modelled in 500 cars you have to wonder what the bloody heck Polyphony Digital have been doing with Gran Turismo.

Polishing virtual dashboards. I guess that is still the go to place for car interior worship.

Amusing that they timed the GT5 patch to co-incide with Forza 4.

Thanks Mads, you never know if its just hype absorbsion that makes me think the handling has changed, it was already pretty impressive in 3, I have 3 separate sources telling me its improved/different so that cool, and by virtue of four points of contact proper suspesion weight shifting its just massively engaging to play. I haven't played a GT properly since 3, so I've no idea what they've done there, it would have to be pretty amazing to deal with Forza and since there is barely a whiff of actual mechanics analysis online its difficult to gauge whats really going on without playing it yourself. Even Turn 10 are sketchy about upgrades to the handling model.

Polophony Digital have been working on the HUD for Nissan Skylines, I wonder if they are more interested in real cars than the game now, I honestly don't know how well that does these days, I might pick up GT5 cheap its been out a while, I know 2.0 has been released, difficult to know if its worth bothering.

On further play, Rivals mode is the obvious home for me, basically its a highscore table, but it sends notifcations tothe person you nominated as your rival if you beat them. What it does to fuel the competition is it asks you, once you hit the start finish line with a faster time, to register this time and quit out, so even though you might feel you have more time in the bag you tend to just post that score knowing you have capacity. This has been happening with a buddy of mine and me on Mugello with the Ferrari something something and we've knocked about 2 seconds at least of our times, more so than we would've have ever done just TTing (you'd think), that puts both of us in the top 9% of times for that track car combination I assume. You can post faster times if you like, but seems more fun laying down a time and passing it back.

The career mode is pretty weak, you basically get what appears to be a linear list of tracks you have to "beat" and you can choose any car and it will offer up 2 races and a wildcard race where your car might not be appropriate but a car of the same class might be. So its free and easy, but like all games of this type and because multiplayer gives you all the cash and credits you will ever need, basically pumping out times on Rivals gets you more credits and whatever the other currency is you will ever need.

It's worth the upgrade, its not worth the Gullible Pack, at least not for those without a desire to get as much car as possible and a little crown next to your name.

Ah yes totally forgot, got Kinect head tracking working. Basically my setup is thus, pilfered corporate desk, 1080p native 24inch lcd screen, microsoft wheel (which is huge) and a chair like what wrestlers use but with padding. Anyways, the natural issue with this is the Kinect "Sensor" can't really go anywhere useful, I tried it at the base of the monitor stand but it was too close and the wheel was naturally in the freaking way, so I've managed to stack two speakers and a dead programming book ontop of each other so there is a tower of crap behind the monitor pointing down on my massive skull.

I haven't fiddled with any of the defaults, and the in game config shows you a pink overlay of where it thinks your head is with a pink verlay over the white of the detected space. Most importantly though the effect is amazing and utterly utterly useful in a way I couldn't imagine. The detection is quite sensitive, you can effectively freelook around the cabin of the car to look at the near side mirror the rearview mirror and look into the apex of the corner, the best analogy I can come up with is its like the first time you used freelook/mouselook on Quake, its suddenly a very natural and incredibly useful tool that will be difficult to go back. Some amazing stuff happens you don't expect too once you've tuned into the concept, on tracks where there is an obvious wall next to the racing line you naturally look towards the wall and then starts to fill your field of view and as such it becomes even more intimidating.

SImply imagine looking at the monitor now, look from the centre of the screen to the right by a couple of centimetres then imagine that image then sliding to the centre so you can see more, so your head swivels but your eyes recentre naturally and then your field of view can see more. It is brilliant.