Gran Turismo PSP Review

It was announced with the launch of the PSP and it came out with the launch of the PSP Go. This fact means it has been in production for over four years. But as the developer mentioned it has been an on/off project and one may wonder if this has done the game any good.

The gameplay

You start with a highly simplified menu with that gives you the option to do a race, go to a car dealer, watch cutscenes and replays, do license tests, and tune your car. The menu works pretty well and we immediately started a few races to get some credits in the bank. You can do time trails, drift races and quick races with laps up to 99. There're about 35 tracks to choose from and once purchased 800 cars to select, but most of those cars are pretty similar. There're over 20 Nissans skylines and just 2 Ferraris for instance. But things get better once you're behind the wheel. Because the driving is great. Put the physics on professional and you'll really feel the cars slide, on top of that there's a great difference between the cars. The Lotus elise is very unstable and twitchy while the Bugatti Veyron suffers from slight understeer. With different views including cockpit view you should be able to get comfortable quite quickly. Licenses are also worth attempting. Here you do small tests like get through sector 2 of Suzuka in 43 seconds and so on. Some of these tests are pretty hard but generally they're fun to do and good for your credit count. Taking everything in consideration your objective in this game is to get as much credits as you can to purchase more cars that you can test in the same limited game modes.

Presentation

The game looks good for a PSP game. Tracks are pretty detailed and the cars, especially in replays look top notch. We did notice some white lines horizontally across the track surface, a problem that seems to be game related. The sound is great. Engines really sound good. Most cars have an unique engine sound though we think some are copied but that's fully acceptable. Soundtrack wise this game hits it spot on. Out of the box you get a hand full of songs including crowd favorite just one second known from the Ferrari 458 italia tribute video. We talked about the cockpit view earlier but it's not as great as you might think. The interior is all blacked out. Basically all you're seeing is a black shape with two mirrors. It has been added pretty last minute we feel and of course the PSP can do just so much. Still it's running at 60 fps and looks better than most racing games on the system so we're not finding all this a major issue.

Gran Turismo is a game where you try to collect them all. It gives you limited game modes to do so, and the presentation isn't as good as we initially hoped. The variation in the cars is another thing we didn't like. But the physics are great so this is a must have for simulation fans, just not for anyone else.

Gran Turismo PSP Review

I'm Robin Chung, author of the dutch book Tegenlicht. I have a website that brings interesting reading material from all kind of subjects like health and gaming. The website also includes a forum, so you can discuss the articles, and you can order my book from there. http://www.robinchung.com

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