Many of the menus and options (including the rather lovely MyPage interface) in the version of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue we played were in Japanese, and thus we couldn’t really explore them as much as we’d have liked. The demo had three tracks (Daytona, Suzuki Circuit and Fuji Speedway) and a reasonably good count of vehicles – 26 in all, but not all of them were playable. The retail version of Prologue will have an extra two tracks which have yet to be named.
Be careful around those corners
Having driven a Toyota Starlet until recently, I probably wasn’t the best candidate to be testing Gran Turismo 5, obviously knowing precisely jack all about cars. But I do know good gameplay, and that’s something that Gran Turismo 5 has in spades. Not being the greatest of racers, the Daytona track was more suited to my lacking abilities, and the Ferrari F355 proved to be a capable vehicle. The demo was time limited to about 5 minutes which wasn’t enough to complete the 8 lap race, but more than enough to come away with a positive impression.
The race at Daytona had us as one of 16 participants – much better than the 6 of previous Gran Turismo games. The AI was particularly timid for much of the race, though the occasional knock was not beyond their programming (causing my Ferarri to spin out at least once). Having got far out in front of the pack, the rest of the demo was something of a breeze, though not having the satisfaction of finishing the demo due to the time limit was a bit of a downer.
A rather unorthodox camera angle
One cannot deny that the most alluring part of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue was its presentation. The game has absolutely beautiful graphics – painstakingly detailed cars, gorgeous environments and a spectacular frame rate - all rendered in up to 1080p. That’s not to say that there are not issues with the way it looks – there are a few problems with aliasing on the cars, and some of the offtrack textures are a little low on detail. It was pretty difficult to hear the sound over the noise of the show – both of the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue demo pods were either side of the large Sony truck, and one was close to the main stage.
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is certainly shaping up to be one of the best racing games ever, and we expect that the full version of the game will do a good job of whetting the appetite of racing fans when it hits PlayStation Network in December. The full version of Gran Turismo 5 is expected to hit stores sometime in mid 2008.
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