For 4 years, I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now, it’s finally here.
Look at it, look at it. It’s so preeetty…
And now that I’ve finally gotten my mitts around a copy of the game, I’m going to gush even more about it like some excited little girl. But importantly, I can now try it out for myself and neglect my work. 800 real-world cars (!!!), including the Nissan GT-R, the Ferrari F2007, and the Le Man Prototype Audi R8 race car, and around 40-something tracks. Yes, I know, most of the tracks don’t really exist in the real world, and you don’t see what all the fuss is about because you’re boring, but still, 800 cars… That’s pretty awesome. And with so many cars and tracks, it seems like a game I’ll be playing for a really, really long time to come. My CAP score screams in horror as I spend hours playing the game everyday, but I love Gran Turismo. Until I get my results…
And that’s not the only drawback with this game. It may have a “Challenge” mode, where you learn more about driving on a track through series of challenges, but there’s no career mode… which is fine actually. Also, I can race with a maximum of 3 other cars at the same time. Yes, not 1, not 2, but 3 opponents. That’s even more than the number of girls I’ve dated.
So exciting…
But then again, the silliness of a 4-car race is justified by, and probably caused by, the frame rate of 60 frames/sec(which is almost unheard of for a driving game on the PSP), and the mostly immaculate modelling of the cars. No grainy, vague looking shapes here. The shape of each car model faithfully conforms to the appearance of its real world counterpart. You can really tell which car you’re looking at just by looking at the shape of it, because here, unlike in NASCAR, a Ford Mustang really looks like a Ford Mustang, which is brilliant. And it’s not just the shapes of the cars that are accurate. You can really discern the different handling characteristics of each car as it pitches and rolls through the corners as well. And if you’re driving a Ferrari Enzo or a McLaren SLR or something that’s supposed to have spoilers that extend at higher speeds, the spoilers actually do that in the game! The first time I drove up behind the SLR in the game and watched the spoiler come up on the SLR, I was so impressed, I drove into its rear end.
It’s this attention to detail that makes Gran Turismo stand out from the rest of the games out there, especially on the PSP, because it’s first and foremost a simulator. If you’re a fan of arcade-style racers, you probably won’t be very fond of this, because this is something that actually requires you to brake 200m ahead of a hairpin turn. It requires you to drive sensibly, and driving sensibly is good. All drivers should learn how to drive sensibly. That way, we’d have fewer women driving on the roads…
One thing that did bother me though, was that you can only purchase cars from 4 manufacturers at any one time. The manufacturers randomly rotate after every other race or event that you enter, so theoretically, you should eventually see all the cars from all the manufacturers after a few lifetimes, when they’ve all become obsolete. I wouldn’t mind this too much, but my PSP seems to be incredibly fond of Nissan, Toyota and Mazda, which is annoying, because I don’t want to buy Nissans, Toyotas or Mazdas anymore. But that’s pretty much the only thing I don’t like about this game. Otherwise, it’s a simulator, and simulators rock. Especially good ones.
After all, who needs 3 girlfriends when you can race 3 other cars around the Nordshleife?
Nico 