After a very long wait, I finally laid my hands on GT5 Prologue. I have been a fan of the Gran Turismo Series since GT2 and have been eager to play the new GT5P. I will go into more detail when I have had more time to play the game.
I use the G25 Steering Wheel to play Gran Turismo and only did a couple of races with the pad as the Wheel adds another dimension to the game and it just isn’t the same without. I set everything to Professional with all Aids turned off (ABS set on 1 in Quick Tune though as it’s too sensitive otherwise)
First of all the Graphics are truly amazing, that’s all there is to say about it. The sound on the other hand is a little weak in my opinion, especially if you are playing from the classic GT view (in front of the car). The sound is much better from the cockpit view although the wind noise get’s a bit much at times.
Onto the more important parts of the game, the handling & driving feel. For me personally it all feels very good although the cars all feel a bit light and I struggle to really feel any weight at all to the cars. The AI on the A, B and C class races (which is all that’s available initially is pretty crap. Especially on some races where the computer cars do exactly the same everytime you restart the race, and it’s more of a puzzle where you have to learn the car’s positions & behaviour to complete the challenge. It took me a couple of days to complete all A, B and C class races more of less with ease.
The difficulty and AI improve immensly when you enter S Class races (unlocked when completing the other classes). The computer actually battles for position with you and overtakes quite nicely. I haven’t quite completed all the S-Class races yet and I actually find some of them very difficult. You need to put in some serious practise and some time developing your quick tune setup (also unlocked when completing the initial classes). Often when you have a choice of cars I find that it is almost impossible to reach the top 3 with certain cars.
All in all I think GT5 is trying to find a balance between Racing Simulation and Arcade Racer which isn’t quite working out yet. I don’t think there is enough of a dedicated sim racers market to go all out simulation which is why the mixed bag is on offer.
Conclusion then is that if you played and liked the previous editions of Gran Turismo you will also like GT5P. I do think that the game is quite suitable for Arcade racers and offers lots of variety in terms of Racing & Challenges, especially for the Arcade racer. My recommendation would be to get a Steering Wheel if you haven’t got one as it is a much better game played with (ideally a Force Feedback) steering wheel. Yes, GT5P has it’s flaws (you might have noticed I didn’t mention online play at all) but I am sure the full GT5 release will be an absolute peach of a game!
