Review

I’m a huge fan of Gran Turismo - it’s important that you know this before I begin this review. So while I can fawn lovingly over every brilliant aspect of the games, I can also be the harshest critic of their failings (I still have a death-warrant issued for whoever made the decision to include Everything But The Girl on the soundtrack to Gran Turismo 2!) With this in mind, let me tell you about why I wouldn’t buy Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.

Quite simply: I want a full Gran Turismo experience and don't want to pay for a glorified demo.

As the name suggests, this is a small preview offering ahead of the real-deal, which is still a year away according to the latest reports. It offers up six circuits to race around, a sizable number of cars to race on them and a large number of challenges to try out. It’s true to say that there is more content here than many full games can offer. So when you consider the budget price tag it’s a pretty good deal.

Sony’s reasoning behind this release is that they are feeding the fans desire to play GT5 now, but I fell for this ruse last time. When I bought GT4 Prologue, I was rightly amazed by the visuals and played it for hours and hours. Unfortunately, this meant that when GT4 finally arrived it didn’t seem like a new game anymore. Consequently, I didn’t play it anywhere near as much as I probably should have done. I can see the situation repeating itself here.

Visually, this currently rests somewhere between Forza 2 and PGR 4 and if you wonder why I’m comparing this to Xbox 360 games, it’s because that’s what everyone else will be doing. The cars are as fantastic as you’d expect and the all-new interior view makes the gameplay even more realistic.

They haven’t done themselves any favours with the track selection though. Of the six, only London and Eiger really show off the detail. The rest are accurate but bland recreations of real-life circuits. I could have done without the Daytona oval and if I never see Suzuka in a racing game again I’ll be a happy man. Yet here it is again. Yawn.

As far as racing games for the PS3, this is currently the best there is but it also highlights just how important the Dual Shock 3 will be. Playing Gran Turismo without a rumbling joypad is a strangely soulless experience and one that the final release won’t have to worry about, but the one question that keeps repeating in my head is: how much sooner would GT5 have arrived if Polyphony and Sony hadn’t developed this? There’s enough here to suggest that GT5 will be an absolutely fantastic game, and one that will undoubtedly sell a great number of consoles, but let’s not spoil it by playing this one too much, eh?

About the Review

Platform

Sony Playstation 3

Developer

Polyphony Digital

Publisher

Sony Computer Entertainment

Released

28th March 2008