Load up the game, and instead of a title screen, you're taken directly to your My Page screen, which gives you access to your garage for changing your current ride, car dealers for purchasing new cars, options for changing the various in-game settings, and two race modes, event and arcade. This hub screen also shows off a calendar and the weather in various parts of the world, all against some gorgeous realtime background scenery depicting your vehicle in realistic settings.

Initially, you have 3,500,000 credits in your purse, making only a few cars accessible. Once you've picked up a cheap car, you can work your way through race events, earning cash and unlocking more events as you progress. Events include single races and time trials, along with "missions" which require that you clear objectives like passing 15 cars in a single lap on the Daytona track.

In Prologue's default state, outside of the events, you're limited in how you can actually put all these tracks to use. The game ships with arcade race and time attack modes. Full online race support will be added through a Christmas Day update.

But forget the actual racing part of the game. If you just want a car and racing reference, Prologue may be what you're looking for. Most of the dealers accessible off your My Page have news feeds that are continuously updated with the latest announcements and press releases. As mentioned above, the GT.tv mode has four pieces of free HD content built in from the start, with more on the way this month before paid downloads begin in late January.

The coolest bonus for racing fans, though, comes right before you race. For most tracks (London is the exception) you have access to a "course guide" option, an HD video tour of the course, its surroundings, and, occasionally, related race events. These tours are set to Gran Turimo-style jazz, with streaming text at the bottom of the clips providing a bit of background history on the course.

There's no doubting that this is, by far, the finest looking racing game around, but there are still a few technical shortcomings. The London track in particular suffers from some pretty noticeable screen tearing. Some of the effects used in replays look a bit unpolished as well. These will hopefully improve for the main GT5 game. Or, maybe Polyphony will go crazy with the downloadable content and actually update the graphics engine gradually.

We've only sampled Prologue through a few races and events so far, but it already seems like a production worthy of the Gran Turismo name -- at least as much as the Japan-only Gran Turismo 4 Prologue was prior to the full GT4's release.