Sony has received a fair amount of criticism for releasing Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. "Why don't they just wait until the full game is finished?" cry some. "What's the point of releasing a glorified demo and charging for it?" bemoan others. However, considering that GT5: Prologue has become the fastest selling PS3 title to date in the UK, I think the reasons why Sony has released the game are pretty clear, as they've raised the profile of their console (indeed, I'm sure this game has sold a few PS3s), raked in a small fortune from sales of the game and pushed anticipation for the full version of GT5 to near-unprecedented heights. With a result like that, they'd really have been crazy not to release it.

While cynics maintain that the game is little more than a manipulative cash-in, my feeling on the matter is somewhat different. After all, it's not like everyone had to rush out and buy the game, is it? No one held a gun to the general population's head and forced them to pick up a copy. In my opinion, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue achieves exactly what it set out to achieve (other than making money); it gives fans of the hugely popular GT series a substantial taster of the delights to come, making the long wait until the full game is finished that much more bearable and giving them a head start for getting to grips with the new handling, as well as purchasing some of the new cars with hard-earned in-game credits.

So what exactly do you get in this Prologue? Well, before I delve into that, I want to take a step back for a moment and examine the pure beauty that greets you upon loading up the game, because Prologue is the best looking racer I've ever seen - by a long way. The backdrops are stunningly rendered and intricately crafted down to the smallest detail, with full, 3D crowds in the stands on race tracks and animated, varied spectators littered around the fictional countryside course of Eiger Nordwand and the brand new route through central London. Speaking of London, the buildings are convincingly recreated and will be easily recognisable to people familiar with the area, the same being true for each location for the six courses available in the game. The skies look glorious, the mountains look stunning, the roads are full of tyre tracks and the roadside objects are varied and detailed, making for the most complete and realistic environments ever to feature in a racing game, all flowing along at a silky smooth frame rate, with juddering only occasionally noticeable during the replays.

However, even these wondrous locales pale in comparison to the astonishing attention to detail that has been lavished upon every single one of the sixty or so cars available in Prologue. We're now getting very close to photo-realistic quality, with no sign of jaggies; every contour of every car is sleek, smooth and completely accurate, making for the most comprehensive and painstakingly detailed reproductions from a wide range of manufacturers, including Ford, Ferrari, Dodge, Suzuki, Audi, BMW and Nissan, to name just a handful. The paint jobs gleam brilliantly, reflecting the surroundings as the cars speed by, the shadows are all rendered in real-time and everything looks so stunning that you will be blown away.

New to the series are equally detailed and accurate recreations of the car interiors. While it's disappointing that you can't use the right analogue stick to look around the car, as you can in Project Gotham Racing, the dashboards, windscreen, steering wheel and everything else within this interior view all look completely convincing, and it's a great touch that switching to the rear view while inside the car allows you to see the back seats, rear shelf and rear window, beyond which you'll find cars jostling for position, hungry to overtake you at the first sign of weakness. All the sounds are distinctive too; engines have never been more convincing or varied, as each car has its own unique sound, which vary enough that you can usually tell the difference. Throw in the screeching of tyres and the cheering of spectators and you've got audio that, while much subtler than the graphics, is just as polished.

In fact, polished is the best way to describe every aspect of Prologue, because the gameplay is just as fantastic as the graphics. While the heavy simulation nature of the GT series might be a turn off to those who prefer the likes of Burnout and Need for Speed, there are a range of driving aids to help make handling your chosen vehicle a lot easier, plus the all-important racing line, which shows you where you should be, when to brake and even, helpfully, tells you the speed you should come down to for tight bends. Turn all these aids off and switch to the tougher Realistic mode and prepare for a huge shock as you find yourself in last place, by a long way! This is the way to keep everyone happy - the true, diehard simulation junkies have a real challenge ahead of them if they wish to switch to Realistic mode and turn off the driving aids, while the rest of us mere mortals can be happy enough being challenged to learn the handling of each car well enough to keep it on the racing line, or even just on the road, stealing positions each lap until we're into top place and sailing to victory.

The handling of each car is also unique - unlike some games where it's hard to feel much of a difference, you really can tell that you're driving a different car when you switch from one to the next. Never before have I experienced such a convincing and deep simulation of the cars on offer here, which are just a fraction of what the full game will offer.

I feel at this point that it's worth taking a break to inform you that driving sims aren't really my cup of tea - when it comes to racing, I prefer your Burnouts and Midtown Madnesses to your Forzas and Gran Turismos. Nevertheless, I could not fail to be impressed by what Prologue has to offer, and neither could I help but become quite addicted to working my way through the forty events on offer in this game to buy some of the faster cars.

This is probably where the biggest flaw for Prologue comes in - the events don't feel very well balanced. Starting in the C Class (and you can't move on to B Class until you've placed top three in all ten events), I picked an Alfa Romeo 147 TI as my starting car and I struggled to win some of the races. Once I'd adjusted to the realistic nature of the driving, I found myself steadily improving, finishing in higher positions on each attempt until I won the day, or settled for second or third, but one event in particular, on the winding, treacherous Eiger Nordwand, had me beat. I tried ten times and couldn't even move up from my starting position of sixth place to fifth. However, once I'd purchased my Honda Integra Type R, I sailed through this event first time, and indeed through all the others that had been giving me a hard time.

While some events only allow one type of car and others are reduced to a small list, many of the events permit a wide range of cars to enter and so the outcome is more down to your choice of car than your skill level. Although you still have to focus to keep your car on the road and brake around the bends (you can drift if you want but you'll lose a lot of speed doing so, while struggling to maintain control of your exit angle), you'll find yourself speeding into first place with ease, driving the majority of the laps alone, well ahead of the pack. That is of course if you have one of the best cars - if you have one of the worst then you'll be doomed to failure every time, and with no easy way of telling which cars are better (beyond the price), those who aren't familiar with the specs of every car on offer might struggle, like I did, if they pick a car that isn't so great to begin with. The key to picking the best cars is to buy the ones in each class that have an exclusive event type early on - after I bought the Nissan GT-R, I flew through every event in the B Class with ease, bar those that required a different entry vehicle.

Regardless of your early performance, you're sure to soon notice that most people's biggest gripe about the game has been fixed - that of robotic, on-rails AI drivers. While the drivers still generally hold the racing line and perform like experienced veterans, you'll regularly see them make mistakes, throwing up an impressive looking cloud of dust as they speed off into the gravel at the trackside, taking a corner on the outside rather than the inside, or even ramming into each other as they attempt to overtake. On the tougher courses at the higher levels you'll often pass cars who are driving back onto the course after completely spinning out, something you may or may not have witnessed happening. As such, it no longer feels like you're up against perfect robots who never mess up, and it makes the experience feel a lot more lifelike. There's still no damage modelling, but you're never going to get every manufacturer to agree to let their vehicle be smashed up, so this is a necessary omission that would be pointless to criticise.

The relatively high learning curve of keeping your car on the road and struggling if your car isn't powerful enough might be enough to put some people off, especially when the cars aren't really going that fast to begin with. However, once you're in a powerhouse that can hit 150mph and above, the sensation of speed is truly gripping and you'll sometimes find yourself losing control and spinning out on the Daytona circuit when you're between a car and the outer wall and lose your nerve for a second. Well, either that or the SIXAXIS controller screwed you over.

That's the other main gripe I have with Prologue - I didn't feel like the controller was giving me the precision steering that I needed. I'm not sure if it's to do with the programming or a limitation of the controller, but turning my car felt very 'all or nothing', regardless of which make and model I picked. You can't slightly hold the left analogue stick to make your car steer slightly to the left or right - you're either driving straight or turning hard. Consequently, watching my car from an exterior view as I had to keep pressing left for a second, then releasing, then pressing, then releasing, to take a corner, and seeing the jerky adjustments onscreen, somewhat spoiled the immersion. If you want to get the most out of Prologue then you need to get a decent steering wheel, and options are available in the game for setting them up for optimum performance.

Actually, I do have one more gripe - as substantial as this is for a taster, there's still not enough in the game for it not to get old fairly quickly. Six tracks is a very small number, and while you can extend that to twelve through reverse or modified routes for each one, with four of them based around conventional racetracks they all start to look and feel a bit samey, while the limited selection of music quickly gets repetitive. In terms of cars you could play for dozens of hours and not even get halfway through what's on offer, but you might start to get tired of the limited tracks long before that point.

Nevertheless, there's no shortage of variety when it comes to the modes on offer, all presented in easy to navigate menus of impeccable quality, backed by an unusual choice of jazz and mall muzak style tunes that at first feel out of place but are undeniably relaxing. You can log onto the PlayStation Network for News updates on the game, to check out the videos stored in GT-TV (just the game's spectacular intro sequence for now) or head online to race with real people. The online mode is limited - there are thirty-five event types split into Beginner, Intermediate and Expert with various classes of car allowed, plus Time Trial, and all you can do is select your event type and then wait to be matched into a game that's about to start. You can't invite friends and there aren't any lobbies as such. However, having the game online is a huge plus and I don't feel that's too much to worry about. Online races generally run well and while players with slower connections can lag and leap around a lot, the collision detection is sometimes disabled so that you can drive through them without affecting your performance, which is a nice touch.

Offline you've got forty events, which do become quite challenging and very exciting once you hit the A Class, while S Class, which unlocks a wealth of tuning options, really steps things up a notch and makes you work for every victory. You can save replays of any race, you can head to the Garage to admire your car collection and change cars (annoyingly you can't just switch cars or purchase cars in the Events menus), you can look longingly at the range of Ferraris in the Dealership while you try to work out how many wins you'll need to afford them, and there's a split screen multiplayer for local competitive fun too. Finally there's Arcade mode, where you pick your course and then go for a Single Race, a Time Trial, or a Drift Trial, the latter of which is very short and extremely tricky. Replays for all these can be saved and your scores are automatically uploaded to the Online Rankings so you can see how you did if you're logged in. There's also a nice little feature in the Arcade mode where you can view real-life footage of the area upon which each circuit is based while reading some interesting background about the location.

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is a roaring success. Graphically it's a huge step up not only from GT4 but from every racing game (and indeed most games) that we've seen so far, and I'm sure it'll look even better in the full game. The recreation of every car has never been so stunningly detailed, the handling has never felt so unique and realistic and there's a range of events to complete with multiple modes, including online play. The game isn't perfect (event balancing and the paltry track selection being the worst offenders) but if you're a GT fan then it should go a long way to keeping you happy until the full game eventually comes out. As great as it all is though, I can't bring myself to give too high a score to what is little more than a showcase for a forthcoming game, especially when the tracks feel so samey after a short while. Still, this is an essential purchase for all driving sim and GT fans, and the perfect appetiser for what the future of the GT series, and indeed next gen gaming, holds in store.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).