Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Review

I suppose it started with Thresh’s Ferrari 328 with a custom Norwood turbo (360 rwhp), but FiringSquad’s writers have always been a group of driving enthusiasts. If you invited the former and current FiringSquad editors to your home, you’d discover a supercharged Honda S2000, a Nissan 240SX, an Acura RSX Type-S, three Infiniti G35’s (V35 and two V36), and an Audi S4 in your driveway. Even though our gaming roots are in real-time strategy and first person shooters, it’s no surprise that driving simulators have always held a special spot in our heart. FiringSquad has reviewed every Gran Turismo release since the introduction of force feedback steering wheel support and now that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has made its way to into our den, only two words are needed to describe the game: absolutely magnificent.

The paradox of all of this is that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is a technology demo. It isn’t even the full version of the game. You don’t have hundreds of cars, or dozens of tracks, or even performance modifications. Even so, this is the best $50 I have spent in a long time.

Stratosphere Blue Skyline 350GT-- Blue Slate G35

The Lexus IS-F was validated on Fuji Speedway

The Infiniti G35 --Skyline V36-- is one of the safest cars on the US market

The Premise

You can’t bring up Gran Turismo without hearing complaints about the lack of car damage and how “unrealistic” the physics are in comparison to something such as Konami’s Enthusia Professional Racing. Gran Turismo 5 attempts to fix all of these complaints, and with GT5: Prologue we have a chance to preview one of these issues.

The developer of Gran Turismo, Polyphony Digital, has traditionally cited lack of car manufacturer support for car damage. With the success of Gran Turismo reaching stratospheric heights, it’s the manufacturers who are now approaching PD for inclusion into the game. At the recent Tokyo Motor Show, Gran Turismo was used to showcase the new Nissan GT-R, Lexus IS-F, Mitsubishi Evolution X, and Subaru WRX STI. Even Ferrari has joined the Gran Turismo bandwagon. With the car manufacturers seemingly on board, Polyphony Digital has changed their tune. While they are working on incorporating “car damage,” into the game, they insist that they will only release that feature when it is ready. Their caution leads me to speculate that we’ll be looking at updated tire wear, brake fade, and engine oil overheating rather than the traditional “the headlights are no longer working” or “your windshield is cracked” simulation. That is, if you were really going to talk about “realistic damage modeling” you’d have to talk about the 90% mortality rate that occurs when a 3300 lb motor vehicle T-bones your car at 30 mph (assuming you were in a car with no side-airbags).

The lighting is superb

The GT5 lighting engine is good enough to capture the nuanced color of the BMW 135i…

The STi is pretty ugly, but it’s fast and handles well.