Rating Preview  Fun Factor  4.0   Graphics 8.0  Sound 7.0  Multiplayer 3.0  Single Player 4.0  Controls 8.0

The thought of GT coming to a Next Gen console gave me chills.  Finally, I imagined, this was exactly the hardware to help pull off Polyphony’s high expectations for creating the most realistic racing simulator, EVER.  The combination of the PS 3’s power along with Polyphony’s typical high quality of design gave me confidence that my $40 was a good investment.  Even if it was just a portion of the completed game.  However, about 10 minutes into the game, I realized something just wasn’t right.

First, let me get this out before getting into the “meat” of the game.  The graphics and physics are fantastic.  In-game cars look like the real cars, in-game cars drive like real cars.  That’s what the Gran Turismo series is all about.  And Polyphony delivers its’ usual high standard of realism.  So if you have never played a GT game, you’re going to be impressed.  But for those who are fans, it’s going to be “old hat”.  Sorry, the truth hurts.  And, yeah, the HD feature is awesome.  But just having a pretty game doesn’t make it great.  You need to deliver more and this is where GT 5 Prologue fails.

Unlike previous versions which used the license feature to help you progress in the game, GT 5 Prologue uses a Class system.  You start out competing in Class C which is made up of lower level, slower cars. In Class B, you move up to sports cars.  And Class A is pure power.  Each Class offers more challenging courses and longer races.  However, that’s about all which is different between Class races.  One thing I liked about the license feature was how it forced me to learn how to race with different cars.  It got repetitive and frustrating at times.  But I did learn how to maneuver, brake, and throttle a front wheel drive car with a mid-engine setup.  Which was much different than a rear wheeled muscle car with a monster engine under the hood.  I had to basically “simulate” what a real driver would need to know for each type of car before the game let me progress.  Basically, the simulator made me….well….. simulate.  Then I was “licensed” to race.  What a novel concept.  

GT 5 Prologue’s use of Class races takes the simulation out of the game.  Maybe that’s what they wanted, since it is a demo.  Oh, wait, Polyphony doesn’t want people call it a demo since that might make people who bought the game feel like they were ripped off.  Well, if that’s the case, maybe put a little more effort into making the game a simulator.  Instead, GT comes across as more arcade-like.  One race which comes to mind, limits you to using only a Nissan GT-R for a one lap race against some moderately good competition.  You have to place in the top 3 to move on.  Not too hard, except for the small detail of starting out in last position.  After about 25 tries where my best finish was 5th, I took the cheap way out and smashed into walls going 110 mph, using them to slingshot me around and past the computer drivers who were confined to racing with real life physics.  Ha!  I sure showed them!  But wait, this isn’t an arcade game.  It’s supposed to be the crème de la crème of racing simulators.  Yet it’s not simulating real racing. 

OK, so maybe at this point you’re thinking, “It’s a little arcadey. Big deal.  I’m not a hardcore simulation gamer anyways.  GT always featured the coolest, fastest, cars. So let me race!  Give me the Ferrari, Skyline, Viper! Let me at ‘em!” 

Um…..hold on.  You need money to purchase the cars.  And earning money, or the difficulty with earning money, is actually one of the things GT 5 Prologue simulates very well.  Unfortunately, this isn’t a good thing.  You earn almost nothing squat for winning a race.  Class C’s top place earns on average $6,000.  Yet a Class C eligible car can cost around $35,000.  That means you need to place first in 5 or 6 races to buy a new car for the Class you are competing in.  Each Class increases the winning amount while also increasing the cost of the cars eligible to race in the particular Class.  It’s a Catch 22 scenario. 

But wait, the game also throws in what I like to call “The Gotcha”.  This is the one race per class where you have to purchase a specific car in order to be eligible to compete.  So finally, just when you’ve earned enough money to buy the car you’ve been drooling over….Wham!  Here comes “The Gotcha”, forcing you to spend money on a car you’ll only use once.  Yay.  Now I have to buy a crappier car for one race only to have to go compete in previous races to earn money to get the car I wanted 6 races ago.  Thanks. 

Difficulty earning money is a concept familiar to GT veterans.  It has always been hard to earn money for cars, at least in the initial portions of the game.  However, the key was to finally compete in races where the prize was money AND a car.  You would sell the car, taking the extra money to invest in a better car.  Not in GT 5 Prologue.  Nope.  When I finally won a car, and a crappy car which couldn’t even be used in the next Class of races, I couldn’t sell it.  You can’t sell cars you win.  I was floored.  This isn’t simulation.  In real life I can sell cars I own.  Guess the game’s designers are either hard line communists or stoutly against re-gifting.  So I’m back to re-racing races I’ve raced a dozen times already. *At the end of the review I’ll give a great tip from a friend who found a way to overcome the money issue.

The game also lacks some of the fun features of old.  Like Rally Racing and old American Muscle Cars.  Both are missing from the game.  It wouldn’t have killed them to add in a couple of rally cars and races.  Especially after they made me buy one particular car for one race.  At least carry on that theme and force me to buy a rally car.  It would have been more enjoyable than having to purchase a lame midsized sedan and take it on a track I’ve driven a dozen plus times.  Or how about letting me win a cool, 1969 Dodge Charger with a Dukes of Hazard paint scheme.  If I can’t sell the darn thing, let me at least enjoy racing the car. 

And don’t think about tuning the cars either.  You need to complete all the Class races first.  Then you can tune a few of your cars features.  I actually like the limited tuning since I’m not a gear-head.  But having to wait until you finish all the Class races is a pointless hindrance and further limits your opportunities to earn money.  Like the old games, there are Club races where owners of the same type of car race each other.  So if you purchased a Suzuki Cappuccino, you could enter a Club Race competing against other Cappuccino’s. However, you start out in last or near the end of the pack. And since you all are driving the same car, not gaining an edge by careful tuning basically guarantees you aren’t going to win the Club Race.  I think the best I did was to move up a couple of spots.  So another opportunity to earn money and have some fun is wasted until you excruciatingly complete the Class races.

The music and sounds are finely done.  Cars sound like cars. Yippee.  And at least the music is defaulted to playing more in the background.  I still have painful flashbacks of marathon racing in GT 2 when Garbage’s “I Think I’m Paranoid” repeatedly blares over the engine noise for two hours of pain.  In this version, you actually forget music is playing.  Which I can’t figure out if it this is a good thing or bad thing.  But it may be a symptom in which the artists and songs are irrelevant.  I only heard a couple of songs I actually enjoyed.  The rest were lame and didn’t seem to fit the mood of the game. 

Lastly, Polyphony gloats how GT 5 Prologue has online racing.  And after all the issues with the single player mode, I couldn’t wait to get online and have some real fun.   Wrong again.  Upon trying to connect I kept getting “Error 11.00000000” and a message gloatingly exclaiming “Failure to Connect”.  After 5 or 6 tries of this, I searched the web for answers.  Luckily, someone figured out that you have to manually re-configure your PS 3’s Network Settings and disable the UPnP feature.  Hmmmmm?  Yeah, I was just about to try that out because it was an 11.000000 error and shame on me for missing the obvious UPnP compatibility issue.  I’m sure a 10 year old could have figured that out.

I did manage to get online and was in queue to race.  The flag went up and I leapt into 3rd place.  “This isn’t all that bad”, I thought.  I was halfway around the first lap and gaining on the 2nd place car when it happened.  I saw my first “ghost”.  The online game has a feature which “ghosts” cars it believes are being reckless or going to unfairly bump you.  The “ghosted” car is able to go right through you so as to not interfere with your driving.  However, when and how the game decides to “ghost” a car is a mystery to me.  Sometimes a car would be in front of me, driving on a straightaway, not seeming to be in any trouble when it would “ghost”.  And times when “ghosting” would have been appropriate, especially when a car kept ramming me over and over before I spun out, it didn’t “ghost”.  Or how about the time when 4 players were side by side in a narrow part of the track and all “ghosted” so they could merge together and not lose any ground.  Last I checked, “ghosting” has been banned in all the major racing circuits.  So how is something as fantastical as “ghost” cars allowed to be in a simulation racing game?  This isn’t Mario Kart, after all.

The good news about online racing is that the money you win can be used to purchase cars in the single player mode.  The bad news is that you stand a very poor chance to win an online race unless you are able to tune your car.  If you try to use a car “straight off the lot”, then good luck.  Because if you have to race with the crowd, you’ll probably just end up being rammed into a wall a few dozen times.  In all the races I saw, the player who won had a car which had the label stating it was tuned and they were able to stay way ahead of the reckless “ghost” drivers. 

And did I mention that you can’t see who you are going to race through the use of a lobby, nor have a friend race with you through a simple feature like “Invite a Friend”?  Again, another feature which would have made the online mode much more enjoyable, yet glaringly missing.

Sure, GT 5 Prologues graphics are top quality.  But the lack of versatility with being able to earn money, purchase cars, and in essence, have fun, is totally lacking.  I realize the game is a smaller version of what is to come and Polyphony probably made concessions to make the abridged version playable, yet affordable.  But if this version is what is to come, only in a larger package, then I may be done with GT series.  Why would I pay $60 dollars on top of the $40, to have a longer and more painful experience?  I seriously hope Gran Turismo 5 corrects all the mistakes and shortcoming so blatantly obvious in Prologue.  Being a fan, I expected a great ride, not to be taken for a ride by a greedy company.  And that’s precisely where I stand after playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

*You want to earn big money with little pain?  Here’s how, in 7 easy steps:

1. Have kids.  My friend has three boys, ages 5, 7, and 8. These seem to be a good range of ages, balancing youthful stamina with the inexperience of playing crappy games for extended periods of time.  Unfortunately, spawning a gaming army takes approximately 5 years.  Though I’ve seen 2 year old gaming prodigies, which should put you in range for GT 5’s release date.  If you have kids, go to step 2. If you don’t have kids, adopt some.

2. Train your kids to play.  Easy since you only need to teach them to hold down one button and steer.  A good measuring tape is if they can play Ratchet and Clank, they can play GT 5.

3. Set them up with a car that can’t lose.

4. Choose the Daytona oval track, single lap race.

5. Turn them loose.

6. Come back in an hour; spend all the money they won on cars.

7. Repeat.