Been enjoying Prologue for the past few weeks, it does have online race, but it's only a small portion of Prologue. The overall game play feels very much like previous GT series and don't expect too much out of it's current online set-up.
I can not understand Japanese, so I have no idea what the news updates say. At the moment (and as far as I understand), there are no online custom races. What you get instead when you go into the online screen, are few pre-set races and time attacks. All you need to do is pick a car that's allowed and the game would randomly match you up with other players. By the looks of it, I'm
guessing the races would change or increase over time, maybe in a pre-set rotation. (at least I hope so, as those races are currently locked to "standard" physics)
Online time board was also added on the Christmas update. You can either enter the time board for each track/car/tire/physics from the main menu or at the pit-menu of each free-run. It seems to be worldwide (unlike GT-HD demo which is region specific) and boy does it get competitive. You can download and watch other peoples replay or load it as ghost, comes in REAL handy when you want to be on the top of the time board.
Compared to the Prologue Demo, there are many small improvements, you may not notice them at first, but together they greatly improve the overall quality and make it a very impressive game (demo). Here's my impression after around 50 hours of gameplay:
As mentioned earlier, there are two sets of physic engines. It is set to "normal" by default and I would suggest changing it to "simulation" as soon as you start the game. On simulation mode the car
will react to even the smallest driver input, IMO it feels very similar to GTR2. There
is clutch support if you have the Logitech G25, but you do have to enable it by pressing triangle during each race. There is no gear grinding, it just wont go into gear instead, so you do have to be careful about how early you release the clutch, clutching is also necessary during take-off on first gear. At last, there
is noticeable engine-breaking, mis-shifting to 4th instead of up-shifting to 6th will result in tire squeal, screen-shake, and off-sets the balance of the car, because of this, you will need to heel-and-toe and rev-match.
Sound has definitely improved, tire screeching sounds different depending on condition, and you can also hear the tires "fold" before they screech. Each cars do have noticeably different engine tone, the DC5 Integra Type R actually has the distinctive K20A sound (although the volume is a bit low), and the F430 screams like a Ferrari should during replay. I have also noticed that engine sound seems to be directional, as soon as an Audi R8 races pass the camera you will hear it's deep exhaust tone in addition to the engine noise.
There are many graphical improvements compare to the Demo as well, shadow edges on dash is now much less jaggy, driver now has shifting animation, and rear-view mirrors now look much better compare to the Demo. I was
very impressed by the reflections, everything seems to have real-time reflection, even interior panels like the carbon fiber A/C vents in the F430 and R34's gauge clusters. When my friends came over, one of them jumped out of the seat when he saw reflection of apex on the door of a BMW 135i I was trying to cut into. Self-shadowing is also present, if you zoom (triangle) into a stationary car during replay, you will see wheel spokes casting shadow onto break rotors.
Lastly, A.I. seems to have been further improved from the demo, they do make mistakes and you will sometimes see cars overshoot corner into sand pits, they do avoid each other and rarely bump into me during races. However I have not yet test how they would react if I park in the middle of the track because I'm too busy competing against this Japanese guy for top spot on time boards
, maybe someone can fill this in before I get to it.
I'm sure you will enjoy it.