Graphical stunning, audibly exceptional and a truely awesome experience, despite a somewhat lack of content!
Anyway, i've played it for a good few hours now and lemme give you a brief overview of what i thought:
Pro's
- Yes, it does look as breathtaking as you think it does from the video's and trailers, the best looking driving sim ever (no, not you forza sorry, in my opinion of course)
- Rumble is included although only small amounts when bumping into cars/walls or going off the road onto grass/sand
- Yes it is in japanese however it's easily navigatable by someone who knows none of the language (e.g me), it's quite self explanatory what you need to do and a lot of the options and things are in english which is good
- GT-TV is a nice feature, along with the news it makes GT constantly up to date and a useful tool not just for playing and although the japanese version does only have japanese film (as far as i can tell so far), it's still nice to watch some of the programmes included in HD
- Music, although it does feature the typical GT style lounge or 'elevator'music for the options and main menu's (it wouldn't be GT without it), Prologue does feature some nice japanese style light rock music in-game which compliments the game nicely, and although im unsure if the music will change between versions (as in, if the US/EU will feature music in english), i must say i love the music when you win a race, very japanese and reminds me of the FF7 victory music (although it's a electric guitar hehe)
- Absolutely stunning replays, admittedly like all GT's you don't get the full sense of the games graphical prowess when actually playing the game, although it looks awesome you can only experience the full sheer graphical masterpiece that it is through watching a replay, some camera angles and scenes are almost photo-realistic it's really really fantastic.
- Multiplayer, honestly i haven't actually tried this yet but i'm expecting great things! 16 player online races in 1080p and 60fps, i'll try it a bit later!
- Game is Full 1080p and although some races limit the AI cars to a certain number, it can handle up to 16 cars at 60fps in full HD, quite a feat, nice one polyphony!
- Regular game updates
Cons:
- The game isn't that long/big, i'm not sure waht the retail price will be in US/EU but i bought it for around £32 ($64) and although thats cheaper than a average game, i'm not sure if it's really a suitable amount for the content your given. I can't remember exactly but i think it's around 40 cars and 10 tracks. This is nice and will keep you occupied for a good few hours but i think it's up to each individual to decide whether it's really worth this amount of money for this content. Obviously i think it is or else i wouldn't have bought it, but i'm a huge GT fan and so i couldn't really wait!
- Updates are annoying. There are several long and frequent updates that sometimes fail, i'm currently updating it and it's failed 3 times on me so far so this minor annoyance is somewhat irritating.
- There is no damage in this game. Although i hear that in the full version there might be, whether it will be included in the EU/US releases of prologue i'm not sure, 'tho i highly doubt it, wait for the full game for damage i reckon (if at all.
- Noticable con of it being in Japanese, but since we don't have a choice that this time i can't really complain, and it's not a big problem, if anything it's interesting trying to understand what it's saying from knowledge of previous GT games and such, tho by and large it's easy and obvious how to get around.
All in all, i think it's a very good game and a nice glimpse at what we can expect in late '08 or early '09 with the full game. If you think you can wait and aren't hugely interested in getting a preview of it, i think you can give this one a miss, but if you want to see absolutely stunningly beautiful visuals and a nice driving sim (that isn't DiRT or Motorstorm), then i highly recommend this and that you import it. Unless of course you can wait a few months, but i simply can't!
Judging by the fact that i think it's going to be a nearly full price game, i'd give it the following:
Graphics - 10
Sound - 9
Gameplay - 8
Value - 6
Overall - 8.0 GREAT!
and would i recommend you import it - YES, as long as you think you can get it from a reliable source e.g Ebay or Play-asia!
I hope this has been of some use to you!