A near perfect game engine, but there are many other issues to resolve before the final release.
Let's get the obvious out of the way then. GT5 Prologue looks STUNNING. There is no other game on any system, past or present, which looks anything like as good as this. The cars are modelled with incredible attention to detail and put games like Project Gotham and Forza in the shade. GT5 sets a new standard for graphics in racing games and indeed for every game across the industry. Every car has a fully-functioning dashboard and a fully functioning driver character model which is just as detailed as the cars, right down to the stitching on their gloves. Perhaps most impressive of all though is that the lighting casts perfect shadows inside the cars as well as on the circuit. This level of attention to detail has come to be expected from the GT series but it's taken the power of the PlayStation 3 to see it fully realised.
The driving is equally impressive. The handling model in this game is light years ahead of every other driving game on the market. GT5 makes Forza 2 feel like Mario Kart in comparison. OK, that sounds a bit extreme but it is completely on another level. The differences between each vehicle are incredibly subtle but then they really should be. What really proves the genius of the driving engine is that just by changing the traction control by one notch you can instantly see a difference in the handling of your chosen car. It's truly incredible.
Onto the cars themselves and there are around 70 in total. There's enough variation in here in terms of power and style that you won't get bored with them, but this is a very small selection of what will finally appear in GT5. The likely car-count in the final game will be somewhere around 500. In keeping with this theme there are also far fewer circuits than will be in the final game. Prologue includes; High Speed Ring, Daytona Speedway, Fuji, Suzuka, Eiger Nordwand and the new London circuit. Each of the circuits also has either a reverse setting or some kind of alternate layout, such as Daytona's infield track. The lack of tracks does limit the game's playability to some extent but that should be expected purely because of the "Prologue" tagline.
More of Prologue's long-term appeal will come from it's online component. At it's most basic level this consists of leaderboards for time-trial events. To begin with it was great fun to work hard at lap-times, bringing them down tenth by tenth to improve rankings but it's become obvious that the top players are already cheating to get to the top of the leaderboards, which more or less voids their importance. In addition to this there's a great new addition for the series in 12 player online racing. Again though, this has it's problems. Players are all too quick to cut corners and ram other drivers off the circuit and this won't change until stricter Forza style time penalties for this kind of behaviour are introduced. Finally, there's GT-TV which allows players to download motorsport themed TV shows, such as the BBC's Top Gear. However, as of the time of writing, there is no such content available through this service, though Polyphony has promised to begin regular updates soon.
Overall, GT5 Prologue is one of the best value for money games on the market. The amount of content you get for your £20 is quite remarkable and the quality of the single-player game is undeniable. On the other hand, the online racing needs to be made much stricter in order to make competition fairer. The most important thing though is that Prologue has laid down the groundwork for GT5 to be the greatest racing game of all time when it is finally released. Also, with updates such as car damage being suggested by the developers for download later in the year, they'll be extra content for Prologue to keep you going right through until GT5 is finally released in 2009.