Like alot of you I got my hands on the latest step towards a fully fledged GT sequel yesterday Gran Tursimo 5: Prologue. I say alot, but apparently not everyone who wanted a copy.
After going on and on about pre-ordering a copy from play.com, i did'nt acutally get around to doing it myself! But my sisters boyfriend did. Along comes release day and i get a call from him saying that the game has been delayed, apparently play.com had run out of copies, and have said that this is due to a problem with sony meaning they're orders were put back 24 hours, though they did give him a £5 voucher off of GTA 4, he still was'nt too pleased, especially as i popped out to town and gloated when i came back telling him that they have copies everywhere.

So I get home and pop in the new disc, up pops the little blu(e) disc and I'm away! ... well almost. Along comes the little box telling me that I need to install the game, ok a 5 minute install and im away! Or so I thought... 20+ minutes later and its finally installed and away I go!
Erm? After I've downloaded the update of course, which took about another 20 minutes, but after thaaaat i was away! No, really!

The first thing you see after all that downloading and installing jiggery pokery is the custom GT intro.



Shiny flashy cars ahoy!

Eyeballs suitably sautéed you click start to see this


(Minus the expesive motor)

Oooh, where to start? Well a good place is the dealerships, to buy your first car.
Ferrari? Aston Martin? TVR? You can't afford any of these, so time to buy your self a nice piece of crap and work your way up! The good thing being that even the crap cars look great in this game. You start with 30,000 credits which can get you a nice little Honda, Ford or Suzuki, once you've made your choice you're off to the events where you must earn your A,B, and C grade badges.

So strapped into my nice little black honda civic, I set off for the 1st race of the sunday cup!
After 5 or so minutes of racing the gorgeous Daytona Speedway I emerged victorious!
After winning the next few races with out much bother it starts to dawn on you. This game is abit too easy. Now I've only just started on my B badge so maybe there is a steep learning curve thats about to hit, but so far its all been a little too easy.

The stand out reason I feel for this, is the games AI, or lack there of. I hope one of the things they missed out of this stop gap game is the final code for AI drivers, as the only challenge seems to be over taking them, and once thats done they never challenge to do the same to you. They stick to the racing line, rarely deviating, and often don't seem to be getting the same speed out of a car as you can, even on straights.

There are other challenges, like time trials and such which keeps the game entertaining though.

After abit of zombie racing i decided to check out the online play!





Each race has diffrent parameters and car restrictions, but the lay out is simple enough.
You race with the car you're in from your garage so none of this picking a car and colour before each race to slow things down.

The race parameters mean that you can't pit an F1 car against a Suzuki cappuccino and keeps things fair (sorry newbs!). Also to this end, if you hit the barriers at high speed you get a timed penalty which slows your car (sorry again newbs!) Also sharp movements (such as those meant to take out a fellow racer) result in your car becoming epheral and simply gliding into said barrier instead, though you can still go toe to toe with other drivers. So far these seems like good ideas implemented well.

The races start quickly and theres little faffing about. Each race begins with a rollingstart, which is ok, but i hope they bring back grid starts for the full game. So far I've only raced in the minor compitions and i'm now off to fix that.

Update to come once I've finished the game...!