It's on Amazon for $30 and I am sorely tempted.

IMO, if i had to buy it now, with Forza 4, F1 2011 and even Dirt 3 out, i wouldn't get it. I have it but it gets virtually no time in my console.. It's not a bad game/sim by any stretch of the imagination but i just don't find myself having a whole lot of fun with it when i play it.

The career is a grind, most of the cars look poor and i believe other games have equalled it or overtaken it in terms of the way it looks.

I have to counter my ambivalence toward this title by saying i have friends on my friends list who worship at the alter of GT5 so it may be just that i don't "click" with it as a game.

if you play/race alone... for 30 bucks.. YES... if you like MP, or don't like to have to unlock almost everything... then NO. The worst part of it is the terrible INTERFACE.

pretty much what magnum said..

I think it depends on what your other choices are:
if you have a PS3 and XB360 then FM4 > GT5 > FM3

GT5 is a good sim underneath a car collection and career game with poor interface and some gameplay choices that require a bit of grinding to get access to a lot of the cars.

Personally I really enjoyed it last year and spent a few hundred hours on it and I still play it a couple of hours per month driving the awesomely modeled Nordschleife in the rain, now that I have FM4 I drive that more often as it is a better all around sim/game, if only it had the great track modeling of GT5.

So for $30 If you like race sims and are ok putting some decent time into it, it is a great deal, I bought a PS3 just for GT5 and It was worth it to me, but it is a game that seems to turn some people off, at $30 it seems like not a bad gamble if it turns out you don't like it you can probably sell it and get most of the money back.

that's all I do in GT5, hotlap the nordschliefe

I would love to be able to at least hot lap... but without proper support for my FANATEC wheel, and still unable to find a good, working settings profile... i don't even like doing that... i wish thou.

Not sure if it helps but here's the wheel settings I'm using on the Fanatec GT2 in GT5:
Sen. 420
FF. 020 (you probably want this higher)
sho. 090
dri. 004
ABS. 060
lin. 010
dea. 010
spr. -3
dspr -3

Also I set the following GT5 Options wheel force settings which seem to work well for me:
Simulation
Power Steering Off
Force Setting 3

Car Settings:
Steering Sensitivity to 0
All assists off

Overall GT5 doesn't feel as good as FM4 with simulation wheel settings, but GT5 + Fanatec feels fine once I get used to it and IMHO it easily feels better than rFactor does with the same wheel on the PC.

I still use GT5 Nordschleife and now Spa DLC for lots of fun that really is not possible in other sims IMHO, especially the great track modeling and changing weather and light conditions, driving my Mazda787 in the rain in an endurance race is awesome here are some favorite vids that show what I like best about GT5 that may be of use for the OP (be sure to check out that 24h video later on when it becomes dark and he is driving at night):

Strange that the price for the platinum version is above 25$ in the US. UK price in the webshop "the hut" is just under that.

Whats funny is everyone that posts GT2 Settings to Turn10 regarding the FM4 countersteer,

None of the above settings in the least are linked to the "Drift Mode" that Fanatec has in both the GT2 and CSR Series wheels....

Hrmmmm....

PD forgot to incorporate RainX in the Windshield physics engine.