Now let’s get one thing out the way before I start this review. I am both a racing game addict and a huge Gran Turismo fan. Evidence to this effect can be found in my trusty dual shock 2 which has both broken X , Square and analogue sticks which randomly stop responding now and again. This obviously will add some bias to this review but I will try to get over that. Hopefully. Possibly. DAMMIT IM ONLY HUMAN!!



This game is not Gran Turismo 5 but as the close minded people would say “it’s only an extended demo”. In many ways this is true, however in others it is not. It does feature the Eiger Nordwand track from the GTHD Concept demo. The main difference that instead of only about 10 cars this has in excess of 60 “dream” cars (why the Citroen C3 would be a dream car is beyond me). It also deviates from GTHD in that it has actual racing in it instead of time trials and drifting competitions. A welcome change I hear the racing game nerds say. It does however retain the leader boards but only for your online races. Yes, online racing in Gran Turismo. You heard right. Oh dear lord its sweet. Any way enough about that and on to the review for real.

I rarely get this excited for games that I actually set my alarm on my holidays no less at 9am (the shops in Edinburgh don’t open till 10am, they are so inconsiderate). I went to bed extra early on Thursday night...well Friday morning, 2am. I woke up in an excited but tired mood to realise it was 12pm. Dammit. I decided what they hey and went on to my laptop.
Then I got up and went downstairs to stick on the heating and water (as it was freezing in my house) then back upstairs to my laptop and surfed Destructoid for a bit whilst my bath was running. Once all that was over with I headed up to Edinburgh. I got to the bus stop to find a bus had just left “Don’t worry about” I said to myself “the buses are every 5 mins”. So I didn’t worry about it and continued to listen to some Chiodos (first album naturally) and the bus did turn up. I got into Edinburgh some 20 minutes later and wandered over to the nearest centre of evil (short hand for Game the UK’s equivalent of GameStop). Picked up one of the many, many display copies and went to stand in the cue. I got to the register where the sales assistant asked me if I wanted to purchase a controller with the game because it was half price if I did “I already have 4”. Then he tried to sell me a steering wheel “I don’t have room/that much money”. Then he resorted to the age old pre-order angle “Want to reserve GTA4?” “I already have a pre-order” (somewhere in the region of a year old on Amazon) “Is it with GAME?” “No” “Pity you could have got free stuff here” he says under his breath. “Well I could but what are the chances of me getting it on launch day if I preorder now?” “Well you probably wouldn’t” “Exactly, now can I pay for this copy of GT5: Prologue?”

Long story short, I get home and opened it up. I stop for a moment and smell the sweet smell of victory that the Americans won’t have this for another 2 weeks. It’s a strong smell. I turn on my PS3 only to realise I still hadn’t downloaded the new firmware update. This takes up about 15 mins then I turn on GT5:P. It tells me I need to install the game’s data to continue. Fair enough if it helps load times. That takes another 10 or 15 mins and then tells me to restart the game. O...K. So I boot it up and then it tells me I need to download an update (this is getting annoying). So I download that only to get an error message 10 minutes later telling me “Oh sorry the download didn’t work whoops!” Now I was angry. I restart the game to get it to download and it eventually does, I assume this is down to server load being the first day. Then the download installs with a handy caution “All prize credits will be transferred over but there is a possibility that Save Data and Replays will be lost”. Oh fun! So that installs and I FINALLY restart the game to be greeted by the intro movie. Oh dear lord its sweet. Better than ANY GT intro I have ever witnessed.



Then I get to the main screen “My Page” as the manual calls it, which is nicely laid out if a little cluttered. At the top of the page there is a label with “Gran Turismo 5: Prologue Spec II” which indicates this is version 2.0 of the software (I hear that the Japanese original is constantly updated with new features). Below that is a map of the world with red dots which I can only assume means players or lots of players as they are generally focused on Europe and Japan. Beside that a clock with the time and then a weather report for all the various tracks. Below that there is a calendar and below that is a line of symbols that correspond to the various actions that can be taken.

I get a warning telling me I have no car and should head to the dealership symbol to purchase one, which I do. I get a Ford Focus ST in black. Then I head to events and try out the game. It has definitely been refined even from the GTHD demo. The physics are completely different much more stiff and the cars feel different to drive. Once again I turn off all the driving aids because I’m hardcore and go to race some races. Two things become immediately apparent: no damage but that is to be expected from the game now and the cars still follow a predetermined path. However they do try to pass each other which I think is brand new but I may be wrong there.

After that I tried my hand at online mode which is as it says online racing. I am actually quite surprised at how smooth it can run, don’t get me wrong if you have a bad connection in your race you will be able to tell, but when it is good it is excellent. My hat goes off to Yamauchi for waiting so long to perfect it. The only problem is the lack of voice chat, the online mode in its current state does not support it but I suppose it stops the douche bags coming out with stupid insults when they lose. The drivers I encountered were a mixed bunch, some were good, some went out of their way to cause havoc on the field. This is just something that you will never get away from in online matches I suppose. It took very little time to get into a race online, far less than any other racing game, or any online enabled game for that matter than I have encountered. I did run into server maintenance error once but it may again be due to first day load.



The thing that annoyed me the most however was the lack of tuning. I was actually shocked that there is no way to upgrade your car. Sure you can play about with gear ratios and tires but you can’t buy new power trains or such which considering how engrained it is in the Gran Turismo experience I really can’t understand how this was overlooked and deemed not important for the release of this Prologue. Another thing I have noticed is some minor slow down from time to time in races which although not immediately apparent does grate after a while of noticing it.

Overall I think this is a solid purchase for the price, £25 in the UK, but it does come with some caveats. It is not Gran Turismo 5 toned down or without the full roster of cars. It is nerfed in many ways (most prominently the tuning) but it is still highly enjoyable nonetheless. I’m not going to attach a number to this review to make you all feel better or even a buy/rent/leave scale; I’m just going to say it’s up to you if you want this game. If you are a GT fan then it will probably already be a must buy but if you like racing games in general it is a good purchase. It will keep you occupied till GT5 appears sometime next year.