A thousand cars, headlights sweeping the night asphalt, the smell of hot rubber.

Gran Turismo 5's profile tells a clean story. Where it shines is exactly what matters for a racer: the feel of a controller in hand sits ahead of 88% of titles, and attachment ahead of 87%. People who touched it hold on to it, and the driving answers. Fun follows, ahead of three quarters of games. Where it slips is the visuals and the soundtrack, in the lower half, and above all the desert island, right at the bottom, ahead of barely a fifth of games. You take a thousand cars, not a world to live in. Careful though, these lines rest on very few votes, a profile to confirm.

Against the benchmarks of sim racing, it's the genre's classic pact: the sensation of driving before the soul. A game you respect on the tarmac more than you hold close.

So, who's it for? You, if you love feeling a car come alive under your fingers, the growing garage, night falling over the track. Much less if you want a world that carries you somewhere other than the circuit.