Later this year, European and Australian gamers will get their first taste of the next in the Gran Turismo series with the Prologue edition. Gran Turismo for years has remained untouched as the best driving simulator but Turn 10 and Microsoft are starting to give Kaz and his team a real run for their money, so many see GT5 as one of the most crucial and biggest Playstation 3 releases of 2008 and we can't but help agree. We recently got a build of Prologue to play around with and while it is only a Prologue, it's clear this is going to be one of the biggest games of 2008

Since the release of Gran Turismo 4 it seems like we have been bombarded month after month with racing games of various quality. The standout for 2007 was the Xbox 360 exclusive Forza 2, which probably has a few people nervous about Gran Turismo and its dominance of the market. Gran Turismo 5 prologue gives us a taste of what’s to come, and that taste is sweet and bountiful.

As you would expect Prologue is not going to be fully fleshed out, but it will give you more than the free Gran Turismo HD download. Five tracks will be included ranging from the world famous Daytona Nascar track through to racing in a highly authentic replication of London. The main game is split into two areas - arcade and event – where event will provide a taste of what to expect from the final game, while arcade will offer a chance to just drive cars around tracks and have fun. Unfortunately it looks like the arcade mode will not have cars unlocked other than those you have unlocked with event, so it could turn out to be a real pointless mode unless they change that.

The events area will offer exactly what you would expect from a Gran Turismo game. You start off with a small amount of cash, buy a relatively poor car (although I don't see how a Subaru WRX 07 is poor car) and then win races to earn money and buy better cars. Even though this is a prologue version of the game, it appears you will really have to put in a lot of time and effort to obtain some of the better cars. Considering it’s not confirmed that you will be able to move a prologue save game to the main game (which would make a lot of sense), then to us it seems like a knock against the prologue edition if they keep it like this. Prologue has always been about getting cars and tracks early, playing for four to five hours and then salivating over the main game. This one has us salivating but it takes a lot more than four hours to really see the best of the game.

For a prologue edition Kaz has done well in terms of the cars included. Fifty cars are on offer and range from fairly average cars such as the Integra from Honda through to the most expensive Ferraris. The cars are mimicked to the nth degree and it is easy to tell what make and model a car is just by looking at it. Even at the prologue stage, Gran Turismo 5 has the most stunningly realistic cars in a video game ever seen but it’s a shame that at this stage it’s still a case of ‘bumper cars’ with no cars taking damage yet. However, the build does have the ability to race in the cockpit view and the level of detail in this view is unbelievable. They said they wouldn't do it until they could do it right, and the fact they waited makes what they have now all the more surprising and thrilling.

Five tracks are in the current build, although only four are new with the Scandanivian highland track from GTHD making a return, albeit improved with more going on and actual races taking place. The tracks include some famous ones from around the world such as Daytona while others are a little more fictional. They all look truly stunning and playing this game in 1080p really shows the power of the PS3.

Prologue also gives us a sneak peek at playing online via PSN as well as what Sony will offer on GT TV but considering this is an early build we weren't really able to check these out as much as we would have liked to. We are sure that both these additions will feature highly in the final European build of Prologue as well as the actual final game itself.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is shaping up to be a must own for Gran Turismo fans and a nice diversion for those waiting for the main game. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue should be out by the middle of the year with the main game expected late 2008 or early 2009.