Buick 87, the Nolan North of car games is in this
Gran Turismo for PSP was announced at 2004 E3, but was released 6 fivers later at 2010. And what a disappointing wait it has been. Polyphony Digital, the company behind Gran Turismo franchise has done good job ruining what could have been a brilliant game.
Starting with negative to leave the few good to say about this game in the end. I can imagine Kazunori Yamauchi and his team went through the plans on how to accomplish the massive Gran Turismo for PSP's limited hardware. Going through the features that are unique for any GT games: huge range of cars, accurate controls, competitive multiplayer/AI, impressive graphics and lengthy career to name few. To start from the top: the last real Gran Turismo, namely Gran Turismo 4 for PS2 had 700+ cars, this version has 800+. When comparing the media size: PSP's dual layer UMD disc has capacity of 1.8GB where dual layer DVD that GT4 uses is 8.54GB. Looking at the numbers it is not too hard to see where this going.
Graphics wise I was little bit disappointed. The UI and menus look nice and stylish. In-play game graphics for most part are good. Frame-rate is constant, cars and tracks look good. Watching the races on a replay as in any GT game the cars look really good. Problem is that when zooming bit closer the polygon count is not as high, one would except in a car-porn game. Cars are detailed and recognizable but bit blurry. I also experienced some screen tearing which is strange for such long developed game.
On audio front game offers the standard set of generic rocks track which get turned off straight away thanks to my dislike of mainstream music. Each car has distinguished engine sound but these bit on the tame side.
Controls no doubt is one of the better executed parts of the game. Racing games on handheld console outside kart-racing games can be awkward because of small screen which make the draw distance short. GT for PSP does not have suffer from this issue luckily. The controls are responsive and accurate. Cars with more performance are naturally harder to control as with any more simulation racer such as this.
In the handheld version of Gran Turismo there are only three single player modes. Time-trial, single race or drift trial. Ad-hoc local multiplayer is supported for four players where head-to-head races can be done. Shamefully biggest focus being on the car trading part. Only a small number of cars are available for buying at any current time. Since there are only four car manufacturers open each day. Meaning if you want to collect all 800 cars you need to be checking the store every day and probably doing some trading. Fine idea for collectors. Unfortunately the execution fails here. On the race mode part of the game it is not possible to see which manufacturers are available. Too see this one needs to go the main menu. This means saving the game when coming out and more loading. PSP games generally don't really need more loading times.
One one front, the game has impressive figures for Gran Turismo game. 800+ cars and 45 unique tracks. This has caused some limitation such as having max four cars in track any current time. As well complete removal of career mode. On the positive note this still feels and plays like full fledged Gran Turismo game most times, but without the career mode. Game has been built more a quick pick-up and play in mind. Unfortunately this makes the game feel like bunch of meaningless single races with broken car collecting/trading mechanism.
