Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is the newest edition to the Gran Turismo family and if you’re reading this, I probably don’t have to tell you that. You know already that it’s going to be a fast paced energetic driving world literally loaded with realism and guess what?
It’s been a long time coming but now it’s here… sort of.
What am I on about? The only thing it shares with Top Gear is the cars but if you’ve seen any episode of Top Gear you know that fast cars is what that show is all about and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is all about the fast car. They grip like in real life with some demonstrating the enormous amounts of over-steer their real-life counterparts have.
It’s not just the unique and super-powerful cars that you can’t afford. No, just like in previous Gran Turismo titles the field is littered with cars that you or I can afford. You might start with something simple like an Alfa Romeo 147 or a Suzuki Cappuccino, but after a few races under your belt you could just as easily see yourself behind the wheel of a brand new Ford Mustang, Aston Martin DB9, some brand new concept cars or even a proper Formula One Ferrari.
But to get there you’ll need to play through events and that is unfortunately where prologue disappoints.
I don’t have problem with playing the events and building my way up the list but GT 5 Prologue might wear you down if all you’re looking for is a realistic driving experience in a car you’re never likely to own. Instead of being given the chance to take the wheel of a supercar straight off of the bat like in many other racing titles, Gran Turismo 5 won’t let you tackle them until you own the cars in the game. That means you’re going to be playing many of the same tracks over and over again to get more cars to push you through the various classes. Not to stress the arcade mode, but all it does is let you race against any car in the game on any track. This means you might find yourself in your dinky little Mazda against a field of cars that would probably eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not stop until you screamed mercy. It also means that while you can quickly get accustomed to the tracks in GT5 Prologue, it might wear you down enough to move to another game. The problem is simple: without a proper arcade mode to let you play as you want, the game begins to seriously lack in fun.Yes, it’s a realistic driving simulator – and quite possibly one of the most realistic ever created – but it’s even missing things that other games that put themselves under the “realistic” moniker have.
For instance, there’s no damage. I don’t know whether it’s something you have to turn on or not but I couldn’t find it in any of the options modes. Maybe it’s like the tuning modes which only let you use them once you’ve made your way through all the necessary classes of race. Whatever it is, this “realistic driving simulator” won’t show a scratch, bump, or dent on your car no matter what you do which is actually quite strange. Perhaps as this is a precursor demo – a really, really big demo – to the real game next year they chose to leave something like damage modeling out. If that’s the case, maybe they should have programmed the music better. The sounds that the engines make are fine as is the touch of being able to choose an environmental sound preset for changing the acoustics of the audio GT5 Prologue pushes out. But the music is the problem.It’s not a bad problem, actually, but rather something you’ll notice quite quickly if you’ve decided to leave the music on. While there’s a good selection of music tracks at your disposal, you not only don’t get to select them, you’ll be forced to listen to the same track over and over again in one race. That means if you start a race and it plays Song X, when Song X finishes as you’re still racing, it’ll just restart for you to hear it all again. That wouldn’t be an issue if the music was innocuous electronica that could blend into the background of practically any racing game, but when some of the music played is short rock or garage that was irritating the first time around, you’re probably going to like it even less the second and third times that they’re played. For a game as well designed as Gran Turismo 5 should be, it’s kind of surprising that they haven’t followed models for music set out by other companies such as Electronic Arts and Bizarre Creations who each tend to do tremendous jobs in the audio programming side of things.
My advice: race with the music off.
And that’s really what most of you will do anyway. Driving is an intimate experience. It’s you on the wheel, the roar of the engine, and the road letting you carve away your imprint. It’s something special and GT5 Prologue seems to capture it beautifully. The game is much better with force feedback controllers and I’d suggest grabbing a Logitech wheel specifically for the occasion as you can really see that GT5 was programmed for them. Playing without any vibration really reduces this game back to what every other racing game is like on the PlayStation 3 and that is lacklustre. I’ve said it time and time again that the release of PS3’s without force feedback was a bad idea so if you’ve got one of the shock-less controllers, now is the perfect time to go out and get one. When you do actually sit down to play you’ll be greeted with some of the best visuals to date. The PlayStation 3 really does shine in this game bringing to the fore the best of what the Cell processor can do.Remember how in the mid-nineties around the release of the second Tomb Raider we started to hear the promises of lifelike graphics in games? You might now and I’m now showing my age but those graphics are now here. They models, textures, lighting and pretty much every part of the graphics are jaw droppingly brilliant and they will surprise you at every turn. This is one game where if you put a photo next to a video game shot, you might have a hard time working out the difference.
And then you’ve got the multiplayer which lets you race one on one in split screen on the same console or the ability to hit the net and go for your life with up to 16 other racers. That’s fifteen other people who you can play against. It’s like being in a real race except that you can’t damage anything and no one wants your autograph at the end. Simply put, while it has its issues, they’re not enough to put a racing game lover off the title. GT5 Prologue is spectacular and while it’s a fair amount of cash for a demo, it is the only taste of the real Gran Turismo 5 experience you’re going to get until next year. That’s one of the things you have to remember about GT5 Prologue: it’s a demo of what is to come. A big demo yes, but a demo of what is to come. If you’re looking for the most stunning driving experience to date and you can’t wait until next year, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is well worth putting down the cash and grabbing now. Should you buy it?: It is the best racer by far on the PlayStation 3 at the moment… does that tell you what you need to know? Developer: Polyphony DigitalPublisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Classification: G
Formats: PlayStation 3
URL: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
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