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102 driving events, 4 manufacturers available each two days (if I understood right), slightly improved AI compared to GT4, no career mode (as we already knew), no bonus for golding events, rank D to S at tracks giving more prize money
 
102 driving events, 4 manufacturers available each two days (if I understood right), slightly improved AI compared to GT4, no career mode (as we already knew), no bonus for golding events, rank D to S at tracks giving more prize money

I'm okay with most of that but the 4 manufacturers thing is bit annoying.
I can't help but feel IGN only concentrated on the bad points.
 
And another disappointing review, this time from ComputerAndVideogames.com:

But this time with some nice positive feedback also.

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 300+ 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.
 
Loving the dirty intro music.

There's some positive reviews out there, mind, and I think I'm going to enjoy this game... Buy a car, do a couple of races, buy another and repeat. Also, because you only choose from about 20 cars at a time, I'm sure I'll try some cars I wouldn't have considered otherwise.

p.s. I'll be the guy sticking races on their longest possible settings every time.
 
Go on October 1st, making its momentous debut as a downloadable launch title for the revamped console. What better title than a flagship exclusive to kick-start the latest version of the ever-changing PSP?
Larger video: 1mb HD

And yet, GT on the PSP is not quite what we were expecting. Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital have clearly put in a lot of hard work cramming Gran Turismo onto a tiny UMD, weighing in at just over 1GB (a 1010MB download will also be available on the PlayStation Store) and despite this awesome feat, Yamauchi-san's claim that this is a fully-fledged GT title falls somewhat short due to the notable absence of a proper career mode, meaning that the crux of the game is distributed between a standard, arcade-style game type with three distinct variations, more on which later.

While this structure means that you can tailor the racing to suitably short bursts of play for the morning commute, anyone itching for something a bit more substantial might be left wanting. So, PSP GT isn't quite the full fat 'Real Driving Simulator' we were promised, but then this is a handheld title after all, and in as such the PSP version delivers in spades.

Initially presented with the slightly perplexing inclusion of a single paltry car in your garage as a starting point, you're made to work hard in winning races to earn credits to then purchase new vehicles. Although the early races are largely unexciting cakewalks that simply allow you to accrue credits to blow on new vehicles, this soon makes sense as the thrill of buying a fuel-injected monster makes all the requisite grinding well worth it.

Each event you complete makes a single day elapse in game, and every day presents a selection of car manufacturers to choose from when you visit the car dealership from the main menu. All of the usual GT suspects are present and correct; from the staple Nissan Skylines, Mitsubishi Evos and Mazda RX7s to the garishly liveried racing-spec rockets that set you back vast wedges of hard-earned credits. New to this particular version of GT is the exciting addition of Ferrari, Bugatti and Lamborghini to the list of manufacturers, raising the vehicle tally to roughly a staggering 800. Accessing the beasts with the massive horse-power takes a great deal of perseverance in racking up plenty of wins though, so slowly crawling your way up the ranks is the only way to add increasingly exotic, high performance vehicles to your garage.

Once you've managed to win enough races to buy a flashy ride, you can play a two-lap standard race, a time trial or a drift trial. Racing against three other AI opponents makes finishing in the top three fairly easy, so accumulating cash towards new cars is mercifully quick. Outside of the standard racing, there's also a diverting challenge mode which is much like previous Gran Turismo's license tests and consists of short braking challenges, cornering trials and a host of other small segments designed to assess your driving prowess and introduce new players to GT's exacting race mechanics. During races you can also switch on a helpful racing line, much like Forza's cornering aid.

It's through besting these bitesize challenges that you accrue the most credits, eventually enabling you to splash out on the better vehicles tucked away at the dealership. Combined with the game's main single player, there's plenty to keep you playing Gran Turismo despite the lack of a deeper career mode. Ad-hoc multiplayer means that playing with mates or random strangers in public is an inviting option, and you can throw down the gauntlet and just race or trade cars if you're so inclined.

As is the benchmark for GT, the presentation and interface is also clearly designed, bold and easily navigable - perfect for the smaller screen. And that same trademark Gran Turismo quality pervades every inch of this bespoke PSP version, from the meticulously crafted vehicles (still no crash damage though folks) to the intricately detailed, iconic circuits - everything is exactly as it should be. While the in game HUD takes a little bit of getting used to, it's perfectly functional and you can tweak the settings from the option menu.

Arguably, the long-awaited PSP iteration of Gran Turismo is the most accessible yet, although that doesn't mean that any concession has been made with the game's deep handling model and outstanding visuals, both of which are almost a perfect match for its PS2 counterpart. However, using either the D-pad or analogue nub to steer, manoeuvring your ride around the challenging curves of a Laguna Seca or a Nurburgring is relatively awkward when compared to the stick on a proper controller, but then this was to be expected - the PSP's nub has never been a joy to play with (that sounds slightly wrong).

Nevertheless, Gran Turismo is a formidable racing sim and Polyphony has done a great job in converting the game for Sony's handheld. The 35 tracks (70 if you count the reversed versions) culled from the PS2 GT offer more than enough longevity and if you're willing to scrape together enough credits to bag your favourite car, then you're really going to love everything that the title has to offer.

Whether you get the most out of GT on the PSP will ultimately depend upon how much you enjoyed the rest of the instalments in the series. If you're not already a fan of the slavishly exhaustive self-confessed Real Driving Simulator, then this will do nothing to change your mind. Superficially it's more of the same, but if you happen to already be a GT fan, then that's obviously a good thing. For the racing connoisseurs GT is aimed at, the omission of a career mode and the continuing lack of damage might be a concern, but for everyone else, Gran Turismo almost takes pole position as one of the most accomplished racers on the PSP.

80%

http://play.tm/review/26653/gran-turismo/
 
That wouldn't be possible as far as I know.
I bought the Ford Offroad game from the PlayStation Store, and it required a higher firmware that the CFW goes up to, and I couldn't get it to work at all.
I'm going to buy a 5th PSP soon, a 3000 model, which will be kept as a 2nd official firmware PSP (I was looking at the specs of this model for the 1st time, and really want one now!)
Huh, that's strange, as I bought Patapon 2 on the PSN, and converted it, and it worked just fine. Maybe it differs on games...
 
To the person who asked about the longevity of races:

Feeling masochistic enough for a 90 lap endurance around Citta de Aria? Go for it (and the game even adjusts the credit payout to the number of laps set)

from the link from the post above :)
 
I don't see, on the reviews, anything about the music in game. It doesn't have an original soundtrack? Only our mp3's?

Something that have most of these reviews in common is, they miss a GT mode. Well, I would like it too, but this is a portable game, so I find logical the Driving Challenges. Other portable racing games, like TOCA 3 or any Need for Speed, do the same, they are structured in missions and don't have a pure "history mode".
 
They could have made a career style mode purely in a mission style format. What's lacking from what it has now is a sense of progression and reward for what you've accomplished.

We've all seen how well accomplishments/trophies/etc have worked in games of late. People love to be rewarded for doing things, no matter how small the task and how trivial the reward. That to me is the basis of a career mode, to be rewarded for progressing in whatever form the game chooses to present it. To remove the reward system of unlocking tracks, special cars, and new events seems....misguided. And to not replace it with anything at all...you have to wonder how much market research and outside testing they actually did.
 
I don't see, on the reviews, anything about the music in game. It doesn't have an original soundtrack? Only our mp3's?
It has an original soundtrack.

Other portable racing games, like TOCA 3 or any Need for Speed, do the same, they are structured in missions and don't have a pure "history mode".
I think Toca 3 was setup the same way the console version was, but I know that Toca 2 was pretty much the exact same game.
 
Original soundtrack! Great, thanks Toronado :)

...I think Toca 3 was setup the same way the console version was, but I know that Toca 2 was pretty much the exact same game.

Not exactly, in PSP TOCA 3 you don't follow the pilot career. In the end you do some normal races, what most of the time you are doing short missions about avoiding cones, finishing the race with no damage, overtake in one lap...

Need for Speed Shift on PSP seems to be a similar case. Obviously I still don't have it, what reading some reviews and previews, they say the PSP version is more focused on short races, duels with another driver and fictional courses (as the old NFS).
 
We and presumably the reviewers knew there would be no career mode. it's just something to play when you can't get to your console to play GT5.. Any reviwer should have been aware of this and the reasoning behind it.

Yet every review has taken it upon themselves to mark the game down because of it, i didnt' see these articles when Kaz announced it would have no career mode. Ridiculous anyone who's pre-ordered or would buy it knew it wouldnt have career.
 
We and presumably the reviewers knew there would be no career mode. it's just something to play when you can't get to your console to play GT5.. Any reviwer should have been aware of this and the reasoning behind it.

Yet every review has taken it upon themselves to mark the game down because of it, i didnt' see these articles when Kaz announced it would have no career mode. Ridiculous anyone who's pre-ordered or would buy it knew it wouldnt have career.
Maybe it just shows how integral part of the "Gran Turismo experience" the career mode is. 💡

I might have bought this game anyways, but seeing how you are not even rewarded for completing the driving missions, I see little point in playing the game. :indiff: I'll rather wait for GT5.
 
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We and presumably the reviewers knew there would be no career mode. it's just something to play when you can't get to your console to play GT5.. Any reviwer should have been aware of this and the reasoning behind it.

Yet every review has taken it upon themselves to mark the game down because of it, i didnt' see these articles when Kaz announced it would have no career mode. Ridiculous anyone who's pre-ordered or would buy it knew it wouldnt have career.
I don't understand the logic behind this. Lets say Sega announced a straight port of Sewer Shark for the PS3 and made sure everyone knew about it. Does that make it a good idea?
 
I don't understand the logic behind this. Lets say Sega announced a straight port of Sewer Shark for the PS3 and made sure everyone knew about it. Does that make it a good idea?

Yes. And I would buy a copy. Make that two copies.
 
I can't believe no one has yet thought of this. The solution to the 4-manufacturers-per-day problem is changing the day in the PSP D:

I don't think it's that simple. From what the reviews say, each race you get into counts as a day, i think it will have nothing to do with the actual calendar of our PSP's ..

Hopefully they'll have a way of showing the dealers based on our credits and what we can afford at that moment, otherwise it's just stupid to show something like ferrari in day 2 or so, you'll never have enough credits for an enzo or the f2007 with only a couple of races done. .
 
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