Review: Gran Turismo 5 Demo requires serious skill [w/VIDEO]

Click above to watch the video after the jump

We’re waiting with baited breath for the arrival of Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo 5. It’s getting more difficult to sit on our hands all the time, so it’s a good thing that Polyphony has released a time trial demo to wet our whistle. The demo is available free of charge for anyone on the Sony Playstation 3 network, and we recently got hold of the 200+ mb file for ourselves (it took about 30 minutes to download via high-speed cable Internet) to get a sense of whether the game is worth our elevated anticipation.

The time trial demo features both a stock and a tuned version of the Nissan 370Z. The goal is to manage the best single lap in each vehicle on a special road course layout of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and our experience with the demo shows that beating every GT5 fan out there for a chance to win a trip to the Indianapolis 500 is going to be no easy task. Hit the jump for our first impressions of the game, along with video of a hot lap captured by Dave Hinkle over at Joystiq.

Gallery: Gran Turismo 5 Demo