EliteMonsterHunter

I have to disagree with some people with the take on GT5. But before I go on let me mention that I enjoy more arcade racers too in the vein of Burnout, F-Zero, Wipeout etc.

GT5 is exactly what I expected to be. Realistically speaking. It's an extension of the franchise and a showpiece for the PS3. Anyone that was expecting more than that was just being delusional. We got a good impression of what GT5 was going to be when GT5: Prologue debuted. It's a prettier, more robust, more content heavy GT. Why is this a bad thing? As the review states, if you're a car fanatic, a true gear-head then GT5 is your early Christmas present. Where I disagree with the review is that if you love structured racing but you aren't exactly a gear-head, then there's still a lot to love for these players too without getting lost within die hards and the fine details of the game. It just requires one to learn and punishes you if you do not, which seems to be unpopular with too many people.

I'd even go so far as to say that a gamer that isn't familiar with cars but wants to begin to learn could play GT5 to get started on some basic knowledge. Even though I love Burnout (especially Paradise) and the like, I love GT5 for the structure. For the skill that's needed to truly learn your car and learn the track and its fine details. For me, this is where GT shines. It's a different type of racing rush than a NFS or Split Second. To try to diminish the game as "just another racing game"...well, that logic could be used for nearly every single game made in the last 30 years.

Anyways, I would say that GT5 isn't a game for gamers with no patience. Gamers that don't like more structured racing or racing in general. But for gamers that like a good, tight race where you need a lot more real world driving skill and knowledge to win...GT5 is heaven. Is it perfect? Of course not. Anyone expecting perfection is just an idiot. But it's one of the best realistic racing games you can buy at this point.

I passed on this to try out Savage Moon. I loved Savage Moon especially the great sound effects. How does Comet Crash compare?

@zabelzero You mean...no other shooter on PS3 right? Wii has been using the motion control scheme for FPS games since Wii debuted. The first game was CoD3 which looked like trash compared to PS3 and 360 but had the best controls. Somehow, I don't know how or why, but Move with MAG doesn't control as well as CoD3, Metal of Honor Heroes 2 or CoD 4/CoD W@W on Wii.

Even the Conduit controls better in the campaign mode than MAG w Move. (multiplay sucks because of framerate issues)

@Sylvrfonic I have to agree with you on the MAG move support. I was playing MAG since January with a break for a few months to play Monster Hunter Tri. I came back to it a few weeks before MAG 2.0 arrived. I've used the Splitfish for PS3 with MAG because dual analog is too clumsy for FPS games. I was hoping that Move would be better for MAG because FPS games on Wii usually work pretty good. Well, after a few hours of play with Move, it frustrated me so badly I was ready to stop playing the game altogether. Move is clumsy and the video shows it when there were instances where the player had an enemy a few feet in front of him and couldn't hit him. Default settings were "ok" at best. I was able to rank 3rd or 4th in my squad but i couldn't seem to get the accuracy I needed to consistently kill someone in plain view. I could do this a lot easier with the Splitfish so I went into the settings and tried to adjust things. Well, it only go worse. At one point, I played 5 matches with Move trying to adjust the settings as I went and only got 4 kills total after those matches.

I've since gone back to the Splitfish and never looked back. Move was a nice idea for MAG but I think Zipper should have looked at the Conduit's extensive settings for motion control as a template as to what should have been in MAG. Anyone looking for superior accuracy in MAG, just invest in a Splitfish or a similar device. it works far better than Move.

Native mouse and keyboard support would have been nice though...

@MrVee PSN Vampah Dual Analog makes auto aim a requirement. Move makes auto aim an option. No one can brag about their skills in a FPS game if they're using dual analog with auto aim enabled. Seriously, who brags about using training wheels to ride a bike? Dual Analog and auto aim is just that. An aim bot to assist the player because dual analog is a clumsy mess when it comes to fps games and the developers know this. Turn off auto aim and the dual analog players will die horribly to Move players under many circumstances other than an outright ambush.

@aforty At this point, I'm so pissed with my phone right now that if Apple offered free Iphone 4s to Vibrant owners on Tmobile (if Iphone4 was on tmobile) I'd jump on it....

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.....

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who the hell am I trying to kid, no....no I wouldn't jump on that.

@gumbottoms I understand where you're coming from. Let me share a funny story. I played with the Vibrant at Tmobile for a week straight trying to decide if I wanted to get it to replace my Nexus 1. I was torn because the N1 with 2.2 is a beast of a phone but the limited storage for apps is ultimately what made me decide to go with the Vibrant. I love the screen. It's "OMG" good and I definitely loved the 16GBs of internal storage. The Hummingbird CPU combined with the PowerVR GPU makes the Galaxy S series phones run incredibly good in some taxing situations even compared to a 2.2 powerful Android phone. I was in heaven with my Vibrant for the first week. Then the problems starting popping up...

First was the GPS issue, which the fix kinda, sorta worked.

Then I realized the Vibrant doesn't have a user dictionary which I needed because Swype wouldn't recognize a lot of words I was trying to type.

Then I realized you can't add custom ringtones and notifications to your contact list unless they're physically on the phone. This annoyed the hell out of me because stock Android will use Google servers and allow for customized ringtones just fine.

Then I found that sync with Gmail servers doesn't work like it's supposed on the Vibrant. Getting group sync to work was annoying as hell because it wouldn't work unless the entire contact list was physically on the phone.

Then I found that Calendar sync didn't work right either. I spent two days frustrated as hell because the Vibrant just wouldn't play nice with Google servers. I finally got it working but this is an Android device. Syncing with Google servers is supposed to be seamless and intuitive. WTF was Samsung thinking?

Then I found that Samsung removed the New and Weather widget and replaced it with Daily Briefing which is useless.

Samsung decides to not put a front face LED on the Vibrant so there's no way of knowing if you missed a call, email or text message while the phone is in sleep mode. Absolutely brillant. I'm no developer or engineer but even I can see that there's a damn good reason to have the LED on any smartphone. How did Samsung screw that up?

Also, someone at Samsung didn't think it was important to have the virtual buttons on the face of the phone to be synced with the sleep timer for the screen. So what you get is anytime you touch the screen or a button on the phone, the virtual buttons will light up (bright as hell) for a few seconds and then turn off. At first it may not seem like that big of a deal, but when you're using the phone for extended periods and the screen is still on, it can become distracting and annoying when the screen is still on but you're constantly seeing these bright ass face buttons turning off and on anytime you do any little thing with the phone. The Epic's sleep timer can be synced with the face buttons, why is this not standard on all Galaxy S phones?

SmartLife may be a competent UI skin but it's poorly designed and I won't get into that because it's just too much to discuss here.

The first week I had the Vibrant was a total love affair. But digging deeper left me wondering how Samsung could get key things right but break things that are standard in Android and already worked fine prior. It's like they reinvented the wheel and made it square and are trying to convince users that square wheels work better than round wheels and riding with no wheels is even better on a bike that has a great, state of the art frame. I've found 3rd party apps and a few workarounds for some of the issues but this shouldn't be needed for services that are standard (or supposed to be standard) in stock Android.

As I mentioned, Samsung better fix this. I'll give them until the 2.2 update and it better release in September. If the update gets delayed, I'm selling the phone and going back to HTC (still makes superior phones than Samsung and superior UI) if the update doesn't fix all of these ridiculous issues, then I'm dumping the Vibrant still. Either way, if this isn't taken care of then I'll never support Samsung again.

@kramer If Samsung's update doesn't fix this and a host of other issues with the Vibrant, I'm dumping this phone and getting the HTC G2 that's coming down the pipe and I'll never support Samsung again. Seriously, There are things I love about the Vibrant but the GPS issues are only one of many problems I've found that just shouldn't be there.

"Unlock the door HTC, I may be coming back soon..."

@Frogboy Incompetent? Dude, after using the Vibrant for the last three weeks I've come across some pretty damning blunders by Samsung.

First of all, they killed custom ringtones and notifications on the phone. There's a different process in place to customize them but the process doesn't work. I had to download Ringo Lite to get custom ringtones and notifications on the Vibrant.

Group Contacts and calendar syncs with google servers doesn't work by default. I had to go into the phone and into my Gmail accounts and monkey around with them to finally get proper sync. That's total bullshit when any other Android phone I've used ( and I've used quite a few) does the sync intuitively by default. I still can't get Groups to sync right on the Samsung Vibrant.

Samsung also killed the user dictionary in the Vibrant. I have no clue as to why they did this when the user dictionary is a default feature in Android. Using Swype was getting frustrating because it wouldn't recognize certain words I was trying to use and when I long pressed to get the "add word to user dictionary" prompt, Lo and behold, it wasn't there. That's when I found out there isn't a user dictionary on the phone. Anywhere. I had to install "User Dictionary" from the market. Lame.

No LED...We all know how this goes. "How do you know if you have a text message, email, missed call or system message waiting when you turn of the screen on the Vibrant? You don't because these geniuses didn't include a LED on the front of the phone. Thank goodness for NoLED in the market. At least there's a fix but this shouldn't have been necessary.

THEN we get to the GPS issues. Look, we've already had some heated conversations here for the hate (or love depending on which camp you're in) for custom UI skins. After spending weeks with the Vibrant, I'm convinced that this phone had the potential to be one of the best smartphones ever made but fails because Samsung made dumbass decisions with Smart Life/Touch Wiz or whatever the hell it's called and removed functionality that's standard to Android for no good reason and didn't provide a suitable alternative. Someone should be fired for this debacle. HTC would have never made such stupid mistakes.

Fortunately for us, Android is open source..meaning, open source is all about fixing the fuck ups that should have never been.
The 2.2 update for the Samsung Vibrant better do a helluva lot more than fix the GPS issue. If it doesn't, I'll never buy another Samsung phone again. I don't care what's in it. Fix it Samsung.

Fix.

It.


What's up HTC? Looks like I might be coming back sooner than I thought.

@benjih still not better than PicSay Pro though.