Either you buy the retail version or the playstation network one, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is nothing else but an extended version of Gran Turismo HD. Instead of 10 cars you'll have 71, which is already a huge collection of cars compared to other titles, but only 6 tracks to race. High Speed Ring, Daytona, Fuji Speedway, Eiger Nordwand from Gran Turismo HD Concept, Suzuka Circuit and central London with their reversed versions at your disposal.

Suzuka, Daytona and Fuji Speedway feature two different layouts which are reproduced in detail from the original tracks. Suzuka comes with a shorter version of the original track while Daytona Speedway comes also with the GT version. The second variation of Fuji comes with a slightly different approach of a ninety degree curve which is transformed into a chicane. So if you don't have tracks, at least you have cars to test. 71 licensed cars are offered to race in a three groups championship. And if you are a good player a bonus group will be unlocked giving you the chance to compete like a real pro with all speed penalties activated: hit the wall penalty, hit the opponent penalty and cut the track penalty. In this way you will not be able to apply old Gran Turismo technics, such as slide your car along barriers or walls, collide violently with opponent's cars, in order to bounce off faster without any penalties. These deliberate physics errors always have brought new debates in the fans' community and the game was criticized several times of its lack of realism although for every new game from the franchise the simulation factor was always aggressively advertised. Still, Gran Turismo remains a racing game based more on the simulation aspect, although if you enable all the assistants parameters the handling of the car becomes similar to Need for Speed series or Test Drive series. GT5 Prologue makes no exception in handling and physics, and Polyphony applies the success receipt from previous episodes. The only difference is that now you drive a 200,000 polygons car instead of 4,000 polygons present in GT4.

You will begin with a small amount of money forcing you to acquire one of the small models such as Daihatsu Sirion, Citroen C4, Ford Focus, etc. Each group will have one or two demanding cars which have to be acquired in order to complete the single mark challenges (time trial, or one lap race). Cars like Suzuki Cappuccino, Honda Civic Type R, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, have to be acquired as fast as possible to complete the challenges and other races which are related to them. In this way you will not spend too much money and you will slowly progress further into the game. Besides the usual brands, tuner brands or exotic ones (Blitz, Art Morrison, Mine's, etc) will make you want to complete new laps on the same tracks. Those tracks that made me think if I should continue the game or just leave it be. At least if there would have been more challenges to complete. Unfortunately you will swing between classic races (between one, three, or five laps) and time-trial challenges (limited by usual 10 minutes).

Physics vs Graphics

So if the races don't represent any addiction to the player, what has this game that makes us want more. First of all the handling of the cars. Either you use a wheel or just the PS3 controller, the sensitivity of your actions are extremely well reproduced in the game. There are no dead moments while you perform a rotation of the wheel or any action with the analog stick. Everything is precise so you better train your fingertips instead of blaming the controller! The cars react like in real world, or at least very similar to the originals. There are no scripted movements. Everything is influenced by a very well calculated physics engine. And this realism still doesn't affect the simple and natural feeling of driving any of the cars. The slipstream effect is very obvious implemented in the physics engine and some of the races will force you to make use of it (especially on the Daytona Speedway). But in some cases the use of it is exaggerated. Graphics represent another turning point for the series. As I already mentioned the cars are extremely well recreated and the environment sometimes tends to be photo realistic.

The problem is that the graphics lacks of any stylized elements, making the game in some places to look too artificial. Anyway it is obvious that the graphics are concentrated towards the cars and towards the geometry of the circuits. Every bump, ramp, or border will change the car's trajectory and will influence the handling. Imagine a situation in which you slipstream the front car and at the same time you want to enter a bumpy curve on the right/left. Most of the time, in such cases, you lose the back of your car because the lack of air force that should react upon the bodywork. I assure you that such situations are frequently present in this game.