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Let me start with my verdict first: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is so far the most refined racing game ever including all its former family members. Yeah, it's not a full-fledged game yet, it's still missing a lot of features of the final GT5 and there are still a few visual flaws even within the FlullHD tech demo. Nevertheless, I haven't played a racing game so far that comes as close to reality and is still as fun to play. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is the killer app for the PS3 at the moment and the more you play it the more fun it is. Ok, let me explain why. As mentioned earlier, the presentation of the game is just benchmark. Similar like Apple devices, Polyphony Digital knows how to design UIs and how to melt everything together. Starting with the colors, fonts, sounds down to the design of buttons and sliders, everything is just beautiful and intuative. Not that this is new to Gran Turismo (GT4 was already a good example for that) they just pushed those things to the next level. And let's not forget the various demo modes that are included in the game. Just let the game go and don't interfer and you'll see beautiful cars placed in unique settings once again beautiful looking in 1080p. Let's talk about the car models next. Wether we can actually see those speculated 200.000 polygons per car in GT5 (vs. 4000-5000 in GT4) really doesn't matter. Those cars just look amazingly real. One thing you can find in Gran Turismo: every generation models looks as good as the CGI models of the previous game and Kazunori Yamauchi's team once again proved that unwritten law with GT5P. Next on my list is car physics as well as the AI. Car physics was always the domain of the Gran Turismo franchise. With the latest release the guys at Polyphony Digital once again brought the game to a new level. Where GT3 and GT4 both leveraged the same physics engine that has its roots back in the old PSone days, GT5 offers a completely new physics engine supporting two modes: standard and simulation. Using the previous generation FFB wheel from Logitech, it's just amazing who real the cars feel and how much control you have over the cars. Sure, there might be other games out there, especially on PCs, that could argue to have even more realistic simulation, but then again I would highly question if those are as balanced and fun to play. The AI on the other side really improved over since GT4 at lot. AI cars sometimes run off the track and you have cars fighting for a better position that look almost real. Not perfect yet, but way better than what we are used to so far. But what about the game as such? Well, as mentioned already, this is just a taste of the final game, but nevertheless, the various game modes as well as the already supported tracks, even though they are still kind of limited are fun to play. Polyphony Digital obviously understood to setup some challenging events in order to keep the game challenging even though you might have passed the challenge in third place. I really like like those races where you have to beat a certain time or overtake all cars within one round. It's amazing to see how you could improve yourself round after round or sometimes just the opposite. But don't get me wrong. GT5P might be a great game, but it is still not perfect. Let me explain why. Let's start with the graphics first. Sure, GT5P is rendering in 1080p, but right now it is using no or almost no antialising. What gives the game a very crisp and nice look in some situations, you still find those flickering edges we all know from previous Gran Turismo games. This is especially visible with some of the car models where parts of the car body are neither horizontal nor vertical. In some cases like in the Photo Mode during the demo, the car models do not fully blend into the backround which make them look to artifical. I understand that AA in 1080p is a performance issue, but Polyphony Digital should think about a better AA especially for the cars, it doesn't have to be full-screen. Next thing I wanna mention are those strange, Gran Turismo style drift sounds that are neither realistic nor specific to the various cars. Those noises just sound very computer game like, but not real. Get those fixed for the final version please. The actual car sounds are much better now and you can hear the big improvement over the last version of the game. Last but not least I still have some issue with the various perspectives you can choose from. First of all we have a in-car perspective now, but from my point of view you are sitting to far in the back of the car. If you drive your car you don't see that many things when looking through the windscreen. I can understand that they wanna show the whole dashboard and everything, but that's not realistic. The other thing I wanna mention here is the top view from behind the car. First of all I can't understand how anybody could actually play the game like this, but even if you do, the car just moves very strangly when running into a corner or doing some slides. I am just wondering what the issue is there. To sum it all up, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is a perfect game and only waters my mouth even more until I can play the final Gran Turismo 5. So far I havn't played too many online games, but based on the few games I've played so far, you can of course find those typical bumber car races which I sick and tired of. Maybe this is going to change in the future by adding a kind of penalty system that really stops those destructive drivers. Come on, this is not Twisted Metal Black here. Pros - 1080p and 60fps are possible
- Great car physics
- Beautiful UI
- 2 player slit-screen
- Challenging
Cons - Just the foreplay
- Still some anti-alising artifacts visible
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