For most racers there is not really anywhere left to go. After deciding on brutal realism or wacky races you then simply add on a few more features (car damage, online play, car wash) every version until you run out of ideas and have to start including bikes. This maybe a blessing when it comes to Gran Turismo, because unlike others it's only ever been concerned with very few elements, physics, graphics and car voyeurism, doing each of these to perfection. Sure Mr Yamauchi could add car damage if he wanted to, but then he'd have to divert processing power from simulating the effects of tiny pieces of gravel under the car’s wheels, and that just would not do. So now we have Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, a small sample of some of the new features we can expect from the first real instalment of Gran Turismo for the PS3.
Some of the most exciting additions can be found in the most important part of the game - the driving. The largely self publicised driver’s eye view sure does look pretty, giving you a perfect recreation of the inside of every car available, and no doubt the only way I'll ever see the inside of a Ferrari. Functionally I found it truly first class. After a little patience, I felt it was easier to navigate trickier corners this way than using the more traditional on the bonnet view. I suspect this is from having a visual cue to where the steering wheel is positioned. Wherever you decided to sit in or on your car you'll be truly slapped to the ground by the graphical prowess on display around you. Driving from tunnels leaves a blinding light that fades into normal view even saturating out colour, shadows pass over intricate stitching in your gloves, even road side turf looks like it's been dug out of a Tiger Woods game. Forget games looking like Pixar movies, soon they will seem like live TV. After seeing GT:P you can bet your Bravia it's close, real close. Next helping you down the long winding road to glory is the racing line. Perfected in many other racers here it seems a little basic, turning red to let you know when to brake, often giving you an entry speed for the corner and......erm well that's about it really. Kind of odd but I suspect this is due to Mr Yamauchi pandering to the serious drivers and not wanting to patronise too much. Controls for this driving experience continue to be as sharp and responsive as they have always been but with a noticeable omission of six-axis steering. Understandably, perhaps the Sony exec that usually administers Chinese burns to those who try to leave out tilting controls was on holiday? But then yet another trick that seems to have been missed is the implementation of those sprung shoulder buttons, what gives? Surely racing games are the whole purpose of these controls. You can of course remap them yourself and I found they worked perfectly well giving you far more control of the throttle over trying to balance thumb pressure on the X button.
Outside of the driving experience the main menu has a few surprises for you. Most unexpected is GT:TV, where the staff of Polyphony talk about and even review cars! I remember first becoming concerned about their obsession with cars when GT:4 included a feature that let you take your vehicle to various exotic locations and take snaps of it. Somehow I still have more holiday photos of an RZ Supra than my girlfriend. The romancing of the car continues in the background of the menu screen where your selected beloved is again whisked away to pose in locations all over the globe. Less worrying new features include being able to clear an event with 3rd place, change your car just before entering a race and a quick tune menu. Reassuringly, all the traditional elements are at play here. Your objective is to spend a pitiful amount of cash on a car that has barely enough power to escape the force of its own wind resistance, win races, get super rich and spend it all on glacier mints and pine air fresheners more cars. Due to this essentially being a super-sized demo there is a lot missing here, there are only 70 cars and you’re now down to about 6 tracks. Stop moaning - it is only £25. As a result of this you'll have burned rubber through to the last class of races pretty quickly where the difficulty curve reaches a gradient more familiar to the average mountain goat. Still all the old rules hold true: if your name begins with Lewis and ends with Hamilton, you'll be able to finish all the races first off with the same car your mum drives. If you're me, however, you'll end up stuck in the A class, racing around Piccadilly Circus at mach 10 over and over again until you have enough money to buy a Ferrari, a task no doubt more familiar to black cabbies.
Once you've finished the A Class you’re treated to the special tuning mode and gain access to the rest of the online races. Until this point you’re relegated to only a few online races usually populated by drivers from Death Race 2000 and end up feeling more like an Ultimate Fighting Championship. The game does try and weed out problems caused by these drivers by turning off collisions on cars that behave erratically or giving out time penalties for causing severe crashes, but the system still needs a little more work. Later online events are a much more professional affair and require certain conditions to be met before entry, often focusing on limiting the amount of performance points you can use. Tweaking weight, horse power, gear ratio, etc. in the quick tuning menu, will increase or reduce the performance points. In the end though fiddling under the bonnet of my beloved Ferrari did feel a little like putting lip gloss on the Mona Lisa. Overall the online aspect in GT:P is a shining example of how to organise online matches. Each one took no more than a minute to setup and go, faster if you repeat the same race again. Plus it does away with nasty lists of servers, just showing the race type and entry requirements. Each time I connected I had a track with, almost always, 16 people racing at the same time with very little noticeable lag or cars disappearing off the track. Plus, any money won from these races you can spend in game on fury dice and nodding dogs even more cars. Then if you do find your hot stuff behind the wheel of a motor you'll notice your lap times start to get uploaded to the GT leader board. However, if you’re not and you feel like improving your racing line you can download replays from here and see how pros do it.
There may not be any pine trees, fury dice, bikes or car damage in GT:P, but there is a long way to go until the game is really finished. What you will find is that GT:P tries out some important and well realised advances for the series, and though baby steps here, they are perfectly formed showing great potential for this Christmas. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed for those in-car glacier mints.
Some of the most exciting additions can be found in the most important part of the game - the driving. The largely self publicised driver’s eye view sure does look pretty, giving you a perfect recreation of the inside of every car available, and no doubt the only way I'll ever see the inside of a Ferrari. Functionally I found it truly first class. After a little patience, I felt it was easier to navigate trickier corners this way than using the more traditional on the bonnet view. I suspect this is from having a visual cue to where the steering wheel is positioned. Wherever you decided to sit in or on your car you'll be truly slapped to the ground by the graphical prowess on display around you. Driving from tunnels leaves a blinding light that fades into normal view even saturating out colour, shadows pass over intricate stitching in your gloves, even road side turf looks like it's been dug out of a Tiger Woods game. Forget games looking like Pixar movies, soon they will seem like live TV. After seeing GT:P you can bet your Bravia it's close, real close. Next helping you down the long winding road to glory is the racing line. Perfected in many other racers here it seems a little basic, turning red to let you know when to brake, often giving you an entry speed for the corner and......erm well that's about it really. Kind of odd but I suspect this is due to Mr Yamauchi pandering to the serious drivers and not wanting to patronise too much. Controls for this driving experience continue to be as sharp and responsive as they have always been but with a noticeable omission of six-axis steering. Understandably, perhaps the Sony exec that usually administers Chinese burns to those who try to leave out tilting controls was on holiday? But then yet another trick that seems to have been missed is the implementation of those sprung shoulder buttons, what gives? Surely racing games are the whole purpose of these controls. You can of course remap them yourself and I found they worked perfectly well giving you far more control of the throttle over trying to balance thumb pressure on the X button.
Outside of the driving experience the main menu has a few surprises for you. Most unexpected is GT:TV, where the staff of Polyphony talk about and even review cars! I remember first becoming concerned about their obsession with cars when GT:4 included a feature that let you take your vehicle to various exotic locations and take snaps of it. Somehow I still have more holiday photos of an RZ Supra than my girlfriend. The romancing of the car continues in the background of the menu screen where your selected beloved is again whisked away to pose in locations all over the globe. Less worrying new features include being able to clear an event with 3rd place, change your car just before entering a race and a quick tune menu. Reassuringly, all the traditional elements are at play here. Your objective is to spend a pitiful amount of cash on a car that has barely enough power to escape the force of its own wind resistance, win races, get super rich and spend it all on glacier mints and pine air fresheners more cars. Due to this essentially being a super-sized demo there is a lot missing here, there are only 70 cars and you’re now down to about 6 tracks. Stop moaning - it is only £25. As a result of this you'll have burned rubber through to the last class of races pretty quickly where the difficulty curve reaches a gradient more familiar to the average mountain goat. Still all the old rules hold true: if your name begins with Lewis and ends with Hamilton, you'll be able to finish all the races first off with the same car your mum drives. If you're me, however, you'll end up stuck in the A class, racing around Piccadilly Circus at mach 10 over and over again until you have enough money to buy a Ferrari, a task no doubt more familiar to black cabbies.
Once you've finished the A Class you’re treated to the special tuning mode and gain access to the rest of the online races. Until this point you’re relegated to only a few online races usually populated by drivers from Death Race 2000 and end up feeling more like an Ultimate Fighting Championship. The game does try and weed out problems caused by these drivers by turning off collisions on cars that behave erratically or giving out time penalties for causing severe crashes, but the system still needs a little more work. Later online events are a much more professional affair and require certain conditions to be met before entry, often focusing on limiting the amount of performance points you can use. Tweaking weight, horse power, gear ratio, etc. in the quick tuning menu, will increase or reduce the performance points. In the end though fiddling under the bonnet of my beloved Ferrari did feel a little like putting lip gloss on the Mona Lisa. Overall the online aspect in GT:P is a shining example of how to organise online matches. Each one took no more than a minute to setup and go, faster if you repeat the same race again. Plus it does away with nasty lists of servers, just showing the race type and entry requirements. Each time I connected I had a track with, almost always, 16 people racing at the same time with very little noticeable lag or cars disappearing off the track. Plus, any money won from these races you can spend in game on fury dice and nodding dogs even more cars. Then if you do find your hot stuff behind the wheel of a motor you'll notice your lap times start to get uploaded to the GT leader board. However, if you’re not and you feel like improving your racing line you can download replays from here and see how pros do it.
There may not be any pine trees, fury dice, bikes or car damage in GT:P, but there is a long way to go until the game is really finished. What you will find is that GT:P tries out some important and well realised advances for the series, and though baby steps here, they are perfectly formed showing great potential for this Christmas. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed for those in-car glacier mints.
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