The GT5 expectation thread (including preview titles)*

I haven't read any the reviews yet, but this would seem perfect for a mobile title. Something you can just pickup and get the most out of it when away from home. I'm be looking forward to my copy

 

sorry, i meant no 'oldskool'-gran turismo mode
Happy to see more 'good' reviews btw.

But still: how hard can it be to recreate the GT-mode? I hope they will have DLC or something (free of course) as I want to get my GT driving license again!

 

IIRC PD have already said there won't be any DLC for the PSP version.

 

Argh, and here I was just thinking about picking up GT PSP. But without career mode... What were they thinking? Ah well, I really didn't need to be getting back into time consuming driving games anyways.

Regards,
SB

 

Well you can create your own career mode, emulate GT4's career more for all you care. I'm really happy that I don't have to. This game is more like Pokemon for driving. Here I just get to drive the cars that I like on the tracks that I like, and my goal is to collect the cars, and trade them with other players. The only thing I regret is not having leaderboards, but there are various sites that will likely have databases for this as we used to have (nice bit of legacy form the past), and as long as we can save replays (and take them off the USB and upload them) they can be verified too. That's not to say I think they shouldn't have had these included, though - it's a bit of a shame that you can't sync your best laps to the online databases somehow. It is a shame though that you can't see very easily if you already have a car. Looks like I'll be tracking that manually to start with ... I presume that iwth the unlocking mechanism for GT5 though that should help keep track of things eventually, but until then, Excel sheet here I come?

Yeah, all in all I can see that many reviewers will be disappointed with PD not doing more with having so many cars in the game, but for me personally, career mode was never the best bit. Prize cars are a different matter though, but in a way by giving you money instead and then random cars for sale at any time, the net-result isn't all that different - in GT4 it could be a drag having to do a certain race several times just to win a particular car.

 

I think, because you can use cars and money between GTpsp and GT5, that it is meant like an offline, mobile component to the 'real game'. You can earn money and cars to use in "The Best Driving Game Ever 5". Something like that

 

Well not just that. They wanted to make the game more accessible, and of course focus more on the Monster Hunter aspect ... after Monster Hunter's PSP success in Japan every game must have some form that allows you to progress while interacting with other players.

I liked this review, not for being positive, but for giving me more interesting information that most of the other reviews, like being able to set the race length to up to 90 laps, and the game adjusting the win-payout accordingly for instance:
http://www.digitalchumps.com/game-reviews/37-psp/3735-gran-turismo.html

 

After I got over the technical achievement - which is immense by the way - I got bored of GT PSP extremely quickly. I mean, I've played this game to death years ago and virtually nothing is different, aside from some new licence tests and new cars - which are artificially kept from you by only have certain dealerships available on certain days (an obvious and clumsy attempt to artificially make the game longer).

Huge levels of excitement turned to almost complete apathy within 24 hours. Very disappointed. The PSP is right next to me now and I simply have no compulsion to play it.

The crazy thing is that all the really hard work is done. It's though Polyphony just gave up when it came to tackling the problem of how to make GT a good handheld game.

"Oh we'll make the license tests a bit better..."
"Then what...?"
"Um... How about chucking in all the GT4 tracks and cars from GT5?"
"Job done!"

 

The point of that was that you can't get all the cars anytime you like, and you can't even get all the cars on your own. If you want to have all the cars, you have to trade with others. This was by design. Of course you may well disagree with that - as always there's a big quesiton mark whether or not this kind of thing works outside of Japan, or for this game, even inside Japan. But with 800 cars, it's not a bad idea to make it all about collecting them.

Personally, I'm thrilled about not having a GT mode in the PSP version. With the options I have here, I can basically choose to play the game exactly replicating most of the career modes of any of the previous GTs, should I choose to, and more or less award me the same kind of prizes, though in this case of course with the exception that you can only buy from four dealerships at a time, where previously you could win either one specific car in one specific color (sometimes not otherwise available), or a random car out of four (could be pretty annoying if you wanted a specific car) or anything inbetween. Getting prize money now but being limited to four dealers, means things haven't changed that much, but there's a lot more flexibility in getting the car you want while still not being able to get everything you want. I like the idea that the game invites me back in to check regularly to see what new dealerships are available, and while it could be frustrating if you want to get a specific car, I like that it encourages me to trade with others (I certainly know people that will have this game) and I'm also fairly sure that Sony will announce the online-play through PS3 support at some point which will help here also.

That said, of course there's a bit of a missed opportunity to make more of this - considering that you've got such a vast library of tracks and cars, it's not actually that hard to come up with something that makes use of this a bit more. Maybe a challenge creator would have helped a great deal here. Also, again, leaderboards are something that I'd really have liked. Improving my laptimes has always been a big draw for me in this series.

While you have it next to you, could you give me some more information on what kind of high-score tables it has? Can they be synced with someone else's through ad-hoc, or will they always contain your times only? Are there progress screens showing how much of the cars / game you've unlocked in numbers and percentage?

Don't you think that the opposite might be true? They probably came up with exactly this when deciding what would make a good handheld game. Kaz has also always been very busy with thinking about ways to make (t)his franchise more accessible, including the ridiculously titled Gran Turismo for Boys idea.

Anyway, I agree with most reviewers that the designers could have done a better job. I personally think a better way to do this would have been to make this the first car-based RPG, possibly with co-op features - e.g. beat a certain team with your team of drivers - there are anime's that have this topic, and you could go from drift trials to rally to formula one, 'level up' your driver and so on. Think Final Fantasy with cars. I'm certain that if this game had been designed by someone from Europe or the U.S., it would have been set up very differently.

But that would probably have been way too expensive. As it stands, I like collecting the cars, I like the tracks, and I'm a Time Trial junkie at heart (so much so that I could live with having all the cars and difficultly levels unlocked at the start - hopefully they do that with the online mode for GT5). For all others, I hope that online play through PS3 (of course already possible now if you download this app from the Jap store) will relieve matters somewhat and that it will be made available just before the official launch, at TGS.

www.play.com has this game for 23,49 and it also has the new Motorstorm for 23,49 and ditto for LBP PSP also. I'd be interested to know the story behind that - shops are probably going to sell this at 44,99, which is quite a difference. But this low price that Play.com, seems to suggest that Sony is selling these new PSP games at much lower prices?

 

Wow GT PSP has turned out to be quite the disappointment after 5 years of waiting. And I bought a PSP just so I could get GT.

I don't think i'm going to buy a new PSP anymore, the graphics are also a step down from what they showed "running on PSP hardware" back in 2004/5. I hated the dithering in Ridge Racer for PSP, makes it look like a PSone game.


They shouldn't have been so adamant on it running at 60fps (a COD4 like perceptual FPS would work ok) and sacrificed visual fidelity.

 

Agreed. Quite disappointed as well and I already had a PSP2000.

 

Japan has Adhoc Party to make the online component more accessible. Without which, players need to meet face to face, which I think is a tall order in the western world (or in places where people live further apart).

Then again if you can play GT PSP via Adhoc Party, it means you are right next to GT5 when it's released.

Now if PSP can connect to Adhoc Party via a PC or some cellular network, it would be a different story altogether.

 

So GT for PSP has tons of cars and tracks, and a great physics model. Outside of that everything else is below average. Sounds like the same old formula to me.

Imagine what they could do if they spend 1% of their time more on everything else. There is really no need for a franchise like GT, that has resources available to them that most of the games industry can only dream of, to end up like this.

 

Sorry but limiting the dealerships idea is totally rubbish. When the Veyron turned up, I had no idea that it would be, therefore I was just a few credits short having bought a car previously. Ultra-frustration... and this is about making the game better for the handheld audience? Tip to everyone:

Spoiler

Make sure you have a couple of million CR in the bank by around Day 30... the Veyron turns up for purchase between Day 30 and Day 35, assuming the dealerships aren't randomly generated.

As patsu astutely points out, the ad-hoc trading may well work in Japan, but it's a total non-starter for the Western audience, as is the omission of online racing.

The only record keeping I can see is in the Time Trials and Driving Challenges part. If you set a record in a single-player race, it does not appear to be preserved at all.

With regards the omission of career mode, I don't actually mind that so long as it is replaced with something... anything... that was actually workable and decent. The bottom line is that if you're going to recycle your old content (again) you need to be creative in how you do it. Polyphony has done literally nothing in this regard and this is the core reason why GT PSP is a disappointment.

 

caveat (a disappointment to some people)

 

I have not played nfs-shift and probably will give it a miss for now. But the car handling in all the videos look really bad, sliding and exaggerating oversteer like the RD grid. But may be it is not that bad

Anyhow hopefully GT5 will have good cokcpit view animations

 

Can people please take the GT PSP discussion and comments to another thread. This thread is about GT5P\GTHD\Whatever.

 

Agreed.

 

Here's a thread for GT PSP:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1336345#post1336345

 

Something from GAF again:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17626515&postcount=8925

PD is going to set up another new website: