Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

So I ran all over town trying to find this game and I finally got my claws on it. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is a small $40.00 "taste of things to come". A little something from the guys at Polyphony Digital to hold over all the crazy Gran Turismo fans. The GT franchise has always been the leading edge in the simulation racing genre and there's no exception here. There are only a handful of tracks and about 60 cars to choose from, a nice chunk of game but by GT standards it's a drop in the bucket. New to the series is the in-car cockpit view that looks amazing, every gauge and trinket in every car moves around like it would in real life. Even the detail on the stitching of the drivers gloves and hand movements to shift or e-brake are modeled/animated very well.

Another addition is the 16 player online races, the structure to get into these races are clunky and it does take a while to get into an actual race. The lag in the races can get pretty serious and because of the lack of damage in this installment (still) people like to bumber-car their way to 1st. Even though online is a bit sketchy right now, Polyphony is aware of all the problems and they are finally going to incorporate damage sometime soon. It's nice to see a franchise like this take baby steps to accommodate the fan outcry for features that have been long overdue. Even if these steps are messy and wind up in "Connection Lost" screens and jerks driving backwards on tracks.

Overall I'm having a really good time with the game, it sucks that there are no license tests in this one though, I always really enjoyed those. Aside from that I have tried my one last attempt at playing Xbox Originals on my Xbox 360. I got the backwards compatibility disc in the mail a few days ago, I popped it in and followed the on screen instructions. After my console restarted I tried Halo and Dreamfall, nothing. As well as my retail disc of Doom 3 and still nothing. I have come to the conclusion that it is my 120GB HDD because I did play Doom 3 just fine on my smaller HDD, I should have thought something was up when I bought it off ebay for only $115.00. Now all I need is a memory unit so I can swap HDD's and play some Xbox Originals on my shitty 13GB free HDD that came with my 360. w00t!