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Half-Life isn't the only game celebrating its tenth birthday this year. Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo series is now a decade old, leading the developer of the PlayStation driving sim to hold an anniversary event called Downshift Session 2008 in New York City last month. Yes, yes, mazal tov, Kazunori Yamauchi and crew.
There are people, reading this right now, who bought a $US 600 PlayStation 3 at launch for one game: Gran Turismo 5. Why? Because despite the recent advancement of other racing franchises, Polyphony Digital's near religious devotion to automobiles has offered hardcore racing/racing game fans an unparalleled driving simulation for a decade.
But until Gran Turismo 5 actually comes out, we can only get a taste of things to come through Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. So is that taste making reviewers hungry for more? Hit the jump for our Frankenreview to find out—a buncha reviews with the crust cut off because we know you like it that way.
I didn't really warm to GT5 Prologue. Too sterile, too slow, too broken. But hey, what the hell do I know. You might love the series so much you're willing to overlook these flaws and go ahead and drop $US 40 on it. If that sounds like you, know that the downloadable, PSN version of the game is due to appear for download at midnight tonight if you reside on America's east coast, or 9pm if you live along the fringes of the great Pacific Ocean.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is a demo. A big one, yes, but a demo it remains, one that gives us but a taste of what we can expect from the full, final Gran Turismo 5 when it ships on the PS3 sometime next year. Serious fans of the series will no doubt already know what they're getting themselves into with this whole "Prologue" business, then, and won't give a monkey's brass balls what I say from here on in.
But if you're still on the fence over whether it's worth shelling out 60% of the full game's asking price for what's probably less than 10% of its content, read on, dear readers, read on.
The gang at Polyphony Digital has been talking up—and failing to deliver—car damage in Gran Turismo for what seems like forever. We know it's coming someday, it's just that Kazunori Yamauchi told us it was coming with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue when we talked to him at Games Convention. Didn't happen, though.
According to an interview with IGN, it may still be en route, via a software update. And it may be coming as soon as this spring. We will, of course, believe it when we see it.
Sony has apparently overcome yesterday's technical difficulties in Europe, and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is now available for purchase. The company apologised for any inconvenience to all of the friendly Europeans who were unable to drive shiny cars around yesterday.
Hey Sony, what gives?! Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was supposed to be ready to download in Europe starting, uhhhhh, yesterday. But it wasn't! Europeans who wanted to play it had to get off their arses and hoof it over to their neighbourhood game retailer and purchase the game on Blu-ray disc. Well, we wanna hear what went wrong. According to Sony:
Yesterday we learned that Weezer and The Mars Volta would be among the artist featured in the soundtrack for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and now with have proof in motion. I tend not to get into a Gran Turismo game until the whole music plus driving experience hits me. With Gran Turismo 4 I was completely neutral until the opening movie, when Van Halen's Panama kicked in. This time around it's Weezer's Automatic. I am now officially looking forward to the game. Hit the jump for another clip featuring a remix of The Mars Volta's Goliath. Good stuff.
The launch of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is coming up fast and Sony is announcing an action packed soundtrack to go along with. Leading the pack is an exclusive in-game remix of Weezer's "Automatic" and a special remix of Mars Volta's "Goliath". Also along for the ride exclusively in North America are Justice, SebastiAn, DJ Shadow, The Earaches and Pride Tiger.
You can check out the entire list of artists and their tracks after the jump.
Subaru created its own sit-down controller for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue for this year's New York Auto Show. The pod lets you race their new STI on a rally track and bounces around when you hit bumps. Now this is something they should set up at malls across America.
The ultimate game controller [Cnet]
