If Gran Turismo PSP was a race car, it'd have go-faster stripes, a fat exhaust and an engine that roars like it wants to take off. But it'd spring an oil leak off the start line, bellow smoke all over the place and fart its way over the finish line.
Gran Turismo PSP
Official trailer
0:38Brand new gameplay trailer. Drool...
Gran Turismo PSP
Official trailer
0:38Brand new gameplay trailer. Drool...
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This is Gran Turismo. The big boy. The game that should define PSP. It's been in development for absolutely yonks. Now we've played it extensively we find ourselves wondering what Polyphony has been doing with it since 2004 because this is not at all the game we expected.
Despite Kazunori himself proclaiming this to be a "fully-fledged" GT game, GT PSP comes across like a rushed patch job. Let us say this first - the physics are really good. The cars handle brilliantly, they have a solid feeling of weight and momentum and you can feel this weight move around as you throw cars into bends and put the suspension under strain.
It's easily the most realistic handling we've seen in a PSP driving game, and all this is done at a silky smooth 60 frames per second which, on the little screen, looks lush. That's why screenshots and trailers had us all excited. But great handling and a smooth frame rate aren't the only important factors of a racing game, and GT PSP falls short in almost every other area.
The main mode of the game has no structure. Hit the single-player option and you have three modes; the standard Time Trial (with no online leaderboards, we might add), Drift Trial (again, no leaderboards and no set goals), and Single Race. That's it.
In Single Race, you're thrown a grid of 45 individual races. Nothing except the race course is pre-determined. The cars you race against are scaled on what car you enter with. So if you're in a Corsa you'll race Puntos and Fiestas, for example. Join in a Ferrari Enzo and the game breaks out the Lamborghinis and Pegani Zondas.
You choose the number of laps - not even that is set - and the difficulty, although only the super-easy Grade D setting is available for each race at first. When you win a race you get cash with which to buy cars and unlock the next grade for that course only.
There are no championships, no trophies and to that end, no sense of achievement. You're just grinding races. Being forced to race the easy grades for each and every race is bloody infuriating. That's hours of monotonous play time spent light-years ahead of the pack on an empty course.
Gran Turismo has in the past been criticised for typically allowing you to buy a fast car and race ahead of the computer. But at least in previous games you knew what challenge a particular event set you, and you worked hard to get a car fast enough to beat it.
When you won it felt like the reward of your efforts to buy and then upgrade your car with all the fattest turbos and whatnot. But there's no parts-based modification in here. You can change some gear ratios, tyres and camber settings, but you can't slap on exhaust kits or new air induction kits - like you could in the PSone games that made the GT series so legendary.
In this, you can enter any race with any car (you have to enter mud and snow courses with a four-wheel-drive car, but that's the only restriction we encountered) and quite easily win, so what's the incentive to buy new cars?
Simply put, there isn't one - not outside of satisfying your own fantasies of getting a car you'll never own in real life. That being the case, you'd think affording that dream Ferrari would take quite some time and effort. That'd give you something to aim for. Nope - we rocked out of the game's training mode with almost a million quid and slapped 500k on a bad-ass super car before we'd even done a single race. Hmm...
The car purchasing system is unique in that not all of the game's 800+ cars are available to buy at the same time. A seemingly random handful of around five dealers are made available for each in-game day (days pass each time you race a couple of events), before they disappear to make way for another five the next day.
The whole idea is that you keep your eye out for the car you want until you're lucky enough for it to appear. We don't like that. When you have nearly a million quid and want to buy a Subaru Impreza for the rally races, it's bloody annoying when it refuses to turn up.
That's essentially what this game boils down to though - it's a collection game. A Pokémon-style, monster hunting, collect-'em-up with 'grinding' disguised as racing, and you're supposed to take satisfaction from needlessly hoarding cars instead of little yellow, pointy-eared monsters. Then trade them with mates who also want to get every car in the game for no reason.
At the very least, we expected the game's visual production values to be through the roof. But it seems that the silky 60-frames-per-second rate came with some hefty cutbacks, too. You'll often see tearing white lines in-between polygons - something we haven't seen since the PSone days.
If you play from the bumper view you'll sometimes see entire polygons on the floor below you disappear as the camera slips just below the texture, particularly when you career into bumpy sand traps.
And during replays (which generally look quite nice) badly positioned camera angles see cars often drive through your point of view, resulting in a mess of disappearing polys. The game has some seriously unforgivably blurry textures too. The cars look amazing, but on occasion the curbs - something you come into direct contact with as you race - look like they're having a blur-off with an N64 game you can't help but notice.
Despite all that, there are only four cars on the course. Ridge Racer on PSP - a launch game we might add - looks better, moves smoothly, is fast as you like and has 12 cars on course. Motorstorm: Arctic Edge (review here) also looks brilliant, is packed with visual detail, has great physics and holds up solid with ten cars on course. That's just better.
As big fans of the series, we have to say, we're bitter. This is not what we expected from Kazunori's boys. They can do better than this. They have done better than this on a home console with a fraction of the power (we're talking about the stunning Gran Turismo 2).
Superb car handling is the only redeeming factor for GT PSP. It feels great to drive. But that driving needed to be packaged with an actual racing game and that game isn't here. It's just an endless grind of relatively easy, empty course driving, and a far cry from the "full-scale Gran Turismo experience" it was claimed to be.
I was hoping to get a PSPgo with this on it, and was expecting great things. No doubt they have only had the game in development PROPERLY for a few months as opposed to having on the slow burner as before.
That sucks, was really looking forward to my first GT game as I think the racing genre fits perfectly on a portable.
Sadly, I think that this game will be like the "short end of the straw" game for the Gran turismo series. The flaw is that the UMD is just too small for "proper" games. It might of worked though if it had, say, 2 UMDs. One for the single player and one for multiplayer. Saying that though "Arctic Edge" looks amazing and it manages to fit onto one disc. That game will kick ass
Gutted. Was hoping that this would be a real must buy for the PSP, but that is two of the big games which have been disappointing (the other being Soul Calibur).
Booooo!! This ain't going to revive people's interest in PSP gaming, Sony! This is going to highlight the lackluster approach that developers have previously had.
I must say I'm dissapointed by the reviews this is getting. Shame. No career mode???! Crazy biscuits! I am now a bit tempted to cancel my Go preorder (although Tesco has already taken my £200). I was pinning my hopes on this game to start a flood of decent psp games. Looks like that's not gonna happen. I should probably just stick to iPhone games instead. That real racing game has got better reviews than this has. It's just not acceptable Sony/Polyphony!
I dont really understand why people play 'serious' racing games on handhelds. If you want a decent racing game your too tight to get GT5p or Forza 2 buy and PS1 and GT2.
Its a shame really 5 years hard work to make a dog egg.
I'll admit, I'm disappointed. I've always been a fan of GT, but this sounds like an insult to the GT series. PD could and SHOULD have made it a great game, but I guess they're too preoccupied with GT5 instead of this.
I was looking forward to this too, but is it just me or do ALL GT games seem soulless? I played GT 5 Prologue and its just a procession of cars. Yeah you can say the thing is about GT is split screen with your mates but the single player is boring - theres more life in a tramps vest. Grid is excellent for race atmosphere, if a little bit cheesey and frustrating at times. It feel like a racer should in the single player, ie very racey. GT is bland and the graphics aren't anything to write home about. If only the 2 games could be merged! Grid style racing with GT split screen. That would be a character. I've played Forza 1 on xbox and that is pretty lifeless aswell, can't speak for Forza 2.
For those thinking of going for motorstorm both games sit on metacritic with the same score but gt several places higher. As always i'll play both before i decide as i hated the career mode and only want to play a psp game for 30min max at a time
Oh no. Really gutted now. Been looking forward to this for years and now they've gone and done this. Can't believe they couldn't put in the GT Mode from the rest of the series. I just hope that the classic GT2 gets a release on PSN and that can be my GT fix on PSP.
Interestingly, CVG's is the very lowest score on Metacritic at the moment.
Will still probs go for Motorstorm or NFS just to be safe though. I still remember when NFS was good all those years ago...
And hilariously, CVG's score for Artic Edge is the highest on Metacric. Im starting to think that critics reviews dotn reflect the quality of the material they study but are soley based on the opinion of the reviewer ... shock!
I kind of agree with the statement that for a handheld game, I very rarely play for extended periods of time. The reviews have said it controls well, and ultimatly I'd rather have a game that controls well but has no career mode, than the other way around. Four cars is a bit low though.
I very much doubt GT5 will suffer review wise. Sometimes even the best developers don't quite get it right.
As much as I hate to say it think GT5 going this way to as its been in development far far to long. Just look at the racers that have been out in it development time! There's no point it looking good if the rest falls short, the cars still bounce of walls etc - next gen I think not. Hope I'm wrong though, more looking forward to Forza 3.
At the risk of sounding fanboyish, sounds good to me! Honestly what were people expecting? Full scale GT5 on a handheld?
When Sony said that it would be a full scale GT game on a handheld, I was expecting to be able to have some structure to my game. This is essentially a game demo. Something of a Sony pastime with the GT games, they should have just revamped GT1 & GT2.
On a different note, I didn't realise that you can install the game to the memory card from the UMD, for faster loading times.
For some reason developers seem to think that when they make a game for a hand held gaming device they have to make a scaled down half baked version. The UMD is 1.8*GB thats 0.3gb bigger than Gamecube discs ( and if we take metroid as a example it was huge and had far better graphics than PSP games and fitted neatly on a 1.5gb disc?) so they could have easily fitted a full fat GT on a UMD. Sounds a lot like Sony wanted it out the door while the PSP was still alive and so resources could be transfered to GT5 that the PS3 needs even more that the PSP needed GT.
I'm not going to argue with the review because it is a shame that there is no career and customisation. However, it plays like a dream and the progression is adequate for a handheld game. I particularly like the fact that you can play with the in-car view.
It is missing loads, but the simple fact is, I'll get more play time out of GTPSP than most other games that I have played on the PSP.
If you're a GT fan, don't be swayed too much by the reviews.
Oh, and the replays are awesome for a handheld game..
I'm surprised no reviews mention or show the in-car view, it isn't really detailed but it works a treat. I'm loving this game at the moment, the simple, quick races are perfect for the psp.
Just bought a Nissan GTR. I f**kin' love those cars.
I'm surprised no reviews mention or show the in-car view, it isn't really detailed but it works a treat. I'm loving this game at the moment, the simple, quick races are perfect for the psp.
Just bought a Nissan GTR. I f**kin' love those cars.
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Fantastic handling
