Don't Call it a Demo
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue may not be the full game, but it's the real deal.
Published: April 20, 2008
Being a Gran Turismo game, it's almost impossible to talk about Prologue without mentioning the absolutely stunning visuals. Yes, the game runs at 1080p (though it's upscaled, resulting in some weird aliasing on both car models and shadows), and at 60 frames a second (though there are hitches and some tearing from time to time), but the real treat is in seeing an entire sea of cars screaming along with dead-on lighting hitting them all. The replays in the game are a thing of beauty (even if they do run at 30fps), and may well sell people on a PS3 single-handedly. The internal view, rife with little details right down to the stitching and felt-like texture of the driving gloves makes hopping into every car an interesting experience.
One note, though, on that aliasing mentioned before: it's actually rather new. I don't remember the Japanese or even earlier preview builds of the game having so much, and I suspect it was because Polyphony finally jumped all the way to having full polygonal detail for the cars, meaning all the seams and handles and such were actual geometry rather than a texture. Whatever the reason, there is a weird bit of shimmering that you'll see on cars both close and far away, but that, like comments on the rear- and side-view mirrors suffering from ultra-low backgrounds and pop-up or being able to see the LOD pop for cars off in the near distance, are just being plain picky.
Aurally, the game is also an absolute treat. Crank up your sound system and you'll hear plenty of differently modeled acoustic environments, and the amount of detail and variety that went into recording all the different cars pays dividends once you start getting into the tuned and ultra-high-end rides. The rest of the audio is fairly typical Gran Turismo fare, right down to the telltale START chime and menu confirmation sounds, though I will admit that the jazzy tracks that play during all the regular menu selections are actually quite good, and the in-race music -- even the stuff that I'd all but memorized from the Japanese release -- is really decent stuff. You'll probably end up killing it after six or so hours of play time, but it's definitely pleasant until then.
Something that the GT series has been able to do that few other racers ever will is deliver a real, genuine feeling of racing different types of cars. The physics in GT5 Prologue are such that a mid-rear car feels absolutely different from a car with a ton of rear wheel drive oomph, and that in turn feels entirely different than an all-wheel drive car. It's in everything about the races, from how you take a corner to how the pitching track affects a particular car's ability to accelerate.
It's because of this steadfast attention to detail that Gran Turismo works. Yeah, sure, just as it's always been, the game is as much about being able to race a dream car as it is seeing all these physics and AI and real-life reproductions of actual tracks playing out, but the real draw to the game is in knowing that when you drop behind the virtual wheel, you're getting something that plays more like the actual car -- or at the very least feels like it is -- than anything else out there.
With Prologue, the real advancement isn't in the graphics or the online play, it's that the sheer nail-biting drama of absolutely needing to nail every single corner perfectly to stay in the lead or catch the pack, and then actually doing it, hitting the apex, pulling the wheel, punching it and praying that you calculated everything right. When you do and like a leap of faith you keep your turn at that angle and your car kisses the trackside bumpers but you pull out of the corner with more speed and precision than ever before... that's exactly what a racing sim is supposed to deliver, and no game can do it like Gran Turismo.
Even if it's "just a demo."