IGN has reviewed the new portable Gran Turismo game, and assuming the reviewer didn’t miss something painfully obvious, gave it a fair, relatively low 6.8/10 score.  The main complaint is that the game lacks a “career mode,” instead making all 800 cars available to be purchased, and all 35 tracks open from the start,  rather than making/allowing you to work through events in a steady progression.  ¹

It seems to me that the design philosophy behind this is to just turn it into a portable ‘pick-up-and-play’ game, while if you want the real experience you need to buy a Playstation 3 and the full version of Gran Turismo 5 whenever it too is finally released.  A problem with this is that the huge selling point of major-release PSP games is that they offer  full-console-game-like experiences, and are all packed with anywhere between 25-50 hours of gameplay.  Even Locoroco, a game about rolling a big blob around has surprising amounts of depth and things to do.

I can understand that kind of philosophy from a commercial standpoint, trying to make gamers double/triple-dip, but it seems horribly unfair to be charging nearly full-price for a seemingly crippled game that fans of the series and PSP owners have been waiting for for four years.  [4-4-4!]  Alternatives, the PSP game would be probably be outstanding value and make for an excellent game if it were priced just as a budget title.  The high expectations would vanish.

While this isn’t a deal-breaker for me, $40 isn’t even too much, this seems extremely unfair to fans of the series.  A PSP is affordable vs. a PS3 and the necessary HDTV to do it justice.  This portable release ought to be a complete title, building on the name and reputation of the series.  The Gran Turismo games has historically sold staggeringly huge numbers (GT3 & GT4 selling a combined 25 million copies on PS2), yet it appeals to a very different segment than the stereotypical gamer.   I personally didn’t give a crap about them until I tried the PS3 GT5: Prologue version, and now I’m obsessed.  It’ll have been five years when GT5 comes out, since GT4 was released.  I can see there being a huge segment of adult gamers now who keep a PSP around, but have otherwise aged-out and lost interest in doing the whole console thing.  I think I’m on the cusp of it myself, owning just a PS3 with a very small selection of games this generation.