Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge

Picked up a copy of Gran Turismo 5: Prolouge the other day and wanted to give my two cents on the game. Been playing it just about every night with Oleg and my younger cousin. Bottom line? It's a good game - for a while.

Sadly, there is only so much you can do before it gets old. 6 (or 8? I forget) tracks only, with certain events that you have to use certain cars for or you'll just never win...But to get those cars you have to redo old events to build up money, 20 times in a row, which becomes old. Some of the events as well, you can literally only do if you're either a pro at the controller (no mistakes...ever) or you have the ultra accurate GT steering wheel. So career mode really has it's ups and downs. Some are fun, some are hard fun, and some are just stupid to bother trying (aggervating too).

Graphics? Out of this world. Bought an RX-8 and on the idle screens when waiting to choose what mode you want to play, it looks real. Not just amazing, or really cool, it looks REAL (playing on a 42' 1080P HDTV). But insane graphics can't make a game, and I think we all know that.

Physics? They are as real as always, but with a simulation mode (arcade "real" like) and a professional mode (real as it gets). Simulation mode really helps in tights spots and when learning the game. It's a lot harder to spin out, or mess up in general. Professional mode, slightest thing you do wrong, you're going to pay and pay hard. A lot of time and patience if you really want to play in that mode.

Online Play? Garbage. Enough said. Every room almost ALWAYS lags. People will fly through you, crash into a wall, then teleport way ahead of you like nothing, then crash into you, and send you flying while they still drive... At the start of the race by the way. That became old, very fast.

The cars? As always the cars are amazing. Even though you only get something like 60 cars, some tuned for you and some not, it just still doesn't cut it. Not the selection department, but the fact you cannot tune any of them. Now, you can "quick tune" (unlocked when you get to S rank in career mode) and lower the cars weight, change dampening, gear ratios, increase power, etc. Thats great...But it's NOT Gran Turismo! I miss blowing money on insane exhausts, getting wheels that match my car, lowering the car and actually seeing it lowered, etc. Now granted, I understand this is like a "demo" of GT5, but they could have at least had a few wheels and some settings ALONG with quick tune, don't you agree?

All in all, the game is a solid GOOD. You can play with some REAL looking cars with SOME decent events on some nice, but few tracks. If you're big into online play (like me) then wait for the real deal, because this lacks heavily.