Need for Speed

in the Gran Turismo series for a spin

Much to the constant annoyance of my friends, I still don’t have my

driver’s licence. I’ve never really seen the need for it; I get from A to B fairly

well as it is. That said, after being introduced to the world of Gran Turismo5: Prologue, I

am now far more likely to hit the open road as soon as I can. If driving is anywhere near

as glamorous as this game makes it seem, I’ve wasted years of valuable driving time.

Treating each new addition to the series as an epic novel — rather than

a video game — the developers of the Gran Turismo series have seen fit

to release a Prologue version, giving consumers a taste of what the final

off the game — it’s not as though you get anything less than a complete game

here. Ever since its first instalment, on the original PlayStation in 1997, the

‘the real driving simulator’ rather than just a video game. To the untrained

eye this difference could seem fairly irrelevant, but when you play the game,

you become overwhelmed by the level of detail the designers have put into

the mechanics of each car. Each has its own drive train, specific RPM, torque and weight.

These factors all have an influence on the car’s acceleration, max speed, traction and brake

speed. For someone like me, who has no experience with cars, the experience can be fairly intense.

One thing that even an automotive idiot like me can appreciate, however, is how stunning the cars look.

The team at Gran Turismo have outdone themselves graphically, with cars and tracks that

look so sharp there are moments when you’d swear you were watching a live

race. According to the design team, each car is displayed with 200,000 polygons.

If you’re not a nerd like me and this means nothing to you, consider that this

is about 40 times the amount used in the PlayStation 2 incarnations of the

game. And this level of detail shows. Apparently each car took about six

months to model, and even the minutest detail has been covered. It’s therefore

a pity that, even with the sheer force of the PlayStation 3, the spectators still

come across as cardboard cut-outs that have been placed in the stands, just like

they did in the original. If you’re familiar with the series,

the game play isn’t really anything new. That’s not a bad thing, though,

as it works just as well as it did on the PlayStation 11 years ago. You race in

a number of events designed to make you experience a range of cars,

separated into three tiers of ascending difficulty. This system works fine,

until you encounter a race with such ridiculously difficult criteria you find

yourself racing it again and again without success — which just makes you

want to give up. Luckily, if you ever get to that stage, you can just head online

and race against the live competition, one of the new and excellent features of

the game. On the whole, Gran Turismo 5:Prologue is a pretty tight package. It’s an

excellent racer, and although it may have a couple of minor flaws difficulty-wise,

the $70 price tag makes it a good buy for petrol heads and PlayStation fans

alike. If this is but a small taste, then the final full version of Gran Turismo 5