I can’t believe it when I sat down with Gran Turismo and realized that it has taken developers Polyphony close to five years to finally bring this game out on the PSP. Five years? What the hell have they been doing?   Don’t get me wrong, Gran Turisimo isn’t half bad, but for a game that has taken five years to make, I was expecting a lot more.

 First of all let’s look at the impressive list of numbers that Gran Turismo offers. There are 800 vehicle models, 45 tracks and no career mode. Two out of three isn’t bad I guess. While it’s true that some of those models are variations of the same car and that tracks have alternative routes and can be driven in reverse, it’s still a lot of driving for a small UMD. If you’re familiar with the Gran Turismo on the PS2, you know what to expect as the portable version is almost identical in terms of gameplay and presentation.  

If you were expecting an arcade racing game like Ridge Racer, you’ll be sadly disappointed.  GT PSP is focused on providing a driving simulation, lots of slow turns around sharp corners, careful braking and paying close attention to detail; if you hate that stuff and like to be reckless with your driving, you’ll hate this game.  If finding the perfect line and getting the best time on a track is your cup of tea, GT PSP no doubt has already gotten your attention. 

Like the console games, GTP has license tests labelled ‘challenges’ but unlike it’s older brother you don’t need to complete these challenges to progress the main game because quite simply…there is no career mode, none at all.  Haven’t seen that happen since….well since racing games were popular in the arcade.

The single player modes are very slim.  You have all the tracks available to you, you can choose any you want, race and learn them and earn points.  The more points you earn, the more you level up, but since levelling up is pretty much in the background you’ll probably never realize it until well into your first ten hours, sucks too because I love grinding and levelling up.

You can play some of the drift challenges which allow you to change and tweak certain body parts such as tyres etc, allowing you to drift a lot better.   You’ll drift through the same courses (and some courses are better for drifting than others) and even though its pretty tricky at first, you’ll soon get the hang of it.  The best mode though is Time Attack.  You can save ghost cars that you’ve raced before and just go around and around trying to shave off precious seconds to your best lap.  I’m very Japanese in my yearning for perfection and I probably spent more time playing this mode than any of the others.   That’s it…race some races…no progression, no achievement, no story, just race and repeat.

Although the single player is very slim, you’ll earn credits by racing well which you can use to buy cars from the dealership.  Each day there will be a selection of different cars in different classes for you to choose from, and the best bit is that with each car and their own very unique qualities it can fundamentally change the way that you drive, making an old track seem new as you try to compensate to handle the new car.

Multiplayer is Ad Hoc only, probably the biggest disappointment of GT PSP is that there is no infrastructure mode to race against people online and while Ad Hoc works and plays very well, you’ll only have the option to play with buddies in the vicinity.   There are standard races and party modes and you can play up to four players, unfortunately I don’t have four people around me with this game to play against, but the one guy I did manage to play with on the train was actually a really good experience.

This doesn’t feel like the full GT experience we were promised and the fact that it took 5 years to develop doesn’t help either.  There are less modes and sense of progression and while there are plenty of cars and the graphics are more than pleasant to look at, there seems to be something lacking from the overall package.  It feels like GT on a diet, and while you can say that it should be expected on a handheld, other racing games have delivered more in the past.

The cars and tracks all look lovely and the physics works exactly as you would expect it too.  But for every excellent graphical touch there are also shortcomings.  Objects on the track look like they were rendered in lower quality, some of the cars can get a little jaggy, and there are far too many tracks that look sooooo boring.

If it wasn’t for the lack of modes for single player and the on again/off again graphics, GT would’ve been an essential game for the PSP.  In it’s current state it will probably only appeal to those that love racing games and previous GT games and even then they’ll probably feel like they’ve done this all before in games that were put together with a bit more class.  There are lots to play and lots to unlock, but only elitists are going to feel inclined in doing so.  Stick with it and you’ll be rewarded with some great racing moments, but I would totally understand if you didn’t have that much patience.