Gran Turismo PSP - Better late than never?

I bought a PSP about a week after they were launched and at the time, it came with a leaflet showing screens from a PSP version of Gran Turismo. I was rather excited about this prospect and now, merely five years later, the game has been released. Essentially a cut down version of GT4, you have a choice between time-trials, single races against three AI cars (Selected at random based on the car you picked) or driving challenges (The ever-so-popular licence tests of earlier games). You choose the length of the races and win more cash the more laps you pick. You start out with each track being set to D difficulty and each time you win on that track you get the option to increase it one rank. Gran Turismo PSP should be judged the same as any racer, on the stength of the car line-up, the tracks, the gameplay, graphics and sound.

So let's begin.

Cars

The back of the box promises over 800 cars to drive in this latest incarnation of Gran Turismo. It's the car choice however that is a good indication of when development began for this game. Primarily, you have all the cars from GT4 with a few additions for new manufacturers and a couple of recent cars added. This means the vast majority of the cars are from 2004 or earlier and will be familiar to anyone who's played a Gran Turismo game before. To this aging lineup has been added a couple of Ferraris, a couple of Lamboughini's, the new Nissan GTR, the Audi R8 and a couple of concept cars from recent motor shows.

As you'll know if you've played a GT game before, 800 cars doesn't mean 800 different cars. It means 100 Skylines, 100 Mitsubishi Lancers, at least 100 other slight variatoins of other cars already in there, 200 cars rebadged for the American market (All the Hondas are available as identical Acuras for example) and 250 shitty station wagons, people carriers and superminis you're never, ever going to drive. So there are about 50 different cars to drive but that's still a decent line-up and the cars do at least all feel a bit different from one another and if you're playing it multi-player, you'll get some use out of the shitty people carriers (Slow car races are as fun in multi-player as fast car races in my experience).

There are a few colour options for all but the LM and concept cars and a ton of dull technical information and history for each if you're into that kind of thing. All in all, it's a GT line-up and little has changed (Literally) since GT4. Take that how you will.

In terms of collecting cars, you don't win any from races and rather than having a full choice from the start, there are four manufacturers available every two in-game days with up to ten of their cars available on any given rotation. This could be random as after 32 in-game days I've seen the first car I bought come up again but in a different set. You can own as many as you want but set 30 as your favourites and these are the only ones you can piss about with the tuning settings on.

Tracks

As with the cars, the tracks are lifted from GT4. There have been a couple of tweaks (You can't cut across the grass on the second corner of Midfield any more because of a wall for example) and there's no SS night stages or Rome. You do get all the old classics though like Trial Mountain and Deep Forest, the real-world tracks like Suzuka, Monte-Carlo (Cote D'Azure) and the Nurbergring and a few rally tracks if you're a real masochist. There's certainly plenty here to keep you occupied though.

Gameplay

This probably should have been my first point as it's what makes or breaks a game, oh well. GT's finely tweaked physics model is here in all it's glory, along with the oddity of no car in the GT universe having a turning circle small enough to do a three point turn on a freeway. The initial problem you might encounter however is that this highly realistic physics model does not sit well with digital controls, such as one is faced with on a PSP. In the real world, when you're driving any car, let alone a high powered, rear wheel drive sports car, you don't just drive with the accelerator flat on or off or the brakes full on or off or using only full lock on the steering wheel. You ease the gas on out of corners, you turn in gently, it's all about being smooth but faced with button controls for gas, brake and steering, smooth driving is pretty fucking tricky. As such, you'll find yourself coasting round corners rather than risking trying to power through them and spinning out and any attempt to brake round a corner in a rear-wheel drive car will result in a crash. Not insurmountable problems but at first it can feel counter-intuitive.

The AI is as fabulously shit as every other GT game. The AI cars stick to the racing line like glue and drive largely independently of your actions. They are essentially rolling obstacles on the track rather than opponents. Quite why Polyphony have never bothered to come up with decent driver AI I will never know because it's the main thing that stops GT being a truly great racing game.

Graphics

Well if nothing else, the game is certainly a looker. Better than GT2 and probably almost as nice looking as GT3, the cars are as pretty as you'd expect, the tracks are detailed, the menus look nice etc etc. There's no slowdown ever and it runs at a good enough framerate for my ailing eyes. There is some tearimg between polygons through, especially on the surface of some of the tracks when the track is going either up or down hill. It's not enough to really distract though and it's no worse than any other PSP game I've played. It's Gran Turismo, of course it looks nice.

Sound

Play this through headphones, it sounds horrible through the PSP's speakers. The music is mainly shit, as seems to be standard for racing games except Wipeout (Why is this?) but luckily once you finish challenge B, you unlock the option to play mp3s stored on your memory card instead, or you can just turn off the music. The engines sound different enough and like real engines, if a little tinny for the most part and there's a thankful lack of Engrish announcers shouting which lap you're on.

Overall

As a racing game, this is pretty mediocre. As a time trial game however the GT franchise remains unsurpased. A handy option for this iteration is the ability to have the racing line, including braking points displayed on the track during races. This means you can hone your cornering to your heart's content, needing only worry about the AI cars off the start line or if you're driving far enough to lap them. As a way to familiarise yourself with the various tracks and cars ahead of the new GT coming out on PS3, this is a great game or if, like me you're spending a lot of time on planes, it's a great time waster. Personally, my favourite GT of the lot so far was GT3 Concept so I prefer the time-trials to races, meaning this is a great game for me but if you're after racing action, there are probably better choices than this. I picked it up new for $50AUS and I reckon it's certainly worth that much.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Read that this game has no career mode.

I think I'll pass on this one.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, in spite of being easily the prettiest PSP game so far, it looks fucking feature-barren. I'll either pirate it or wait a year or two and buy the inevitable sequel.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Yeah, you just do single races to buy more cars to do single races with. As I said, it's a time trial game but if you're into that kind of thing it's a pretty good time trial game.

"Career" mode has always been a joke in GT games though. You buy one shitty car, find a race you can win with it, do it up with bigger turbos and shit until you can win a race that gives you a decent racing car then use that decent racing car to repeatedly win whatever race nets you the car with the highest resale value to get enough money to buy a proper Le Mans car, the end. Who can honestly say they ever bought anything other than the top upgrades for a car once they owned a racing car?

GT's career mode is essentially a load of individual events with tailored opposition which essentially this game has too. You choose the track you want and how many laps and the car you want to drive and the system picks some suitable opponents. Once you get past the fact there are no preset races, it basically is GT's career mode, only without prize cars.

I think if you're playing GT for the career mode, you ought to try a game with a decent one, just to see what you're missing. GRID's is great and you can pick that up pretty cheap these days (Although the soundtrack is even worse than GT's).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I heard it has a DeLorean, and that cars from this game can be imported into GT5 on PS3 when it gets released. That's almost enough to make me want it, right there.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I think it was my memories of enjoying earlier GTs back in the day that was really driving my interest for this, but the more I see, hear and read about it the less interested I become. Don't see any reason to really bother with this one, going to just wait and see how GT5 turns out (hopefully better than I'm currently expecting).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

There is indeed a Delorean, but it's in GT4 too. I'm sure all the same cars will be in GT5, you'll just save a bit of time collecting them in this first, if that rumour is true.

GT5 will have to have dramatically improved AI to interest me. I've always loved the physics engine in the GT games but to persuade me not to just keep playing GT4 will take more than a graphics boost.

FELIPE NO

For some reason I skipped GT4. In fact I skipped GT2 as well, I obviously have a bias for odd-numbered installments. That being the case, as soon as GT5 is out long enough to have dropped in price, it's an automatic purchase.

Not enough changes between just one installment of the game and the next, as you said... I think that's why I've only bought 1 and 3 so far. Played 4 briefly, but it didn't grab me.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Four was one of the bigger updates in terms of the physics engine I felt, it certainly took a bit of getting used to, mainly because the ability to steer under brakeing was made a shade more realistic. I'm sure I'll get a PS3 some point soon and as such, will inevitably get GT5 when it comes out but like you say, I wouldn't rush out on launch day to get it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.