Gran Turismo PSP game Review

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, game review, 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, game review, 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, game review, factors of a racing game, and, game review, 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, game review, 45 individual races. Nothing, game review, except the race course is pre-determined. The cars you race against are scaled on what car you enter with. So, game review, 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, game review, race is bloody infuriating, game review, . That's hours of monotonous play time spent light-years ahead of the pack on an empty course. Click Here and Download Gran Turismo 2009 For Free! Gran Turismo has in the past been criticised for typically allowing you to buy a fast car and race ahead, game review, of the computer.



But at least in previous games you knew what challenge a particular event set you, and you worked, game review, 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, game review, 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, game review, 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, game review, 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, game review, some time and effort., game review, 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, game review, ... The car purchasing system is unique in that not all of the game's 800+ cars are available, game review, to buy at the same time. A seemingly random handful of around five dealers are made available, game review, 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, game review, . 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. Click Here and Download Gran Turismo 2009 For Free! That's essentially what this game boils down to though - it's a collection game. A Pok?on-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,, game review, 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, game review, 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, game review, entire polygons on the floor below you disappear as the camera slips just below the texture, particularly, game review, when you career into bumpy sand traps.



And during replays (which generally look quite nice) badly positioned, game review, 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, game review, cars on the course.



Ridge, game, game review, review, 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, game review, 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., game review, As big fans of the series, we have to say, we're bitter, game review, . 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). Click Here and Download Gran Turismo 2009 For Free! 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 review, 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.

PSP 3000 Review

The PSP, game review, has never really been the must have gadget. When it was released several years ago it was a gaming device with extras. But since then the consumer changed and other features become important, game review, .



I know this is a dodgy intro but please allow me to explain., game review, The PSP was a gaming handheld released at a 250 price point when it got released. But then, game review, two years later internet became more mainstream and important. And the core design of the PSP wasn't aimed at internet features.



For example the WLAN switch is a stupid Engineering fault and it shouldn't have been there. The, game review, operating system wasn't really internet friendly, neither was the Wi-Fi adapter, it can't even do G! With the iPod, game review, touch doing games and media, a new feature became more important and again the PSP lacked behind. Consumers wanted to play music and watch videos on their handheld and the PSPs core wasn't designed for that. It's too big and fat to be a multimedia device, game review, .



Admittedly the video quality is great and the music features decent.



So the PSP doesn't do a lot of things right. It isn't the best multi media player, nor is it fantastic on the internet. But then there's the gaming feature. The fantastic thing about the PSP is that you can play blockbuster games on it everywhere. Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, and Little Big Planet just to name a few, game review, . And the experience is amazing. Most games play and look great. It is exactly what you would want from a portable device.



The screen size, game review, is spot on and the controls are comfortable even during the longer gaming sessions. But awkward hardware decisions should again, game review, be noted. The speakers for example aren't very loud. and we didn't like the thousand buttons on the thing. There's a brightness button, but the brightest is not so bright and therefor best for almost every situation. We don't like the volume buttons much and again the WLAN internet switch is just plain useless. I understand that it should support the battery but why not just program the OS to use the built in Wi-Fi during online tasks online, rather than to let the user make the switch.



The design and hardware decisions are questionable in our opinion but other people seem to love it. We don't like, game review, the plastic feel of it or the thousand buttons. It all makes the device feel cheap and makes it look big. In fact it could just barely fit my pocket. But with that said the buttons feel great and the screen, game review, quality -aside from the lack, game review, of brightness- is amazing.



The PSP 3000 ships for about 150, game review, euros so it's pretty cheap.



And it has a good list of blockbuster titles with more incoming so it's a good value. Granted it isn't the best looking portable or most practical device on the market but it is a great gaming device for an affordable price, and nothing more.



PSP 3000 Review