Screenshots :.
Gran Turismo
PSP
Matt
20-10-2009
"Somewhat evocative, no?"
"It runs at a fair old clip too."
"Lovely."
"This is your main game mode. No, really."
So, it’s been a bit of a wait for us UltraNinjas folks, but finally we have the Sony PSP Go! Happily sitting on our office desk flashing its puppy dog eyes at us and wanting our attention. Luckily, we (well, when I say we I mean me, as Jay was busy ploughing through the wonderful world of Machinarium) have now had a bit of time with Sony’s newest handheld, and what with it being me in charge there was only one game that was going to be first into the firing line.
Gran Turismo PSP is, as many of you are aware, somewhat delayed in its appearance on Sony’s little (and now littler) handheld. Around the time I bought my original PSP back in 2005 it was hyped up as the one big reason to buy into Sony’s new line of business, promising impressive visuals, handling and a huge range of cars. Some four years later it delivers mostly on those promises, but…
Actually, let’s get the good out of the way first. If you were to imagine a handheld Gran Turismo, chances are that what we’ve ended up with is pretty close to what you were thinking. You’ve got a selection of driving tests to work your way through that allow you to get to grips with different cars and types of corners and situations, you’ve got a chunky selection (as in, over 800) of cars from different manufacturers, and there’s also a good selection of circuits on offer to zoom around, with old series favourites (Trial Mountain, woooo!) mixing it with a fine choice of real life venues.
This is all underpinned by a pretty impressive handling model, which despite never feeling close to being as genuine as latter day Gran Turismos or Forzas is still reasonably authentic and rewarding. You get a pleasant amount of sharp steering and drift in the rear wheel drive cars in particular, and the addition of rally cars to the fold offers a nice change, with the less grippy gravel, snow and dust surfaces of the rally tracks making for drifting heaven. In general, if you fancy a particular kind of car then you’ll more-than-likely find it, and they all handle pretty much as you’d expect when you compare them to each other.
It looks rather tasty for a PSP game as well, with the framerate at a solid 60fps throughout and a pleasing amount of texture detail spread liberally across the screen. One slight compromise that has had to be made is that in races there are only three opponents dicing against you (in the usual rather rigid, soulless GT manner), but all things taken into account it’s a pleasant game to look at. Sound wise the game’s a little less impressive and features a selection of rather dull tunes, although there is an option to use your own music that you unlock (ugh) a few steps into the challenge mode.
This is all fine and good, but the game then begins to come unstuck when you look around for modes to race around in. The most glaring omission from the handheld GT is the career mode, in which players start off with a naff old banger and gradually work their ways up the ladder until they reach the top-end sports prototypes and open wheel cars that are but a tantalising promise early in the game. In fact, Gran Turismo has always fully been about the career mode for me, and the total absence of it leaves a gaping hole in the PSP version’s petrol tank.
This could have been somewhat rectified if the main game had some sort of compelling structure to it so that you felt like you wanted to keep working through to collect all the cars and triumph in all the events, but it doesn’t. The main option is the Driving Challenge mode that throws over 100 little tests at you such as tackling a number of corners in a particular type of car, managing to brake enough to stop in a zone at the end of a straight and so on, but effectively all this becomes is an elongated license test mode. This is made all the less meaningful without the carrot of earning any kind of license to buy better cars, as you can buy anything you want from day one.
Having said that, it’s not quite true. For some reason best known to themselves, the developers have offered a selection of manufacturers to purchase from but then made them appear at random points rather than all being available to choose from. You’d assume that this may have been some sort of recognition that the game offered little in the way of a feel of progression as it is, but it’s a clumsy attempt to throw some sort of random element into proceedings and it gets bloody frustrating. After each race or event you compete in the list of four manufacturers available to browse swaps around with no set pattern, and even worse is that you can wait for an age for, say, Ferrari to appear and then realise that on that particular game day they are not offering the car you wanted to buy. Madness. On top of that, there are no upgrade options to be found for any of the cars, which is another huge element of standard Gran Turismo play.
The other main single player offering basically allows you to change between your choice of circuit, car and amount of laps, with the game giving you prize cash for longer or more tricky races. It’s pretty much a simple single race option with the slight added bonus of levelling you up throughout so you can take on better AI and earn more cash, so it’s hard to say that you’ll be particularly addicted to this either.
Therein lies the rub. Gran Turismo ticks a lot of boxes in its PSP iteration; you have the selection of cars, you have a decent amount of circuits and enjoyable handling, but all that content lacks a decent spine to keep you coming back. You could argue that as a handheld game the simple pick-up-and-play nature and limited options are part and parcel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to overlook the things that are missing. Would a career mode really have been that tricky to implement? Would it have been that difficult to put in some kind of rudimentary upgrade option for the cars? Who knows. What you can say, though, is that the gaming experience is all the poorer without them.
That’s undoubtedly a shame, as otherwise it’s a nifty racer with some nice features, such as the promise of being able to port your garage across to GT5 whenever it is deemed fit for release and the option of racing three chums in ad-hoc mode. It looks good, it handles well, but it just lacks that sense of progression that I find a major draw in racing games. For the most part, GT PSP sticks to what it does well and performs admirably under the circumstance, but in some cases that just isn’t quite enough.
Gran Turismo PSP is, as many of you are aware, somewhat delayed in its appearance on Sony’s little (and now littler) handheld. Around the time I bought my original PSP back in 2005 it was hyped up as the one big reason to buy into Sony’s new line of business, promising impressive visuals, handling and a huge range of cars. Some four years later it delivers mostly on those promises, but…
Actually, let’s get the good out of the way first. If you were to imagine a handheld Gran Turismo, chances are that what we’ve ended up with is pretty close to what you were thinking. You’ve got a selection of driving tests to work your way through that allow you to get to grips with different cars and types of corners and situations, you’ve got a chunky selection (as in, over 800) of cars from different manufacturers, and there’s also a good selection of circuits on offer to zoom around, with old series favourites (Trial Mountain, woooo!) mixing it with a fine choice of real life venues.
This is all underpinned by a pretty impressive handling model, which despite never feeling close to being as genuine as latter day Gran Turismos or Forzas is still reasonably authentic and rewarding. You get a pleasant amount of sharp steering and drift in the rear wheel drive cars in particular, and the addition of rally cars to the fold offers a nice change, with the less grippy gravel, snow and dust surfaces of the rally tracks making for drifting heaven. In general, if you fancy a particular kind of car then you’ll more-than-likely find it, and they all handle pretty much as you’d expect when you compare them to each other.
It looks rather tasty for a PSP game as well, with the framerate at a solid 60fps throughout and a pleasing amount of texture detail spread liberally across the screen. One slight compromise that has had to be made is that in races there are only three opponents dicing against you (in the usual rather rigid, soulless GT manner), but all things taken into account it’s a pleasant game to look at. Sound wise the game’s a little less impressive and features a selection of rather dull tunes, although there is an option to use your own music that you unlock (ugh) a few steps into the challenge mode.
This is all fine and good, but the game then begins to come unstuck when you look around for modes to race around in. The most glaring omission from the handheld GT is the career mode, in which players start off with a naff old banger and gradually work their ways up the ladder until they reach the top-end sports prototypes and open wheel cars that are but a tantalising promise early in the game. In fact, Gran Turismo has always fully been about the career mode for me, and the total absence of it leaves a gaping hole in the PSP version’s petrol tank.
This could have been somewhat rectified if the main game had some sort of compelling structure to it so that you felt like you wanted to keep working through to collect all the cars and triumph in all the events, but it doesn’t. The main option is the Driving Challenge mode that throws over 100 little tests at you such as tackling a number of corners in a particular type of car, managing to brake enough to stop in a zone at the end of a straight and so on, but effectively all this becomes is an elongated license test mode. This is made all the less meaningful without the carrot of earning any kind of license to buy better cars, as you can buy anything you want from day one.
Having said that, it’s not quite true. For some reason best known to themselves, the developers have offered a selection of manufacturers to purchase from but then made them appear at random points rather than all being available to choose from. You’d assume that this may have been some sort of recognition that the game offered little in the way of a feel of progression as it is, but it’s a clumsy attempt to throw some sort of random element into proceedings and it gets bloody frustrating. After each race or event you compete in the list of four manufacturers available to browse swaps around with no set pattern, and even worse is that you can wait for an age for, say, Ferrari to appear and then realise that on that particular game day they are not offering the car you wanted to buy. Madness. On top of that, there are no upgrade options to be found for any of the cars, which is another huge element of standard Gran Turismo play.
The other main single player offering basically allows you to change between your choice of circuit, car and amount of laps, with the game giving you prize cash for longer or more tricky races. It’s pretty much a simple single race option with the slight added bonus of levelling you up throughout so you can take on better AI and earn more cash, so it’s hard to say that you’ll be particularly addicted to this either.
Therein lies the rub. Gran Turismo ticks a lot of boxes in its PSP iteration; you have the selection of cars, you have a decent amount of circuits and enjoyable handling, but all that content lacks a decent spine to keep you coming back. You could argue that as a handheld game the simple pick-up-and-play nature and limited options are part and parcel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to overlook the things that are missing. Would a career mode really have been that tricky to implement? Would it have been that difficult to put in some kind of rudimentary upgrade option for the cars? Who knows. What you can say, though, is that the gaming experience is all the poorer without them.
That’s undoubtedly a shame, as otherwise it’s a nifty racer with some nice features, such as the promise of being able to port your garage across to GT5 whenever it is deemed fit for release and the option of racing three chums in ad-hoc mode. It looks good, it handles well, but it just lacks that sense of progression that I find a major draw in racing games. For the most part, GT PSP sticks to what it does well and performs admirably under the circumstance, but in some cases that just isn’t quite enough.
7/10