Quick Review
As a racing game this is extremely good. Its exciting, difficult and looks great, the cars don't look quite as nice as GT5 but the tracks and background arguable look better. The handling is incredibly realistic but extremely unforgiving. Come out of a corner sideways and put your wheels on the curb and you will get spit off the track. Putting two wheels on the grass sucks the whole car onto it. This can get annoying but I like it. It teaches you to drive properly. Not arcade style. The handling model can be changed to various models from beginner to pro and the difference is enormous with pro not allowing traction control or abs.
The driver AI is very good with drivers coming off the racing line to cover the inside into a corner. The downside is they are ruthless.On some of the later races they outright ram you off the track. Another annoying thing is that if they tap you up the arse, you will almost always crash. Whereas if you tap them up the arse, you will almost always crash. The sound on this game is one of the areas where it excels. All the cars sound good but its the cars like the zonda that make your ears bleed.
There are a few bugs, such as frame rate drop occasionally including a horrific part on the legends dlc that slows to a crawl in one race at the same corner every lap. I assume this will be fixed as they seem to be ironing out the bugs when they come across them.
This is a great game but make no mistake it is very hard too.

The control system on NFS seems to have been created with the pad as the main controller. While the handling is great on the pad if unforgiving it loses something on the wheel. You can control the car more but you seem detached somehow. One of the main difficulties I think is that they have tried to make it universal and not just with a certain wheel in mind. There are so many options to try it may well possible to make it much better, but you definately cant just plug your wheel in and get a much improved experience.

As a game this a little disappointing. While the cars look great some of the external gfx look iffy at best. The dusti kicked up when you go offline is shit. The tracks look great but are far to polished. The sound is disappointing too. Some of the top cars sound good but when you are in cockpit view they are muted. The cars in front are not which makes it even more annoying. The AI is crap. Auto drivers on rails and the racing is easy and dull. When you get further on it is a joke. To do the 24 race you will have to leave your ps3 on constantly for 1-2 weeks as there is no speed up or save facility.
Handling is where it gets tricky but it is good, very realistic but a bit more forgiving when you go slightly over the edge. As racing game this is average at best. If you want to get GT5 for your racing spills and thrills forget it. If however you want a driving simulator..........

Think of GT5 as a game and you are kind of missing the point. The racing is bland and while the handling is great it just doesn't engage you on the joypad.
Plug in a wheel however and it is different beast all together. Forget racing as it is far too easy and go into time trial. Just you, the wheel and the track. The handling which is good on the pad suddenly comes alive. Every minute movement on the wheel and pedals is translated directly to the car resulting in absolutely perfect control. The curbs which were a little forgiving are suddenly a challenge and stamping on the brake pedal (one of the dullest things while driving with a pad is the braking) will result in lock up or hideous ABS bounce. Drive a lap of the nurgburgring in a fast car and you wheel finish with your heart racing and your forearms pumping as you have had to man handle the car round the twisty bits. Push to hard (and the handling does encourage you to push and push and push) and it will just shotgun you off the track in an instant, but you can feel the exact point of no return the feedback is that good.
I read that car companies now pay Gran Turismo to model cars for them before production as the handling is that realistic. (will try and find source if anyone is interested)
Its a shame you have to play this game to unlock all the stuff and without the wheel or if you think simulators are boring I would not recommend it. If you like them though and think of it as just a simulator, get yourself a wheel and it is in a different league entirely. Nothing I have tried on any platform comes close.