Thank you for not including damage, my car would have never survived the first race
Speaking of racing, the race tracks in this game are unbelievable. They’re gorgeous! Details, details, details! When you go to race at Daytona, it looks like Daytona, down to the last bit of fence. When you’re racing in the mountainous areas of Europe, it looks like actual mountains and a lusty green field of grass, sitting perfectly in front of those snow-capped towers. The amount of tracks you get, again for a game that is truly a prologue, is pretty impressive. On top of these tracks, you also get to race them backwards which means you can enjoy the other side of them.
Of course, the cars are probably the real bread and butter here. I was very impressed when GT4 hit the market some years ago. I felt like it had pushed the limits of the PS2 and produced something truly remarkable. That, of course, was because I had GT3 to compare it to. If you put them side-by-side, you would see the remarkable difference. Fast forward some years to the Playstation 3’s first attempt at the series and you can already tell the capabilities of the system. Looking at GT4 now it looks like a first-generation PSOne game compared to Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. It truly is that big of a difference. In the Blu-ray documentary that is included on the game disc, you hear about what they had to work with to put the models together. They basically were sent high-quality CAD files of the car bodies and worked with very high-end modeling software to make these suckers look sweet. The shaders that the PS3 produces also helped, and the lighting (which has always been a huge deal for Sony systems) looked unreal. When your car is racing on the track and it shifts positions with the sun, the shadows inside and outside the car properly (and accurately) adjust accordingly. The game does small things like that and it also does other things such as when you enter a tunnel, the entrance of the tunnel reflects off the dashboard instruments until you’re out of the tunnel. It adjusts according to speed and type of dashboard. That’s fine details that you can’t see in any other racing game to date. You’ll notice these things as you play GT5: Prologue. The shine of the logo, of the hood of the rims on the tires, they’re all mesmerizing. You won’t be able to take your eyes off the details, which makes it incredibly difficult to keep concentration during a race.
So is there a visual disappointment in the game? Yes, just one. I hate the crowd. They actually hurt the game a bit. If they had been left out, I would have been happier. They were put in, they look like something on the Playstation 2. You’ll see my point when you drive on the Daytona track and hundreds-to-thousands of little colorful sticks are in the audience. They’re not nice to look at or appreciate. Thank goodness they’re minor in the scheme of things, but regretfully they’re noticeable. Even in the mountain region, the crowd with arms just doesn’t look PS3-esque. Again, it’s a minor complaint, but certainly one that I noticed.
You’ll ultimately forgive Sony and Polyphony for this when you see all the tracks and cars in the game. Those are healthy distractions.